Tucked between the holiday season and the summer season is DC budget season. It begins in January with DC Council performance oversight hearings of DC agencies, continues in March with more hearings after Mayor Muriel Bowser submits proposed budgets for those agencies, and ends in June with the council’s final vote on the District’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
These oversight and budget hearings present several opportunities to call the DC Council and the mayor’s attention to what you believe should be the District’s spending needs and priorities. Council members are hosting listening sessions, like Ward 3 Matt Frumin’s virtual meeting on Saturday, January 20th at 10 a.m. (register here). If you can’t make it, you can email him at [email protected], or call his office at 202-724-8062. You can even use these listening sessions to submit questions that a council member might ask agency officials during the hearings.
ANC commissioners and individuals are also welcome to testify at the oversight and budget hearings, or submit their testimony into the record.
Bone up on some of the issues impacting ANC 3F
What might you testify about? We can think of a few topics:
- Safety and security in apartment buildings (Metropolitan Police Department, DC Housing Authority, Department of Human Services, Department of Behavioral Health)
- Rent control and voucher payment rates (Department of Housing and Community Development, DC Housing Authority)
- Connecticut Avenue bus service and the safety plan, and general traffic calming and pedestrian safety (DC Department of Transportation, WMATA)
- The Soapstone sewer rehabilitation project (DC Water, Department of Energy and the Environment)
- UDC and the DC Archives (UDC and Department of General Services)
More about the hearings and budget process
The agency oversight hearings started Wednesday, January 17th and will continue through Friday, March 1st. You can find the schedule here.
Mayor Bowser will release her budget by Wednesday, March 20th. Then, the council budget hearings, also by agency, will be held. The dates, once announced, will be listed here. The live and archived hearings can be viewed on the DC Council’s website.
What happens next? The website for the council’s Office of the Budget Director has a step-by-step summary of this and the rest of the budget process.
Green Eyeshades says
The Washington Post has a new story about incompetence and disarray at the DC Housing Authority. I hope some readers of the Connection are as amused as I am by some of the details:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/01/23/hud-investigates-dc-landlords-vouchers/
“In a letter to the Housing Authority in July, HUD asked for data on 16,506 voucher contracts that the authority had provided to The Post in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The Post’s investigation used the data to estimate how much money the Housing Authority lost to paying rents above market medians.
“The Housing Authority overhauled its procedures last summer to conform with federal law, contracting with AffordableHousing.com to determine a reasonable, market-rate rent for each unit leased. But contracts were grandfathered if they were entered with landlords before those changes, Housing Authority officials said, meaning any overpayments for them would continue.
“Housing Authority officials have said the grandfathering of contracts was meant to avoid disrupting the market or displacing voucher holders whose landlords might balk at extending leases at reduced rents.”
“But it is not clear whether the grandfathered rents comply with federal law and regulations, which prohibit payments above market rate. Asked whether HUD had signed off on the grandfathered rents, [Housing Authority spokeswoman Alison] Burdo said only that the Housing Authority has informed federal officials of its own review of the policy, which was implemented by the authority’s prior administration.” [snip]
The other new discoveries in the bottom half of the Post’s story today tend to show that DC landlords are as guilty as DCHA of ignoring the law and regulations intended to prevent overpayments.
For example, landlords simply do not fill out a form required by HUD:
“Among other materials requested by HUD was information from federal forms that landlords must fill out and sign when leasing to voucher holders. The ‘Request for Tenancy Approval’ form includes an ‘Owner’s Certification’ that the rent charged is not above market rate. Owners of properties with more than four units must fill out a portion asking for the rent prices of the property’s three most recently leased comparable units occupied by tenants without subsidies. HUD requested information from forms collected by the authority since 2018.
“The Post, through FOIA requests, obtained several dozen of these forms, filled out by various landlords. In many cases, the landlords left the portion about comparable units blank, though the buildings had more than four units.
“Burdo said she could not say why the previous administration approved such forms, but that going forward the agency won’t. ‘DCHA recognizes the HUD requirement for landlords to submit the comparables on the RFTA form, and [we] are adjusting review and monitoring procedures and practices to ensure compliance,’ she said.
“In some of the forms filled out in recent years, comps listed by landlords were apartments rented by voucher holders, defeating the purpose of the comparisons. This appears to have been the case for forms filled out for 4801 Connecticut Ave. in Northwest D.C. For several years, the Housing Authority has paid $2,648 including utilities for one-bedrooms there, records show, though the building recently advertised one-bedrooms for $1,700.
“Many apartment buildings, including 4801 Connecticut, have taken advantage of the fact that D.C.’s rent-stabilization law restricting rent increases in older buildings does not apply to subsidized renters. The Housing Authority has been willing to pay higher rents than these buildings could get under rent stabilization. But at 4801 Connecticut it’s the market, not rent stabilization, holding prices down for many units. The building has charged new privately paying one-bedroom tenants far less than the roughly $2,200 allowed, records show.” [snip]
FHC says
Thanks very much for flagging this!