The work that provided the basis for this publication was supported by funding under an award with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The substance and findings of the work are dedicated to the public. The author and publisher are solely responsible for the accuracy of the statements and interpretations contained in this publication. Such interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views of HUD.
By Lisa A. Sturtevant, PhD
Nearly 400,000 renter households in the Washington DC region—about half of all renters—are cost burdened, spending 30 percent or more of their income on housing costs. For many individuals and families paying high housing costs can mean there is too little for other essentials, such as food and health care. In the Washington DC area, more than 12,000 homeless individuals were identified in this year’s point-in-time homelessness count, though we know the number of people without stable housing is much higher. Despite the efforts of countless housing advocates, non-profits, and local governments, the housing affordability challenges in the DC region continue to grow. What can local jurisdictions do to stem the rising affordability challenges?
Housing is a growing concern in the region. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2000, about 220,000 renter households in the Washington DC metropolitan area were cost burdened. In 2015, that number had grown to about 380,000, an increase of 160,000 households. In 2000, 33.2 percent of renters were cost burdened. In 2015, that share was 48.5 percent. The overall number of cost burdened renters has increased in jurisdictions throughout the region. For example, there were about 25,600 more cost burdened renters in DC in 2015 than there were in 2000. In Montgomery County, the number of cost burden renters grew by more than 31,000 over the 15-year period between 2000 and 2015. Fairfax County added 24,200 new cost burdened renter households over the same period.
These increases are not because local jurisdictions have ignored the problem. Just in the last few years, DC has dedicated $100 million to its Housing Production Trust Fund. Montgomery County has increased efforts to use public land for affordable housing. The City of Alexandria continues to look for opportunities to partner with developers to expand mixed-income housing. Fairfax County has made housing affordability a key component of its Strategic Plan to Facilitate Economic Success. Arlington County is working to adopt at Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) process to more efficiently and effectively allocate local housing resources.
But, as the cost burden numbers show, it hasn’t been enough. And things probably are not going to get easer in 2017. Even without specific affordable housing proposals, the new Presidential administration could weaken key Federal programs that local jurisdictions have come to count on for the production and preservation of housing affordable to lower-income individuals and families.
Tax reform. No specific proposals have been discussed by the incoming Trump administration related to the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. It seems very unlikely that the credit itself will be eliminated since there is generally broad bipartisan support for the program. However, there has been a lot of talk about the likelihood of tax reform under the new Trump administration. Some affordable housing finance experts have suggested that there could be “substantial” indirect effects of proposed tax reforms on the LIHTC, making the tax credit less valuable to investors. Reduced capacity of the LIHTC could mean a growing need for local resources to fill financing gaps and to make projects feasible.
Cuts in Nondefense Spending. President-elect Trump has indicated that he intends to cut nondefense spending, at one time saying he wanted cuts of one percent every year. This would mean cuts to key HUD programs that serve some of the lowest-income and most vulnerable individuals and families in our communities—programs like the Housing Choice Voucher Program and CDBG and HOME. Historically a target of cuts, these programs could be at significant risk under a President who has indicated little interest in supporting HUD programs. Even now, federal housing programs currently serve only about a quarter of eligible households. Reductions in federal funding would means that local jurisdictions will lose critical resources to support a wide range of housing and community development programs and the losses would disproportionately impact the lowest-income and potentially the most vulnerable households.
Rising housing challenges and declining federal resources are not new phenomena; local jurisdictions have been taking on increasingly active roles in housing policies and funding for decades. However, in 2017, the role for local action on housing will be even more critical in our region. What can local jurisdictions to do differently to move the needle?
Communication is key:
Make the case. Throughout our communities we need to continue to make the case for why housing is important. And there is not just one argument. Whether it’s because increasing housing supply is good for the local economy. Or that education and health outcomes are better for families with access to safe and affordable housing. Or that poor children who live in higher-opportunity neighborhoods go on to make more money—any pay more taxes—than those left behind.
Document the need. At the local level, it is important not only to quantify housing needs in the community, but also to relate those numbers to actual people. Combining hard data with descriptions of hypothetical—or real—individuals and families is important for demonstrating the need.
Explain how housing finance works. Make sure that the community understands why government is necessary when it comes to building housing affordable to lower-income households. Tools like the Urban Institute’s affordable housing simulator can help show in black and white that gap that often needs to be filled by public resources.
Communication can be hard but other important steps are even harder:
Prioritize housing. Public resources are limited and local jurisdictions have competing demands on those resources. In general, however, local communities have not been explicit about prioritizing housing, and then about prioritizing particular goals within housing programs and policies. Prioritization—linked to specified and dedicated funding sources—seems especially important to having an impact.
Innovate on the funding side. To meet housing needs when federal resources are on the decline, it is going to be necessary to identify new sources of funding. Local jurisdictions need to commit to looking for innovative funding sources and partners.
Photo courtesy of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
By Lisa A. Sturtevant, PhD
Fair housing never emerged as an issue in the presidential election; however, the new President and his HUD secretary and Attorney General will have responsibility for overseeing the enforcement of new fair housing laws, including the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule and the disparate impact court decision. There is uncertainty about what a Trump Presidency will mean for housing nationally, but given his selection of Ben Carson as HUD Secretary, it seems more important than ever to re-commit to working regionally to support the goals of fair housing and access to opportunity here in the Washington, DC metro area.
It has been over a year since the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development published the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule that established a new housing needs assessment process (replacing the analysis of impediments) with the Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH). The AFFH rule lays out a new procedure for local jurisdictions to assess areas of concentrated poverty, to identify disparities in access to good schools, transit and other amenities, and to evaluate unmet housing needs among certain subpopulations, including racial and ethnic minorities and persons with disabilities. In addition, for the first time HUD is providing a trove of local data to help localities identify patterns of demographic change. The goal of the AFFH rule is to bring greater guidance to localities for “affirmatively furthering fair housing” as mandated in the Housing Act of 1968.
Despite some of the rhetoric, the new regulations reflect only an incremental change to HUD’s approach to enforcing fair housing and is designed to encourage a more intentional assessment of whether the goals of the Fair Housing Act are being met. However, the AFFH rule has been castigated as a vast overreach by the Federal government into local autonomy, and the change in leadership at the Federal level will likely give broader voice to those claims.
During the campaign, President-elect Trump said he wanted to dismantle the AFFH rule. Donald Trump’s company has been sued by the Justice Department for violating fair housing laws in New York. In the 1970s, Trump’s father was arrested in Prince George’s County while allowing an apartment complex he owned fall into disrepair and for subjecting African American tenants to deplorable housing conditions. It’s not likely that a President Trump will take the lead on promoting fair housing from the White House. Trump’s pick for HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, has given every indication that he will not be a champion for fair housing at the Federal level either. He has called the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule a “mandated social-engineering scheme” and a policy indicative of a “communist” country.
The Region Should Be a Leader in Promoting its Own Fair Housing Goals
With likely backpedaling on AFFH at the Federal level, the Washington DC metropolitan area should remain committed to advancing fair housing in the region. Now, more than ever, local elected officials need to be leaders for promoting access and opportunity for all members of our community.
Regional discussions about AFFH are already underway. Last spring, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments partnered with Enterprise Community Partners and the National Housing Conference to host a full-day training and information sharing session around the AFFH rule. The primary objective of the convening was to discuss the data component of the assessment tool but the conversation shed light on the entire AFH process. At the meeting, we had representatives from HUD, as well as from the Baltimore area, which recently completed a regional housing plan.
This meeting led to further discussions among local Housing Directors at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG), but momentum around AFFH slowed over the summer. Given the road ahead, now seems like a good time to re-energize regional partners around fair housing. The lack of Federal leadership is one important reason for mobilization. But there is increasing evidence that regions that are more racially and economically integrated have stronger, more resilient local economies.
There are several things we can do now which would not only help support housing options and integration throughout the region but could also allow us to act proactively—to do something!—in the wake of the unprecedented Presidential election:
Produce data on housing needs and opportunities more efficiently. We learned in our March AFFH meeting that HUD is providing a tremendous amount of data to localities, but jurisdictions are advised by the new rule to make use of locally-generated data. Rather than each jurisdiction analyzing its own data, MWCOG should facilitate a regional data analysis exercise that can help with local housing plans but also help jurisdictions connect regionally.
Consider a regional assessment of fair housing. HUD recommends, though does not really incentivize, a regional approach to assessing housing needs and developing strategies. While each local jurisdiction in the Washington DC area will still develop its own financial, land use and other tools to meet local housing needs, there may be some degree of regional assessment that could be undertaken. Local elected officials, along with housing and planning directors, should become better informed about what it would take to do a regional assessment of fair housing, and whether some type of regional approach is possible.
Share best practices. At the very least, local jurisdictions in the Washington DC region need to do a better job at sharing best practices for expanding housing options. In the last few years, many jurisdictions in the region have conducted housing studies that have led to the development of policy recommendations. The policies and plans should be shared across jurisdictions through MWCOG or another regional body so that jurisdictions can learn from each other and possibly help promote consistency in policies and regulations throughout the region.
Focus on community engagement. There is no silver bullet that we have yet to discover that will solve our region’s housing challenges. Jurisdictions in the Washington DC region are among the most innovative communities in the country in terms of affordable housing tools. We know what needs to be done. The major obstacle that remains is building political will and responding to community opposition to housing, particularly multi-family housing and housing affordable to low-income individuals and families. We should work together to solve the NIMBY (not in my backyard) issue by figuring out how to respond to concerns about density, schools, and parking; how to provide elected officials with education and information they can use at public meetings; and how to have conversations that promote inclusion and tolerance.
On that last point, I think there would be a lot of people in our region who would want to be part of that conversation right now.
Photo courtesy of Kate Gardiner
By Lisa Sturtevant, PhD
According to recent American Community Survey (ACS) data, more than one in five households in the District of Columbia is severely cost burdened, including 27 percent of renters and 12 percent of home owners. When individuals and families pay a disproportionately high share of their income on housing—50 percent or more—they often face challenges paying for other necessities, including food, health care, child care and transportation. In DC, about 60,000 households face this challenge. However, the rates of severe cost burden vary substantially for different segments of the population. Demographic characteristics like age and immigration status matter, but household income is the primary determinant of whether a household is severely cost burdened. While not surprising, this suggests opportunities for the housing industry and workforce development organizations to work together to expand housing options by both increasing the housing supply and growing incomes of residents of DC and the rest of the region.
Some populations in the District are more likely than others to face affordability challenges. The rate of severely cost burdened households is higher among renters (27.4 percent) than for the overall population. While seniors age 65 or older are just about as likely as the overall population in DC to be severely cost burdened, the challenges are greater for the more vulnerable 85+ senior population (24.8 percent are severely cost burdened) and people with disabilities (33.6 percent are severely cost burdened). Single-parent families and immigrant households are also disproportionately cost burdened, with rates of severe cost burden of 32.2 percent and 25.3 percent, respectively.
But the single biggest factor that is associated with cost burden is income. Most low-income families and individuals find it difficult to find affordable housing in the District, including households with full-time workers. An individual working a full-time job at the city’s minimum wage (currently $11.50 per hour) would earn about $24,000 a year. Nearly 70 percent of households with incomes at or below this full-time minimum wage worker salary are severely cost burdened, paying half or more of that income every month towards housing costs. This group of lower-income households includes non-working households, as well, but this particular statistic is emblematic of the struggles of low-wage working households in the city and, indeed, throughout the region.
Look what happens when you examine the rates of severe cost burden only for households with incomes above the city’s minimum wage. The rates of severe cost burden are significantly lower for all groups with a household income higher than what a full-time minimum wage worker would earn in a year. About nine percent of these higher-income older seniors (age 85+) and immigrants are severely cost burdened. Among single-parents and immigrants, about 11 percent are severely cost burdened if they earn income greater than the full-time city minimum wage. These shares are dramatically lower than for the same groups that earn lower incomes.
The District of Columbia is among a growing number of states and localities that has instituted a minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum and has planned increases. By 2020, the minimum wage in DC is set to rise to $15 per hour. A full-time, year-round worker at this wage would earn $31,200 annually. In Maryland, the statewide minimum wage increased from $8.25 to $8.75 per hour in October but in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, the local minimum wage is $10.75 per hour. In Virginia, the minimum wage remains at the Federal level of $7.25 per hour.
Advocating for a higher minimum wage—or a living wage—in the region’s jurisdictions would help put more money in the pockets of people in lower-skill, lower-wage jobs. With more money, it could be easier for these individuals and families to find housing they can afford. However, it is possible—though by no means conclusive—that an increase in a local minimum wage could actually lead to increases in rents at the lower level. A coordinated effort of increasing wages AND expanding housing supply is the best way to ensure wage gains translate into access to more affordable housing in the city and in the wider Washington DC region. To that end, the housing industry and workforce development community should have a shared goal of working together to help alleviate the challenge for the many households living with incomes that are too low and housing costs that are too high.
By Lisa Sturtevant, PhD
You can’t hide from media reporting on Millennials and home ownership. But the message tends to be oversimplified and often contradictory. Millennials are getting set to jump into home ownership. Millennials are walking away from home ownership. Some reports say student debt is the reason Millennials can’t buy a home. Others say it’s not.
The attention to Millennials housing choices is justifiable. The generation of Millennials—those roughly age 18 to 34—have surpassed the Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest generation and are in prime household formation. Furthermore, surveys of Millennials uniformly find that the vast majority of this population wants to be home owners. For these reasons, Millennials will potentially have an enormous impact on the nation’s housing market.
As we know, however, housing markets are local. The Millennial population in the Washington DC region tends to be more highly educated and have higher incomes than Millennials in other parts of the country. But home prices are also substantially higher in the region than they are in other places. So what are the prospects for home ownership among 20- and 30-somethings in the DC region and how will their choices and the constraints they face impact their ability to accumulate wealth through home ownership?
There are about 1.5 million people between the ages of 18 and 34 
in the Washington DC metropolitan area. The shares of Millennials tend to be higher in closer-in jurisdictions like the District of Columbia (35%) and Arlington County (34%), but Millennials make up substantial shares of the population in the region’s suburbs, for example in Loudoun County (20%) and Montgomery County (21%). The housing choices this group is making now and will make in the future depends on their economic situations and choices about marriage and family, as on the available housing opportunities in the region. These factors combined will determine the extent to which young adult households in the Washington DC region will be longer-term renters than past generations—or will move out of the region where they find more affordable home ownership opportunities.
There are two key decisions individuals make that are relevant to understanding home ownership potential among Millennials—whether or not to form an independent household (measured by headship rates) and whether to rent or buy (tenure choice).
Headship
Headship
Headship rates are defined as the percentage of people that are heads of households. The main way young people become the head of a household is when they move out of their parents’ home. Households are also formed—and therefore headship rates are higher—when roommates that are living together decide to live on their own. Headship rates decline when individuals living alone get married or move in together.
Headship rates for the 25-to-34 year old population were lower in 2014 than in 2005 or 2000. (The focus in this section is on the older Millennial population who are most likely to be looking at home ownership.) Therefore, young adults in the Washington DC region are not forming independent households at the same rate as they did at the height of the housing market or even back during a more “normal” housing market. The biggest decline in headship rates were in Prince William and Prince George’s counties. These are the jurisdictions that were hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis and also tend to have lower household incomes that in other jurisdictions in the region.
Tenure
Home ownership rates have fallen pretty substantially since the height of housing market and the declines have been biggest among young adult households. Perhaps, surprisingly, though, home ownership rates have rebounded more quickly in the District and Arlington—places with some of the highest housing costs—than in many other places in the region. For example, the home ownership rate among 25-to-34 year olds in the District was 18.9 percent, lower than the 2005 rate of 27.2 percent but not too much lower than the rate among this age group in 2000. In Arlington County, the home ownership rate was over 30 percent for 25-to-34 year olds in 2005. The 2014 rate of 21.1 percent, however, is in line with the rate in 2000. The biggest drops in home ownership have been in Montgomery and Loudoun counties. One conclusion from these trends may be that home ownership opportunities have rebounded for the highest income Millennials who are able to buy in the District and close-in locations but remain limited for young adults with more modest incomes.
Home Prices
Most young adult households do not earn above the area median income and the vast majority of homes on the market are unaffordable to them. In 2015, the median income for a household headed by someone age 25 to 44 was $92,326. (Data were not available specifically for the 25-to-34 year old population; however, the median household income for this younger cohort will be lower.) Under standard assumptions, a household with an income of about $92,000 could afford to purchase a home priced at about $370,000 (four times income). However, options are few in many parts of the region. In the District, the average sales price of a condo in August 2016 was nearly $520,000 and the average townhouse price in the city was over $740,000! In the broad Suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia regions—which includes Frederick, Charles and Calvert counties in Maryland and areas south to the Fredericksburg area 
and west to Fauquier and Clarke counties in Virginia—prices were lower. The average condo in Northern Virginia was about $300,000 and it was about $230,000 in Suburban Maryland. The average townhouse sold for $406,000 in Northern Virginia and $293,000 in Suburban Maryland. But prices were much higher closer in and in areas well connected to jobs, transit, and amenities. For example, in the City of Alexandria, the average two-bedroom townhouse sold for $590,000 in August 2016. In Arlington, the average condo sold for $430,000.
Implications for Millennials—and the Region
There are no easy solutions to increasing home ownership opportunities for Millennials in our region since this particular housing issue is so closely tied to challenges related to student debt, access to credit and wage and employment growth. However, it is important to continue to support the construction of new housing that is affordable to more moderate-income homebuyers, which could mean changing zoning to allow smaller housing units or residential buildings that fill the “missing middle.” In addition, local governments, businesses and advocacy groups can work together to help identify resources for downpayment or other home purchase assistance for first-time homebuyers.
By Lisa Sturtevant, PhD
There is abundant research showing that stable and affordable housing is associated with improved educational outcomes among children in low-income families. Access to affordable housing can result in fewer moves and can reduce overcrowding and other housing-related stresses. Housing assistance can help families move to neighborhoods with higher quality schools and housing investments can be part of broader, holistic community development efforts that lead to better outcomes for children.
Housing is important to educational outcomes because the school that a child attends is usually determined by where she lives. (Charter schools and school choice in some communities can weaken this link between residence location and school location.) Higher-quality schools—whether measured by test scores, teacher tenure and quality, or availability of resources—tend be located in communities where housing costs and incomes are higher. As a result, when families are segregated by income, it also means their children are segregated by school quality.
Unfortunately, income segregation is on the rise for families with children. According to a recent study by researchers at the University of Southern California, between 1990 and 2010, families with children became more likely to live in neighborhoods segregated by income. Over the same period, there was no change in income segregation among families without children. This means that all of the recent increase in income segregation in the U.S. has been among families with children. We know that place matters not just for education outcomes but also for economic mobility opportunities for children, so this recent trend in income segregation among families is particularly concerning.
It is not uncommon to hear that “housing policy is school policy.” Housing programs can help lower-income families access neighborhoods with better schools, and can help alleviate the concentration of poverty in neighborhood schools. But what housing policies have worked the best to help families access good neighborhoods and good schools?
Inclusionary zoning policies can be a key way to support positive educational outcomes. There are more than 500 local inclusionary zoning (IZ) programs across the country, and many of the jurisdictions in the Washington DC region have IZ or IZ-like affordable housing programs. Research has found that affordable units produced through an IZ program are more likely to be located in low-poverty school districts than housing opportunities created through either the Housing Choice Voucher or Low-Income Housing Tax Credit programs. IZ is not a silver bullet for connecting children to high-quality schools, however, and program design matters. A RAND study has shown that Montgomery County’s MPDU program has been singularly effective at locating housing in low-poverty neighborhoods, which has led to better academic outcomes for children in those homes.
Voucher mobility programs can be effective at connecting families to neighborhoods with high-quality schools, but intensive search assistance and other supports seem necessary. Research on the federal Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program has generally found that while the program helps families find housing they can afford, families receiving a voucher tend to live in neighborhoods with low-performing schools. Housing search assistance and pre- and post-move counseling can make a voucher program much more successful at getting families into housing in neighborhoods with good schools and ultimately lead to better educational outcomes for children. Furthermore, the most effective housing mobility programs operate at a regional scale, streamlining the porting and the administration process across jurisdictions.
The housing tax credit allocation process is another important mechanisms for expanding housing options in neighborhoods with high-quality schools. Tax credits are allocated to the states from the Federal government and a state entity (e.g. a state housing finance agency) awards credits on a competitive basis to projects that meet criteria and recommendations set out in the state’s Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP). (Nine-percent credits are awarded competitively.) The QAP and the allocation process can have a big impact on the number and types of affordable projects that get built in neighborhoods with good schools. According to a recent report by Enterprise Community Partners, states can prioritize access to good schools in their allocation processes. Maryland, for example, has the option to increase the eligible basis of projects if they offer “reasonable access to jobs, quality schools and other economic and social benefits.” But the link between housing and good schools is not often an explicit part of a state’s QAP.
These policies can help families access housing they can afford in neighborhoods that have good schools. But it will never be possible to move everyone. Just like other approaches to connecting families to opportunity, developing joint housing-school policies should be a “both/and” proposition—both investing in housing in high-opportunity neighborhoods with good schools and investing in existing communities to improve neighborhoods and schools. And no matter the policy approach, it is an important first step to ensure that people who care about schools and people who care about housing—who all care about the quality of life of families and children—are talking and working together. Housing Virginia recently convened a group to explore and improve the connections between affordable housing and schools. As we head back to school, thinking about how to do more of that collaboration is essential for ensuring all students have a successful school year!
