Category: Resources

CSG Testimony on DC FY2020 Budget for Department of Housing & Community Development

Posted on by Cheryl Cort

CSG Testimony FY20 Budget Hearing for DHCD

Testimony before the Hon. Anita Bonds, Chair, Committee on Housing & Neighborhood Revitalization, Council of the District of Columbia

RE: FY2020 Budget Oversight Hearing for the Department of Housing and Community Development and Housing Production Trust Fund

By Cheryl Cort, Policy Director

April 23, 2019

Good afternoon, my name is Cheryl Cort and I am the policy director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG). The Coalition for Smarter Growth is the leading organization working locally in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region dedicated to making the case for smart growth. Our mission is to promote walkable, inclusive, and transit-oriented communities, and the land use and transportation policies and investments needed to make those communities flourish.

We want to commend the Mayor for proposing a substantial increase to the Housing Production Trust Fund to $130 million and an increase in the Affordable Housing Preservation Fund to $15 million. D.C. continues to lead the country in its commitment to local funding for affordable housing, along with its use of important policy tools like TOPA and DOPA, and the administration’s innovations in the New Communities Initiative. These investments, policies, and programs are critical, but much more is needed to preserve and build affordable housing in a city that is rapidly becoming unaffordable to its low-paid workforce and many long-time residents.

The District continues to experience strong demand to live here, which drives up housing prices. In addition, the city’s economy has a large and growing gap between wages earned at white-collar jobs and the earnings of workers who provide essential services to many of the businesses upon which the high-paid professionals rely for day to day needs. To address the needs of low income residents, including the workers who fill 8 of the top 20 occupations in the city, we need deeper and more strategic investments. And we need stronger policies. The FY2020 budget can be more a part of the solution.

Workforce housing – make strategic investments for low wage workers to live in the city

We appreciate the administration’s attention to the housing needs of D.C.’s workforce. Helping workers live near their work has many family, community and environmental benefits. We are disappointed, however, that the income targeting proposed for the new $20 million “workforce” housing program, from 60% to 120% AMI, will miss providing assistance to the working households who most need it to stay in the city. The need starts at 50% AMI, and goes down from there.

Last month, we released a study on D.C.’s workforce housing needs (see attachment). We found:

  • 8 of the most common 20 occupations pay less than $48,000 a year (e.g. administrative assistants);
  • 5 of the top 20 jobs pay below $30,000 per year, which is considered extremely low income for a two-person household (e.g. janitors and cleaners);
  • Not a single one of the most common 20 occupations in the District was between 50% and 80% AMI.

Many of the fastest growing service jobs in the District, such as home health aides, food preparation, and waiters/waitresses, earn extremely low incomes. At these income levels, most working households face severe housing cost burdens, paying more than half of their income to housing. In contrast, rarely does a household earning 80% AMI or more face severe housing cost burdens.

These data show that the District’s critical workforce housing needs are with those earning well below 80% AMI, let alone 120% AMI. But the income targeting for the Mayor’s workforce housing fund would target assistance for earners at 60% to 120% AMI, or $112,500 per year for a 2-person household. For higher earners at this range, we should focus on policies that make the housing market work better, to produce more moderately-priced homes in more neighborhoods. For the expenditure of scarce funds, we must be strategic. Based on our research, we recommend the follow to address affordable workforce housing needs:

  1. Establish a workforce housing policy for income targeting based on need using earnings data and severe cost burdens. We ask the Council to approve funding for the new workforce housing program using income targeting no higher than 60% AMI for rental and 80% AMI for ownership. In fact, based on our research, we recommend that the focus for workforce housing go to rental assistance at 30% and 50% AMI.
  2. Recommit the city (especially through DHCD and Office of Planning) to its obligation to comply with the Fair Housing Act’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. The D.C. Council can address this in part through the Comprehensive Plan update bill. The Comprehensive Plan should be revised to unlock the potential for less costly, mixed-income housing throughout the city. This is an important way to better address workforce housing needs up the income scale. The Comprehensive Plan should significantly expand the potential for creating new housing, including inclusionary zoning units, especially in high opportunity neighborhoods. The Comprehensive Plan must also ease restrictions on building housing, especially affordable and public housing, like the Park Morton/Bruce Monroe plan to replace deteriorated public housing.
  3. Greatly expand the Local Rent Supplement Program (LRSP) to provide rental assistance to help low-paid workers, especially through tenant-based LRSP. The FY20 budget proposes modest increased support for targeted affordable housing and project-based rental assistance. However, the budget proposed no additional tenant-based rental assistance. We urge the Council to add funding to tenant-based LRSP. In the long term, we should greatly expand LRSP and pair it with our fair housing efforts to bring more deeply affordable housing to high opportunity neighborhoods. These actions are a key way to address our workforce housing needs, and breakdown a legacy of discrimination which cuts off access to opportunity and choice.

 Thank you for your consideration.

_________________________________

Attachment: Making Workforce Housing Work, a new report by Coalition for Smarter Growth, March 2019

10 Orgs Release a Platform for Fairfax Healthy Communities

Posted on by Stewart Schwartz

 

Coalition for Smarter Growth, Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions, Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance, Audubon Naturalist Society, Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling, Friends of Accotink Creek, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Potomac Conservancy, Friends of Dyke Marsh, Audubon Society of Northern Virginia

Fairfax Healthy Communities:  Sustainable, Inclusive, Livable

 A Joint Vision for Fairfax County in 2019

We support a vision for Fairfax County that is sustainable, inclusive, and livable and urge candidates for local and state office in Fairfax County to support this vision and to commit to the implementation steps necessary to make this vision a reality.

We share a vision for Fairfax County where the County commits to:

  • Providing housing opportunities for people of all incomes, ages, and stages of life in every district in the county, investing in improving affordable housing and access to opportunity in communities where there are concentrations of poverty, and fostering greater racialand economic integration in single-family, low-poverty neighborhoods.
  • Ensuring transit, walking, bicycling and other modes of active transportation are well-funded, safe, convenient and accessible for people of all ages, giving residents more choices and reducing traffic congestion.
  • Creating vibrant, mixed-use, mixed-income transit-oriented communities which provide a range of housing choices and employment opportunities, while reducing vehicle trips and vehicle miles traveled.
  • Fighting climate change by dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, transportation and other sources.
  • Restoring watersheds to ensure clean drinking water and healthier ecosystems.
  • Expanding parks and trail networks.
  • Ensuring access for all to affordable health care and healthy local food.
  • Taking specific steps to realize its One Fairfax commitment to racial and social equity, community involvement, and the 17 goals laid out in the One Fairfax policy.

A sustainable, inclusive, healthy, competitive, and fiscally sustainable future for Fairfax requires a fundamental shift in land use, transportation, housing and energy policies toward walkable, mixed-use, mixed-income, and transit-oriented and green energy communities, and the full engagement of the community in achieving this future.

 

Signed:

Coalition for Smarter Growth

Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions

Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance

Audubon Naturalist Society

Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling

Friends of Accotink Creek

Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Potomac Conservancy

Friends of Dyke Marsh

Audubon Society of Northern Virginia

*  The above signatories are 501(c)(3) organizations. This platform is strictly educational and is being shared with all candidates and the public. By law, our organizations are strictly prohibited from participating in, or intervening in (including the publishing or distribution of statements) any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.

CSG Testimony on FY20 DDOT budget

Posted on by Cheryl Cort

We are excited to support the FY20 budget proposals to implement 16th Street dedicated bus lanes, the K Street Transitway, and the summer H and I Streets rush hour bus lanes pilot. These investments are a great start to a new era of delivering a priority bus system that gets hundreds of thousands of D.C. residents and visitors where they need to go, safely and efficiently. Building on this budget, we ask the Council and DDOT to jumpstart the District’s new priority bus system by accelerating implementation of dedicated bus lanes, and the other improvements we need to make this transit service faster and more reliable.

Read the full testimony here: CSG DDOT FY20 Budget Oversight_3-11-19

CSG Testimony re Amazon & Affordable Housing

Posted on by Stewart Schwartz

Coalition for Smarter Growth

March 14, 2019

Arlington County Board

Suite #300

2100 Clarendon Blvd

Arlington, VA 22201

 

Re:  Amazon incentive package and community needs

Dear Chair Dorsey and members of the Board:

The Coalition for Smarter Growth is the leading non-profit in the DC region advocating a network of livable communities – walkable, mixed-income, mixed-use, transit-oriented centers and corridors linked by an expanded transit network including Metrorail, bus, bus rapid transit, light-rail, and street-car as appropriate. Our partnerships span the region’s leading conservation, affordable housing, bicycle/pedestrian, and transit advocacy organizations, as well as progressive architecture, planning and development firms. We are proud that this web of partnerships enabled us to collectively win the first-ever dedicated funding for Metro.

We support Amazon’s decision to locate in Crystal City/Pentagon City. Their decision is a vindication of Arlington’s long-time leadership and implementation of smart growth and transit-oriented development (TOD). It is a vindication as well of our regional advocacy for TOD and of the Council of Governments’ Region Forwardvision and Visualize2045transportation plan commitments to TOD. Amazon is also teaming with one of the region’s most successful transit-oriented developers, JBGSmith, who have a record of good design and placemaking, and recently started a workforce housing fund.

Turning now to the proposed incentives program. We join others in the long-standing concerns about the nationwide use of incentives to attract major corporate entities – particularly given so many socio-economic needs in our communities. But we also recognize that both Arlington and the State of Virginia incentives are performance based. Arlington’s incentives are also being drawn from the growth in revenue from the Transient Occupancy Tax, of which 15% will go to Amazon for performance but the remainder to schools, housing and transportation in Arlington. We are pleased that the state transportation investments are among the most progressive seen in the U.S. in that they are focused on transit, bicycle/pedestrian and safe street design investments.

A new area of concern raised by Megan Rhyne of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government must be addressed – that the proposed agreement includes a provision allowing Amazon “at least two-business days to refute, redact or file a lawsuit when someone seeks records of its interaction with the county” (P. Sullivan, Washington Post, 3/15/19). At CSG we have always placed transparency in government at the core of community planning and engagement and strongly support ever greater transparency in FOIA standards and fewer exemptions. Therefore, this provision which Ms. Rhyne says is unusual, should be removed from the agreement.

While we are supporting the Amazon transit-oriented project, we share the significant concerns about housing affordability in Arlington and the region – an issue which admittedly predates Amazon. While Arlington and Alexandria are pledging $150 million toward affordable housing needs over ten years, our understanding is that these are not new, additional funds. It is good that the Virginia Housing Development Authority will be allocating $15 million per year over five years in low interest loans for affordable housing and added $3 million to the statewide Virginia Housing Trust Fund. But this level of investment is also far short of the need. Since Arlington notes that increased revenues will result from Amazon’s investment and associated development and economic activity, we urge the use of a significant portion of those revenues for affordable housing – to double or more the current annual commitments. We urge the same for Alexandria, Fairfax, and the state.

As for the state commitment to affordable housing, we need to point out the discrepancy between $750 million in incentives for Amazon and $50 million for Micron, while only adding $3 million to the state housing trust fund and the five-year, $15 million per year loan program for Northern Virginia. Similarly, the comparison between the billions we spend on highways and interchanges is stunning when compared to how little we are investing in affordable housing. In fact, housing close to jobs and transit IS a transportation solution, reducing vehicle trips and vehicle miles traveled. Investing in affordable housing in smart growth locations creates far more benefits than do our massive highway expenditures, providing family stability, improved health, improved educational outcomes, improved access to jobs and affordable transportation, and reduced air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, we need both much more public funding support from the state and local governments, but also innovative private sector investment in long-term committed affordable housing for 60 percent of area median income and below.

Beyond funding, we concur with many other groups that we need effective preservation strategies for market-rate affordable housing in our diverse neighborhoods that are potentially impacted by the economic development that will come with Amazon. Arlington, DC, Alexandria and advocates at CSG and the member groups of the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance have many ideas for effective tools for both preservation and inclusion of affordable housing, and we need a stronger commitment and an accelerated approach to implementation in each jurisdiction with the full participation of local residents.

Turning back to transportation, and Amazon’s role, we are pleased that Amazon has achieved about a 50% mode share for non-auto commutes in Seattle and has promised that they want to do even better here. We recommend a goal of 65% non-auto mode share. To achieve this, we recommend that Amazon provide transit passes to all employees, and that they minimize on-site parking (as they have discussed) — and price it OR offer equal non-parking benefits to any employee who might be eligible for or offered a parking space but wishes to take transit, walk or bike to work. Include secure bicycle parking, along with showers and lockers for bike commuters.

In addition, the state, Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, and local jurisdictions should add other projects to the package of transportation investments including:

  • Connecting Metroway through Alexandria to Fairfax’ Embark Richmond Highway BRT
  • Accelerating the Long Bridge rail project and building the separated bike bridge
  • In the I-395 Corridor provide TOD node-to-node bus rapid transit connections between Fort Belvoir, Springfield, Landmark, Mark Center, Shirlington, Pentagon City/Crystal City and Pentagon (and a Kingstown to Van Dorn to Landmark connection).
  • Expansion of Capital Bikeshare
  • Expansion of dedicated bike lane infrastructure

In conclusion, we support Amazon’s location decision, but we urge you to fix the FOIA issue, to advance these additional transportation projects in partnership with other jurisdictions, AND commit to increasing funding for affordable housing, adopting new tools for preservation and inclusion, and including the community in the development of these strategies and programs.

Thank you.

Stewart Schwartz

Executive Director