Ward 3 Housing Justice | Northwest Opportunity Partners CDC
Release: February 21, 2023
Contact: Meg Maguire, megmaguireconsultant@msn.com, 202-546-4536
On February 15, Ward 3 Councilmember Matthew Frumin requested $100 million in the 2024 budget for “acquisition of land to be used predominantly for housing, with an emphasis on increasing DC’s affordable housing stock.” The request is in CM Frumin’s budget submission to Mayor Bowser, his first as councilmember.
“We thank CM Frumin for this proactive, forward-thinking request which will stimulate the creation of affordable and welcoming communities,” said Meg Maguire, chair of Northwest Opportunity Partners Community Development Corporation (NWOP CDC), a member of Ward 3 Housing Justice (W3HJ) and Ward 3 resident.
CM Frumin is following through on a 2022 campaign promise he made to fund the NWOP DC proposal to establish an Affordable Housing Property Acquisition Fund. This fund would enable the city to acquire privately owned commercial property particularly – but not exclusively – in the four planning areas defined in the 2019 Housing Equity Report: Creating Goals for Areas of Our City that are high in opportunity and high in need of affordable housing: Rock Creek West, Rock Creek East, Capitol Hill and Upper Northeast.
The Fund would fulfill Mayor Bowser’s goal announced in the 2023 Economic Strategy Initiative to “explore land/property acquisition as a tool to create and preserve affordable housing” by enabling the city and qualified mission-driven affordable housing developers to move quickly to acquire non-residential public-purposed property to accelerate private sector production.
“We believe Ward 3 workers should be able to live in Ward 3,” added Maguire. “If the city is serious about its housing goals, it needs a transformative idea like this fund to buy property and enable private sector developers to use their savvy and technical expertise to create significant amounts of new affordable housing. We will work with the Council and Mayor Bowser to realize Councilmember Frumin’s proposal.”