Around 829,000 people work in D.C. (within the city-proper), and about 26 percent of them are immigrants. Today, the Washington Post reports that some of D.C.’s immigrant workers, particularly those working in restaurants and some daycare centers and schools, are going on strike.
According to the U.S. Census, 58 percent of the 292,000 occupied housing units in the District of Columbia in 2019 were rental units. Thus, rental housing is the preferred housing type for most in the city and plays an important role in the city's overall housing market. However, rapidly rising costs of even this type of housing (relative to home ownership) is a growing concern for many. In this context, one may suppose the high income of many renters would be positively correlated with their city tenure (i.e. presumably a greater ability to pay). But, this appears not be the case.
The recent spate of announced openings of new retail stores, including many high-end retailers at City Center and hip eye glass retailer Warby Parker, will no doubt help fill a void in the District’s retail landscape. These new stores will attract tourists on vacation shopping sprees and retain spending (and tax revenue) that might otherwise have occurred outside the District. At the same time, the proliferation of branded stores has changed the retail landscape in the District and in the nation.
The Office of Revenue Analysis annually compares DC’s tax burdens to those of the largest city in each state. The recently released Tax Rates and Tax Burdens 2014: A Nationwide Comparison calculates income, property, sales, and auto tax burdens for a hypothetical family of three at five different income levels across these 51 jurisdictions.
After many years of decline, the total number of children in the District started to increase beginning 2011.
Last week DC Public Schools and the DC Public Charter School Board released waitlist numbers for the city’s public schools. The waitlists are a result of the first round of the annual public school lottery, which determines who gets seats at the city’s charter schools, at out-of-boundary traditional schools, and in the pre-K grades at traditional schools.
A small number of “spoiler “units with high turnover may be the reason.
The District, along with a few other housing major markets in the nation, has rent control laws that were enacted to protect tenants against unreasonable rent increases. The laws governing rent control in these markets generally stipulate that rent increases are bound by the Consumer Price Index or other cost of living measures. These laws also allow for larger increases when units become vacant (we will return to this point later).
The District added about 90,000 net new residents between 2000 and 2014, but the population churn has been great. Current Population Survey data show that more than half a million people report moving to the District from some other state or jurisdiction during that period—this is on average 8 percent of the city’s resident population every year. Residents also move within the city frequently: In 2014, for example, nearly 60,000 residents moved houses within the city—this is approximately 9 percent of District’s resident population.
Home prices throughout DC have increased tremendously since the mid-1990s, but the ascent in home prices has not been steady; in much of the city, home prices peaked in 2006 near the height of the housing boom, fell, and then started to rise again several years later. But not all neighborhoods had the same experience.
Kevin Lang contributed to this post.
Last Friday the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) announced the 2014 graduation rates for the District’s public schools. Among OSSE’s findings were that DCPS’s graduation rate increased two percentage points from last year while charter schools’ rate dropped by almost 7 percentage points.