FREE RIDE

By the Numbers: Dwindling Affordable Housing

HERE'S ANOTHER REMINDER of how severe the region's housing crunch has become: The D.C. area "stands to lose about 26,000 affordable housing units over the next five years as a number of property owners opt out of a housing program designed to keep rents low," The Post's Mary Otto reports. Let's examine the tightening supply of affordable housing, by the numbers.

» 13.7: The percentage of total affordable units in the District — under eligible programs like Section 8 — lost between 2001 and 2005, according to a Government Accountability Office report. That's 312 units total.
» 13.3: The percentage of similar units lost in Maryland during the same time period. That's 2,036 units.
» 10.5: The percentage of affordable units lost in Virginia during the same time period. That's 1,827 units.

» 26,000: The number of additional housing units in the region whose affordability contracts will expire within the next five years.
» 58,000: The number of applicants on the waiting list for publicly subsidized housing in the District.
» 11,000: The number of families waiting for housing assistance in Fairfax County.
» 17,000: The number of families waiting for rental assistance in Montgomery County.

» "Low-Rent Program Predicts Losses" [WaPo]
» ALSO: "D.C. Gentrification and Section 8 Subsidized Housing" [Goodspeed Update]

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COMMENTS (1)

  • Lack of affordable housing is becoming more and more of a problem in the United States and is just one of the issues Congress needs to but is currently not addressing adequately. Another such issue is that of global poverty. Today, one simply cannot ignore global poverty’s ubiquity, its far reaching consequences, or its possible elimination. According to the Borgen Project, one person dies every 3.6 seconds due to starvation and most of these victims are children under the age of 5. Thus, it is clear that extreme poverty defines the lives of a tragically large number of people around the world. Yet, despite the depth of this problem, its cure is both within reach and, comparably, embarrassingly affordable. Indeed, to eliminate hunger throughout the globe, the world community would have to spend $19 billion dollars annually. Compare that figure with the U.S.’s current defense budget of $522 billion and the elimination of global poverty becomes not only doable but morally compelling.

    By Jessica , Posted July 9, 2007 7:12 PM
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