Breaking Ground DC: A Housing Plan for the Capital and the Nation

Why Housing Is the Fight of Our Generation

Our country is in the middle of a housing crisis – and DC is at the forefront. Tens of thousands of Washingtonians spend more than half their income on rent and buying a home and building generational wealth feels impossible for too many. And when it comes to buying their first house in the city they grew up in? An impossible dream. We have a shortage of housing, a shortage of political will, and the snowballing effects of decades of decisions that made both problems worse.

We live in a city etched by decades of failed ‘urban renewal’ and redlining policies that kept the opportunity to build generational wealth unavailable for too many. In the 1950’s and 60’s, more than 20,000 residents and 15,000 businesses were forced out of Southwest DC in one of the largest urban renewal projects anywhere in the country. The affected community was over 70% Black and 90% poor. Sixty years later, the promised economic ‘renewal’ never arrived for many residents.

We have a responsibility to fix what these failed housing policies broke. That means being honest about history, and it means being bold about what comes next. We need bold, big reform that builds homes people can actually afford – and that requires a local and federal partnership.

I’ve spent six years on the DC Council fighting to make this city safer, more affordable, and more fair. That’s the same fight I’ll bring to Congress.

The single biggest driver of housing costs is scarcity. DC has too little housing for the people who want to live here, and outdated rules that make it harder to build more.

We are the only jurisdiction in the country where the federal government tells us how and where we can build. We need statehood so that we can make decisions for our own neighborhoods – and that includes repealing the federal Height Act and replacing it with a local Height Act allowing DC to make its own decisions and regulations on what our city looks like.

One of the biggest restrictions on new housing in the Capital are zoning laws that restrict huge swaths of the district to single-family homes. This isn’t a zero sum game – we can support and preserve historic neighborhoods in the city while re-imagining new neighborhoods with denser, higher housing.

DC has the tools to build its way out of this crisis – what we’re missing are leaders willing to use them. Here’s how we break ground:

Build More Housing Near Transit

Every Metro station is an opportunity to build a neighborhood. When housing is close to transit, neighbors spend less on transportation, workers can reach jobs across the region, and we reduce smog and congestion in the District. I’ll fight to maximize density near Metro and bus corridors by giving additional incentives to builders who build more, denser, and higher within a five minute walk of a Metro station and along major bus corridors.

Some of DC’s most beloved and walkable neighborhoods were built before modern zoning codes made that kind of development impossible. These neighborhoods remain desirable for residents and tourists alike because they embody a unique ‘DC character’ that today’s zoning laws make impossible to replicate. I agree – and we should build more places like them. That means:

  • Legalizing more rowhouses and townhomes as a primary housing type. Today, rowhomes are banned or restricted in 67% of DC’s residential zones, despite being a defining feature of DC’s unique aesthetic.
  • Reducing setback requirements that push buildings away from the street – allowing denser use of lots.
  • Transferring GSA-administered land that no longer has occupants to DC and the private sector, and designing new mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods
  • Allowing zoning changes to create alley homes – a low cost way to add gentle density to existing neighborhoods.
  • Easing rules restricting the construction and renting of Additional Dwelling Units (ADUs) – allowing for homeowners to generate additional income while increasing density

In my first year on Council, I watched as COVID devastated Downtown DC – with long-term disastrous effects for businesses, landlords, residents, and our tax base. I authored the RECOVERY Act specifically to address this crisis, and incentivized a mixed-use transformation by speeding conversions of commercial buildings to residential use. Thousands of new units are now being created Downtown and DC is leading the nation with these conversations. And we won’t stop now. The explosion of remote work has completely changed our idea of what downtowns are – not solely in DC, but across the nation. We need to aid this transition by allowing flexibility in our existing buildings, and that also means allowing more flexibility in what constitutes allowable residential space – including allowing for co-living spaces and more nontraditional or unconventional apartment blueprints. That means allowing more flexible floorplans by reimagining our building codes – all while driving more vibrancy in neighborhoods like Downtown that need it

It’s more expensive than ever to build in DC – and an opaque permitting process, skyhigh agency fees, and delays government responses have made it impossible for all but the biggest developers to take on new projects. That means it’s ultimately residents who are paying the price.

We need wholescale reform, from the ground up. That means eliminating unnecessary fees, and re-imagining a leaner permitting system that actually encourages new building and development.

The DC Housing Authority should be one of the most powerful tools we have for creating affordable housing. Right now, it is failing the people it’s supposed to serve. A 2022 audit found a 74 percent occupancy rate for DCHA-owned units, the worst in the nation, millions of tax dollars simply missing and unaccounted for, backlogged projects, uncashed rent checks – and a city nightmare as thousands of residents sit on waiting lists hoping to find a home. In the past three years, no meaningful progress has been made. We need a change.

I want to transform DCHA into a force in DC. That means:

  • Real, rigorous oversight – not performative hearings, but genuine accountability for outcomes.
  • Injecting new capital from private and federal sources so DCHA can actually build housing at scale, and move benched progress into the pipeline immediately
  • Creating a new governance structure, with quarterly reporting to Council and annual, public audits
  • Measuring success by units occupied and families housed
  • Deliver capital injections from the federal government to renovate existing units and building new units
  • Hiring more case managers to put more people in more homes and answer residents concerns

Homeownership is one of the most reliable ways to build generational wealth. Redlining and discriminatory home lending processes continue to impact Black and Brown families in DC, even decades after their official illegalization, and has locked tens of thousands of families out of the compounding benefits of home ownership.

The impact of those 100 year old policy decisions continues to be felt – with many long-time DC residents priced out of neighborhoods they love, and seeking more affordable options in neighboring jurisdictions.

We need tax abatements for first-time homebuyers who are DC residents. Keeping people here and building equity here is how we begin to repair the economic harm of decades of discriminatory housing policy. We should exempt residents who have lived in DC for more than ten years from local property taxes for at least three years, and incentivize developers to make a share of new rental units exclusive for long-term DC residents.

In addition, we need to make it easier for seniors on fixed incomes to realize their earned housing equity by increasing the tax exemption for seniors on home sales. Our seniors should be able to make housing decisions based on what’s best for them – not because they can’t afford taxes owed on a sale.

DC’s housing crisis doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s part of a national crisis that demands national solutions. And as DC’s Delegate to Congress, I’ll have a platform to fight for both. Here’s what I’ll push for on the federal level.

Make Rent Tax Deductible

The federal tax code currently allows homeowners to deduct mortgage interest, while renters get nothing. That’s a $30 billion annual subsidy that flows entirely to people wealthy enough to own homes — while the majority of lower-income Americans, who rent, get left out.

Making rent, up to $15,000 a year, tax deductible would put real money back in the pockets of millions of renters across the country, including the more than 60% of residents in DC who rent. It’s a straightforward, commonsense, bipartisan way to use the tax code to address housing affordability, and Congress should act on it immediately.

It’s no secret that there are neighborhoods of the city that have been left out of the wave of investment that has transformed huge swaths of the city in recent decades. We need to change that. Opportunity zones – designated areas with favorable tax incentives, including for new housing – were established nearly a decade ago, including several in DC. Let’s expand this further, and deepen the tax incentives for new housing specifically. We can build bipartisan support for this model and ensure that the Nation’s Capital is the model for building new opportunities for affordable and inclusive housing.

We know that homelessness is fundamentally a function of a lack of affordable housing. And while we’re tackling the supply-side issues of building more housing, we also have to ensure that we are re-imagining a homelessness model that actually delivers the safety and wrap-around services that help transition those experiencing homelessness into long-term, stable housing. The national shelter model of large congregate facilities where dozens or hundreds of people share space, is not working. It’s expensive, it’s difficult to manage, and for many people experiencing homelessness, it is not a path to stability.

I support a national shift to a non-congregate model built on the approach pioneered by the model I championed at the Aston: smaller, supportive, dignity-centered housing that gets people into stable situations faster and keeps them there. I will fight for federal capital to build additional noncongregate bridge housing models like the Aston, in neighborhoods across DC and America.

Simple changes to our tax code can supercharge the building of rental units in the District. Frontloading the tax deductions on the building of rental units, in lieu or deducting the taxable benefit of those assets over time, could spur a surge in building. A recent Center for American Progress study found that “moving to immediate tax expensing of new multifamily rental housing could induce the creation of 706,000 to 1,062,000 new homes over the next decade at a cost of up to $206 billion.” The study estimates the effects of this one change would lower the median rent by $2100 a year.

The American starter home that allowed generations of working-class families to build wealth has disappeared, especially in Washington, making home ownership a mirage for tens of thousands of Washingtonians. Zoning regulations, building codes, and financing structures all conspired to make it uneconomical to build small. Enough.

Congress must act to bring starter homes back: federal support for communities that reform zoning to allow smaller homes, incentives for developers who build entry-level housing, and reworking federal building standards that add compounding, unnecessary costs to build affordable homes for first-time home buyers.

DC deserves a representative in Congress who is aggressively working to tackle the housing crisis – that is my commitment to you.

More housing. More affordability. More people with a place to call home. That’s Breaking Ground DC.