Members of the D.C. Council pressed city officials yesterday on affordable housing efforts, saying it may be time to require developers to set aside a certain number of low-income units in more new apartment buildings.
Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D), who held a hearing on the issue yesterday, said the council is very serious about increasing affordable housing and will consider placing stricter requirements on developers and allowing greater construction density.
Council member David A. Catania said he doubts the city's tally of affordable housing units it says it has added in five years.
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Cropp said she knows that changes could rile neighbors and the business community.
"The real estate market is hot, and we have to move quickly," Cropp said. "We have a window of opportunity, and we need to go through now."
A report last week said the District's growing number of modest-income households are competing for a shrinking supply of low-priced rental apartments. According to the report, by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, cashiers, security guards, child-care workers and others among the city's least affluent residents spend far more on housing than experts consider reasonable -- with most paying at least half their income.
Ellen McCarthy, the city's interim director of planning, said the administration of Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) has renovated, replaced or added 17,000 affordable housing units in the past five years, a net increase of 7,000 units.
She said the task is to keep pressure on developers to include affordable units while ensuring that the requirements are not so onerous that the developers build elsewhere.
Council members viewed those numbers skeptically, saying that many more affordable housing units have been lost in recent years than gained.
"I don't believe it,'' David A. Catania (I-At Large) said about the administration's tally of new units. "I can't see it, touch it or feel it. I believe we have a crisis."
The city currently offers developers incentives, including zoning or density changes, to include affordable units as part of their project. In some cases, the city has allowed developers to build an extra floor of housing if they set aside a percentage of units for low-income residents. Similar units are also required when city land is sold for housing projects.
Some housing advocates and council members want the city to adopt a proposal for inclusionary zoning, which would require that affordable housing be included in every new or renovated development, saying the city needs to increase the number of units while keeping revitalized neighborhoods economically diverse.
Mandatory inclusionary zoning is opposed by developers, who say it would make it harder to get projects built. The D.C. Zoning Commission, at the request of housing advocacy groups, is considering the proposal.
McCarthy said that Williams would be in favor of inclusionary zoning if that were the best way to increase the number of affordable units. But she said other tools that the administration uses are more effective. If inclusionary zoning had been in force the past five years, McCarthy estimated, it would have created only 780 additional units.
Cropp said inclusionary zoning is one of many proposals the council will study in an effort to increase the number of affordable units.
