Affordable Housing in Trinidad
First, there is a new rent relief program, targeted mainly at affordable units. Nena Perry-Brown writes in Urban Turf:
This afternoon, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a $10 million grant program that affordable housing and small landlords will be able to apply for directly starting tomorrow. The grants will cover 80% of delinquent rent, up to $2,000 per month since April, in exchange for the landlord forgiving the remaining 20% and any outstanding fees.
Also, Fortitude at Delta Towers, the new mixed retail/commercial development for seniors and disabled residents in the southeast corner of Trinidad, is nearly finished. According to a press release from Mayor Bowser, the building is open. The original Delta Towers was built in 1979 by the Delta Housing Corporation, formed by alumni members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. The new Fortitude building increases the total number of units from 149 to 179, including 18 permanent supportive housing units for seniors. To get an apartment in Delta Towers, families must have at least one member who is either disabled or at least 55 years old and earn no more than 30% of the median income (more on this below).
Thirty new units may not sound like a lot, but take a look at all the affordable housing within Trinidad on this spreadsheet I made from publicly available data (map above):
D.C. determines who is eligible for subsidized apartments by comparing a family’s annual income to the median income here. So that means that if you were to line up every family’s income, from those who earn nothing to Jeff Bezos (a sometimes District resident and the richest man on earth), you look for the income in the very middle. According to D.C., that number, the Area Median Income, is $126,000 a year for a family of four in 2020. This gets complicated based on how big your family is, and you can look at the whole chart here to see which incomes qualify for which bracket.
The vast majority of affordable dwelling units in Trinidad come from Delta Towers and the newly constructed 1164 Bladensburg Road, which is reserved entirely for residents 55 and older who qualify based on income (with 13 units for those experiencing homelessness). The rest of the units throughout the neighborhood are either small, several-unit buildings or new, mid-rise buildings like The Hendrix and The Corey, which are required by law to make at least 8% of the apartments or condos into affordable housing.
To me, this illustrates the fact that if the mayor wants to hit her goal of creating 12,000 new affordable units by 2025, she’s going to need a lot more larger projects like Delta Towers. Going forward, I’ll try to keep this spreadsheet updated, and as always, you can feel free to send me a note if I’ve missed something or gotten it wrong.
Thirty new units may not sound like a lot, but take a look at all the affordable housing within Trinidad on this spreadsheet I made from publicly available data (map above):
D.C. determines who is eligible for subsidized apartments by comparing a family’s annual income to the median income here. So that means that if you were to line up every family’s income, from those who earn nothing to Jeff Bezos (a sometimes District resident and the richest man on earth), you look for the income in the very middle. According to D.C., that number, the Area Median Income, is $126,000 a year for a family of four in 2020. This gets complicated based on how big your family is, and you can look at the whole chart here to see which incomes qualify for which bracket.
The vast majority of affordable dwelling units in Trinidad come from Delta Towers and the newly constructed 1164 Bladensburg Road, which is reserved entirely for residents 55 and older who qualify based on income (with 13 units for those experiencing homelessness). The rest of the units throughout the neighborhood are either small, several-unit buildings or new, mid-rise buildings like The Hendrix and The Corey, which are required by law to make at least 8% of the apartments or condos into affordable housing.
To me, this illustrates the fact that if the mayor wants to hit her goal of creating 12,000 new affordable units by 2025, she’s going to need a lot more larger projects like Delta Towers. Going forward, I’ll try to keep this spreadsheet updated, and as always, you can feel free to send me a note if I’ve missed something or gotten it wrong.
The map is from Open Data DC's Affordable Housing map, and I made the spreadsheet from that data.
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