How D.C.'s Department of Housing and Community Development Will Tackle Housing Challenges

Aaron Wiener launches an in-depth interview of Polly Donaldson with a discussion of Mayor Muriel Bowser's recently proposed budget, which would allocate $100 million to the district's Housing Production Trust Fund for the creation and preservation of affordable housing. Wiener notes that, despite its goal to create housing for people earning less than half the Area Median Income (AMI), the Trust Fund manages to creates more housing for people making more than half the AMI. In response, Donaldson supports the current funding balance, and claims that the city is doing a better job of meeting statutory requirements: "In other words, we need to make sure that the deals we’re approving and that are moving forward and that we’re encouraging developers to bring to us have the ranges of income levels being addressed. If we only approve units at 80 percent [of AMI], that’s not going to meet those goals."

The interview next moves on to the subject of homelessness, which is not a direct responsibility of the DHCD but orients to Donaldson's experience as the former executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. According to Donaldson, "[Mayor Bowser] believes it really has to be all the agencies that are touching housing involved in ending homelessness. [We need to create] permanent housing solutions: both permanent supportive housing, for a defined subgroup that needs wraparound services and a stable housing environment, and targeted affordable housing, affordable units for folks flowing through the system who don’t need the same extent of services."

 In addition to more in-depth discussion on the above subjects, Wiener and Donaldson also discuss challenges of blighted and vacant properties in some neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.