At-Large DC Councilmember Robert White then hosted a Public Roundtable “11.28.2023 — Making Social Housing Work in the District of Columbia”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZUPkGYTdcM

At White’s hearing, Ms. Colleen Green, New Director of DHCD speaks about social housing >> https://www.youtube.com/live/KZUPkGYTdcM?feature=shared&t=14004

DHCD, Dir. Green on Social Housing:

“Creating a new organization [Dept of Social Housing] to tackle social housing could lead to similar waste. The duplicative administrative cost alone should be reason for caution we want to make sure that when we innovate we do it in ways that increase efficiency and minimize unnecessary disruptions this is how we will have the best chance of assisting assisting the district’s tenants quickly and effectively the impact of reallocating resources from our existing programs and the potential loss of Housing and services compounded with the cost associated with the creation of a new agency should also be carefully evaluated when making decisions about the most effective course of action for these reasons it is crucial to engage in financial modeling for projects in different neighborhood markets and to create a business plan for our potential new agency to accurately assess the timeline and amount of subsidy required for the proposed agency to achieve self-sufficiency at DHCD we have studied other social housing projects and efforts in the United States that have recently been highlighted in the media in places such as Montgomery County Maryland Atlanta Georgia and Seattle Washington among others these efforts can represent important steps forward for these places and we can benefit from some of the tools they are applying to achieve their goals as you know through the commitments the mayor has made over the past couple of years DHCD has been the leader in advancing new approaches while creating a significant number of affordable housing units for example DHCD requires affording affordable housing development we assist to meet the highest environment and energy standards of any low-income housing tax credit program in the country… .” https://www.youtube.com/live/KZUPkGYTdcM?feature=shared&t=14359

“[W]e are all operating from the same one [financing] bucket. You would really need additional resources and additional um set aside or whatever appropriation whatever you want to call it in order to create more more units… What really is going to be needed to create more units is more dollars, so siphoning off sort of the existing resources to create a new public agency does not net not create more more units.” https://www.youtube.com/live/KZUPkGYTdcM?feature=shared&t=14814

CM Robert White: “What if there was money in addition to the housing production trust fund so let’s say uh the council kept it at 100 million but added 25 million to social housing projects, would that change your perception or your your view of um the [social housing] program.” https://www.youtube.com/live/KZUPkGYTdcM?feature=shared&t=14848

Dir. Green: “I think that we have the resources we need to create affordable housing. Putting that 25 million into the pot of resources that we currently have could also establish sort of the goals of social housing, by policy changes [or] if we’re using continue to use the RFP [process] … we [can] request projects that meet the [social housing] goals of what we’re talking about … that band that we’re not meeting … the 0- to 30% [AMI], the lowest income bands built.” https://www.youtube.com/live/KZUPkGYTdcM?feature=shared&t=14870

“I think that some of the things that have been said [during this hearing] in terms of um leveraging things differently looking at different financing models that can stretch our dollars using bonding capacity in a different way that could potentially create more units more savings will stretch the dollars farther so it was really interesting to talk about and hear all these ideas for different um financing models and that’s how you would get to you know additional units.” https://www.youtube.com/live/KZUPkGYTdcM?feature=shared&t=15018

“Alot of what can be done in terms of social housing model, I say, let’s take a look at the housing authority and see, you know they have a lot of projects they have unused bandwidth right there that we need to make sure those affordable units come online that are that are available to us that aren’t produced yet so focusing on the processes and procedures and making the things that we have work better is probably where I would spend my investment in my dollars um you you mentioned.” https://www.youtube.com/live/KZUPkGYTdcM?feature=shared&t=15210

CM Janeese Lewis George: “I guess my question is why don’t why don’t you see us creating social housing as a way to to create more of that wouldn’t we reach our goal faster if the district also took on took on the role and became our own sort of developer in its own right in creating housing?” https://www.youtube.com/live/KZUPkGYTdcM?feature=shared&t=15907

Dir. Green: “I think that you know developers are efficient. This is what they do. They’re always on trend with the market. We actually partner with them to figure out what’s going on in the market. I don’t think that the creation of all of these units are by developers. These were policy decisions that were made that created units at certain affordability levels. … [T]o me it’s not a matter of how it’s produced or who’s producing it, because I think the partners that we have are quite efficient in producing. It’s a matter of our policy direction, are we going to put more money in are we going you know to fund at this income level [or are] we’re going to fund at lower income levels.” https://www.youtube.com/live/KZUPkGYTdcM?feature=shared&t=15925