This month, Kevin Clinton, Board Chair of the Washington Housing Conservancy and Chief Program Officer for the Federal City Council (FCC), is the guest writer for the WHC blog. The FCC recently launched Housing Unity DC, an effort to bring together all the stakeholders in the housing space to build consensus and create real world solutions to DC’s growing housing affordability crisis. Read our blog and more about Housing Unity DC below.
Housing affordability is one of the defining issues facing the District of Columbia this season. The housing ecosystem in the city is in a state of rigor mortis.
As real estate values plummet, the situation for nonprofit housing organizations grows more dire each day. These nonprofit housers are losing their buildings and the associated covenants that make it possible for them to stabilize rents that enable people to stay in their homes. Decades of DC housing policy have constrained the ability to produce new housing, driving up prices. Government subsidies have helped make these units affordable but will never be enough to save an entire sector in crisis. (DC Policy Center)
Another warning sign: investors have withdrawn or are now excluding DC from their portfolios. When investment slows, fewer homes are built, fewer affordable units are preserved, and affordability challenges worsen.
Through my work as Chair of the Washington Housing Conservancy (WHC), I’ve seen firsthand the challenges that nonprofit housing organizations face in providing housing that is safe, affordable, and sustainable—especially for middle-income households increasingly squeezed out of the market, but ineligible for traditional subsidies.
Too often, affordability is framed as a challenge only for the lowest-income residents. The reality is broader. Teachers, nurses, first responders, nonprofit professionals, young families, and longtime residents are increasingly struggling to remain in the communities where they live and work.
At the same time, nonprofit housing providers face rising acquisition and operating costs, aging properties, complex financing structures, and regulatory environments that make long-term affordability harder to sustain.
Following the pandemic, DC adopted policies backed by government resources to help residents remain housed during extraordinary uncertainty. But demand exceeded available resources, and the responsibility for bearing the cost of policies favoring non-paying tenants shifted to the non-profit and private sectors. Delays in our courts and housing processes contributed to the mounting financial strain by breaking the mechanisms that enabled tenants and housing providers to work together towards solutions.
Across the sector, we have seen prolonged rent nonpayment, deferred maintenance, delayed improvements, and reduced services. There is no question that we need systems that protect residents facing hardship. We also must ensure that providers remain financially sustainable and preserve affordability over time.
Affordable housing challenges cannot be solved by nonprofits, government, advocates, or the private sector acting independently.
That is why in my other role as Chief Program Officer at Federal City Council, we launched Housing Unity DC.
Housing Unity DC was created to bring together a fragmented housing community after years of difficult—and at times bruising—debates over rental policy, eviction, funding, and development. Those debates created real divisions among owners, advocates, providers, policymakers, and investors.
The Federal City Council stepped up because we believed we could play a different role—bringing together parts of the housing ecosystem that do not always sit at the same table.
Housing Unity DC intentionally includes nonprofit providers, including WHC, developers, advocates, investors, operators, tenants, and public leaders. Through a structured, facilitated process, the goal is to rebuild trust and identify pragmatic solutions where broad consensus exists—and where there is a viable path to implementation.
Housing Unity DC’s goal is to identify, elevate, and move good ideas to create a healthier housing ecosystem that:
- Produces and preserves housing at multiple price points
- Expands access to neighborhoods of opportunity
- Protects residents from displacement
- Creates greater certainty for investment and development
- Reduces unnecessary regulatory and procedural barriers
- Sustains affordability over the long term
Our hope is to inspire participants from all sectors to take meaningful steps towards a healthier housing ecosystem. Progress is possible in the following focus areas:
1. Build trust across the housing ecosystem
Policy works best when residents, advocates, providers, investors, and government collaborate rather than operate in opposition.
2. Advance pragmatic reforms including those that encourage not just new construction but also the preservation of existing housing
Focus on solutions with broad support and a realistic path to implementation.
3. Remove unnecessary friction
Examine permitting, timelines, regulations, eviction backlogs, and operational barriers that slow housing delivery and preservation and strain housing providers, investors and residents alike.
4. Align public and private investment
Public investment is essential, but long-term affordability also requires attracting and sustaining private and nonprofit capital.
The question now is whether we are prepared to work differently to solve our housing affordability challenges. It is time to start.
Preserving housing affordability and promoting economic mobility in the DC-region
The Washington Housing Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Your investment helps us expand our work. Your gift is 100% tax-deductible. EIN 83-1866109
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