Dive Brief:
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Despite record-setting levels of residential construction, the District of Columbia has built 13% less housing than the city’s nine-year-old comprehensive plan called for, neighborhood development specialist Payton Chung wrote on the blog Greater Greater Washington.
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And although the plan designated only 30% of new housing for the central part of the capital city, most new homes have been built there over the years, he said. What the plan identified as “central Washington” and the waterfront along the Anacostia River are the sites for “the lion’s share of both new housing and new jobs,” Chung said.
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Part of the problem: Another section of the plan called for “conserv[ing] single-family residential neighborhoods.” Chung wrote that the policy is “doing too good of a job of keeping new housing out of the neighborhoods that were supposed to accommodate 70% of future housing growth” — a trend that has kept the District “well below its housing growth projections.”
Dive Insight:
Yet an economist from Washington’s Office of Revenue Analysis wrote in a separate blog last week that the city issued a record-breaking number of residential building permits between 2010 and 2015 — an average of 4,403 per year.
Economist Peter Johansson wrote in the blog District, Measured, that D.C. is headed toward record-high residential construction.
“The District is currently experiencing its most expansive phase since the 1960s, with regards to both population and construction of new residential buildings, measured by building permits,” he said.
Because building permits indicate construction is imminent, and because activity in the housing sector is an indicator of whether the economy will improve or decline, Johansson noted, “this may very well be an indication of a strong, growing economy in the District in the years to come.”