The D.C. Office of Planning (OP) is returning to the drawing board to rewrite its comprehensive plan for the first time in almost 20 years. The plan, which focuses on community development, has significant implications for the future of affordable housing in the city.
Creating a new comprehensive plan is a multi-year process involving periods of survey collection, public input, and time to draft the document itself. The District’s last plan was completed in 2006 and revised in 2021, but multiple outlets, including Street Sense and DCist, reported it was insufficient in addressing housing conditions or racial inequality.
According to volume one of the 2021 Comprehensive Plan, the “overarching goal for housing is to provide a safe, decent, healthy, and affordable housing supply for current and future residents in all of Washington, D.C.’s neighborhoods.” From there, the plan lists various priorities, including producing market-rate and affordable housing in high-cost areas, providing rental subsidies to extremely low-income populations, and reducing homelessness to “rare, brief, and nonrecurring events.”
According to The Washington Post, D.C. achieved its goal of adding 36,000 housing units between 2019 and 2025, accumulating nearly as many as it had over the previous 18 years. However, the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development dashboard shows it hasn’t reached another threshold — creating 12,000 affordable units as part of the 36,000.
And homelessness has remained a pervasive issue in the District. According to The Community Partnership and Point-in-Time Count data, rates of homelessness have fluctuated over the last decade, including a 7.6% decrease from 2017-18 and a 14.1% increase between 2023-24. While the total number of people experiencing homelessness is lower than pre-pandemic levels, Black residents and other marginalized demographics are still disproportionately affected.
Ryan Hand, associate director for citywide planning at OP, said the city is working to remedy disparities through the new planning process.
“Something that I’m really excited about in our work is centering the needs of people who have been harmed by racism and other forms of discrimination,” Hand said. “We need the city to grow in a way that benefits everybody. It needs to be a shared prosperity.”
OP is inviting community members to contribute throughout this process. Staff members hosted three information sessions in late March, and launched a public survey with questions like “What three words do you hope will describe D.C. in 2050?”
For additional information on the comprehensive plan, visit dc2050.dc.gov, where more opportunities for public engagement are posted.
Dreaming bigger (and de-commodifying housing)
On March 22, D.C. opened the planning process with its first information session at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. Attendees moved among rooms in a come-and-go, walk-through order, exploring topics like housing, employment, mobility, and climate.
All of the rooms had staff who explained informational materials and answered questions. One poster had a map of dedicated affordable housing in the District, which was heavily concentrated in Wards 7 and 8, while another activity invited community members to grab sticky notes and respond to prompts like “What are your biggest concerns with housing today?”
Attendees Ama Ansah and Paul Osadebe said they appreciated the event, but were unsure whether workers shared their vision of transforming the housing market. For example, under the District’s Inclusionary Zoning program, projects like the Wardman Park hotel redevelopment are required to have at least 8% of residential floor space designated for affordable units. The Wardman project is set to have 10% — more than the minimum — but Ansah said the city can do much better.
Both of them emphasized the significance of language, particularly in reaching consensus on topics like affordable housing. For instance, affordable housing could mean residents contributing 30% of their income toward housing and having the remainder subsidized, as it does in many government programs. However, it could also be more systemic, like creating housing that’s affordable to all people of all socioeconomic backgrounds.
“If my mom said that we need affordable housing where we’re from in Houston, she’s not talking about some government program, or some set aside of units within a luxury building, or a tax credit,” Osadebe said. “She’s talking about something that I, on the salary that most people where I live make, could actually get.”
Ansah and Osadebe used affordable housing as an example of the discussions community members, urban planners, and other groups should be having throughout the city. It’s early in the comprehensive planning process, and both attendees said residents have time to decide what priorities and which populations to advocate for.
For example, Ansah said one demographic must be included in the planning process: people experiencing homelessness.
“As we’re talking about community-building, housing is community,” Ansah said. “We also have to acknowledge and act on the fact that unhoused people are part of the community. So, bringing them into conversations. What do they want? What do they need? What will serve you best in this situation?”
Hand, the planner at OP, said workers are trying to include unhoused residents by looking into partnerships with Bread for the City and Miriam’s Kitchen.
“I like to start with citywide priorities and building consensus around what our priorities are together,” Hand said. “What I find is that when we talk together about what our values are, what our priorities are, having equitable access to housing, having good services, treating people with dignity and respect, is something that we pretty much all agree on.”
Housing, for whom?
According to the 2021 Comprehensive Plan, D.C.’s housing market changed significantly between 2006 and 2017. The overall supply of rental units rose, whereas the share of affordable ones decreased.
This disparity fell in the number of affordable units based on percentages of median family income (MFI), which is $154,700 for a family of four. Over that 10-year timeframe, the quantity of units available for households making more than 60% of MFI expanded by nearly 45,000, but the share for those “earning less than 50% of the MFI declined by approximately 22,000.” In short, there was even less housing for people who needed more help.
Hand said this could have happened because a federal program called the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) aims to assist households earning more than 50% of the MFI. According to an article from Urban Institute, LIHTC helped add almost three million units nationwide between 1987 and 2015, but it also has shortcomings like “not serv[ing] the lowest-income households well on its own” or “not requir[ing] [units] to be permanently affordable.”
When federal programs aren’t providing enough support, Hand said they can be supplemented with local initiatives. However, programs like D.C.’s Permanent Supportive Housing and emergency housing vouchers are known for a time-consuming application process and limited resources.
“That’s where things like local rent supplement programs start to fill in the gaps to help people meet their needs,” Hand said. “Obviously, there’s not enough vouchers to meet the needs of every resident. It’s something we take very seriously.”
When new housing is added, it can also lead to the displacement of long-time residents. Hand said the new comprehensive plan will feature an anti-displacement strategy to address this problem, but he did not provide additional details about what it will include.
Overall, Ansah and Osadebe said District residents should advocate for themselves and each other throughout the comprehensive planning process. They hope the community can make racial and social justice into a working-class issue, and housing itself into a human right.
“We can just decide that the greatest ill is having people out on the street, period,” Osadebe said. “That needs to not be a thing anymore, regardless of profit, and we can proceed from there.”
Back at OP, Public Affairs Specialist Lauren Marcinkowski said there will be more topic-focused sessions in May and June, including discussions on housing, sustainability, and transportation. The office will launch another survey and host additional events this fall. From there, staff will draft the new plan, alongside coordinating more public engagement in late 2026 and into 2027.
“If anyone has ideas for partnering or wants to bring us into neighborhoods to talk to their communities, we’re open to it,” Marcinkowski said. “It’s going to rely on a lot of word of mouth as well, so we want to get the information in the hands of anyone who can share it.”
Visit dc20250.dc.gov to share your feedback.
