HOUSING COMPLEX | This Is Where D.C.’s Housing Voucher Recipients Live

Where Housing Choice Vouchers are concentrated (graphic courtesy of the Washington City Paper)

Go HERE to read the full article by Aaron Wiener. 

Question: Does this change your opinion on where future low-income housing and "affordable" housing projects should be located? Should the trend continue of focusing these residential projects in poor east of the river communities (that already have the highest concentration of DC poverty) or should more low-income and subsidized housing units be distributed west of the river in more income and employment rich neighborhoods?

Article Excerpt:

The District has by far the highest concentration of recipients of housing subsidy vouchers in the region, according to a new report from the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University—and they're clustered in the city's poorer neighborhoods.

Nearly half of the census tracts in the District have a high concentration of people receiving housing subsidies through the Housing Choice Voucher program, the federal program for subsidizing rents for low-income residents at privately owned buildings. (The program is separate from public housing, whose buildings are publicly owned, although both programs are administered by local housing authorities.) In suburban Virginia, by contrast, only 13 percent of census tracts have a high concentration of voucher holders; in Maryland, that figure is 26 percent, still much lower than D.C.'s 46 percent. A high concentration is defined as a ratio of vouchers to total rental housing of at least 8.25 percent, which is 50 percent higher than the regional average.

Within D.C., there are also tremendous geographical disparities. The four census tracts with the highest concentration of voucher recipients are all east of the Anacostia River, as are eight of the top 10, even though less than a quarter of the city's population lives there. The tracts with the highest concentrations are in Washington Highlands (Ward 8), Fort Davis (Ward 7), Douglass (Ward 8), and Lincoln Heights (Ward 7).