“We’re really excited,” policy analyst Eliana Golding said, referring to the proposal to add a record-breaking $400 million over two years to the Housing Production Trust Fund.
The DC Fiscal Policy Institute applauded the mayor for her investment in affordable housing and direct economic support to residents, but still had some criticism of the document.
Kate Coventry, a senior policy analyst with the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, said that despite advocates’ claims that the PIT count is not perfect, “no one thinks it is. But it is a measure.”
In 2019, the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute implored the mayor to double the annual $100 million in housing funds, saying the trust has become less valuable each year as construction costs have gone up.
Kate Coventry – a senior policy analyst at the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, which researches budget and tax issues in the city – said homelessness in the District is primarily caused by failed systems and policy.
To this day, only three of the 49 full-service grocery stores in D.C. are located in Wards 7 and 8.
Doni Crawford, senior policy analyst at the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, said local activists helped craft the legislation, and successfully pushed it to the top of the council’s agenda: “It’s definitely a really big step forward,” Crawford said.
A 2020 study from the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute found that nearly a third of people experiencing homelessness in the District say incarceration played a role in their housing struggles.
“My biggest concern is just the process DCPS will use to communicate to schools that they now have access to this [$14 million] funding and can indeed use it to stabilize staff,” Qubilah Huddleston, an education policy analyst at DCFPI, told The 74.
McDuffie contends the District government-sponsored trust funds could solve the District’s growing racial wealth gap. In which white families have 81 times the wealth of black families according to the DC Fiscal Policy institute.