Permits issued in the District of Columbia for construction of single-family housing rose 10 percent during the 12-month period ending June 2003, according to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). For multifamily apartment dwellings, the figure—2,200 permits—was five times higher than the number issued in the previous 12 months.

The shortage of affordable housing is being fueled by the decline in real wages and benefits, increases in fuel and other costs, and the cyclical rise in property values.

“It’s getting harder and harder to stay here,” Tyrell Bivens, 38, told the Militant as he sat outside the Gateway apartment complex with his friend James Henderson, 40. Both men work as laborers in the construction industry. They said work is relatively stable now and they can make as much as $14 an hour.

Even so, “no matter how much more I make, it never seems to be enough,” Henderson said. He said rents have doubled since he moved into the building in 1995. He now pays $1,300 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. “It takes me and my wife working just to pay the bills, and I need all the overtime I can get.”

“The hardest thing is not knowing how long this ride will last,” said Bivens, referring to the uncertainty of long-term work in construction.

A report by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), entitled “Can You Afford to Live Here?,” said average monthly rents in the region rose 16.6 percent between 2001 and 2002—from $992 per month to $1,157. It placed the average monthly rental cost in the city of Washington, D.C. at $877.

The report also pointed out that the average wage needed to pay that rent is $13.33 per hour. A report covering the same year by the National Low Income Coalition estimated that it would take an hourly wage of $18.13 to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Washington, D.C. It noted that one out of five households in the city earn less than the full-time minimum wage of $6.15 an hour.

Government and service jobs constitute nearly 81 percent of employment in the city, according to local government figures. There has been an increase in employment in the service sector over the past decade as government cutbacks have resulted in layoffs of public employees. The U.S. Census Bureau’s National Compensation Survey shows that many workers in service jobs earn far less than the $13.33 an hour that, according to the COG report, is needed to afford a one-bedroom apartment. Cooks earn an average of $9.45, janitors and cleaners $9.64, and hotel clerks $8.38. The average wage for all workers employed in food preparation and serving is $8.72.

At the same time, the city’s unemployment level, while lower than the 9.2 percent high point in 1999, remains at 7.1 percent, and is higher if the numbers of part-time workers and those who have given up looking for jobs are included.

And while median household income has increased by more than 30 percent over the last decade, real wages have declined, lagging behind the rise in cost of living. The number of households living at or below the official poverty level has also risen by nearly 20 percent. A study by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute concluded that the city’s minimum wage of $6.15 an hour is worth less when adjusted for inflation than in 1979.

And the buying power of the city’s maximum welfare payments—$379 a month for a family of three—fell by nearly a third over the last decade.

Bivens and Henderson say they spend about half their income on rent. “Every month I know I have to set aside two checks to pay the rent,” said Bivens. “Another one goes to food, then there is gas, electricity and water. After that there’s nothing left.”

Just under 60 percent of households in the city rent. Of those more than half are paying at least 30 percent of their monthly income for rent. And nearly a third are paying at least half of their income for rent.

Working people who own their homes face a similar squeeze. Just over 72 percent of homeowners are paying mortgages with an average payment of $1,291 per month. Just under a third pay 30 percent of their income in housing costs, and 12 percent pay at least 50 percent. The overcrowding rate in apartments—that is, households occupied by more than one person per room—is 12.7 percent, according to government figures.

Opponents of the city’s modest system of rent control regulation have argued since its passage in 1985 that eliminating rent control would provide an incentive for businessmen to step up housing construction, and that the resulting increase in vacancy rates would hold down rents. Currently, rental units built after 1975 or those in federal or city-owned buildings are exempt from rent control.

A report by the Urban Institute based on the 2000 Census data showed that rental vacancy rates have declined in the city over the last decade, from 8.0 percent to 6.2 percent. This has resulted in higher rent increases than in other cities in the surrounding region.

Working people are also being squeezed by the cyclical rise in property values in the city. In many of the city’s working-class districts, especially near the downtown area and along the historic U Street corridor, where single-family brick homes and businesses once abounded, high-rise luxury buildings featuring on-site laundries, spas, and restaurants are being built, a process known throughout the country as gentrification.

In the downtown area, even affluent Blacks had kept out during the decades of Jim Crow segregation. In contrast, throughout the last century the U Street corridor was a center of businesses owned by Blacks. Its residents included the noted jazz composer Duke Ellington.

Large sections of the corridor, also known as the Black Broadway, were destroyed in the wake of the Black rebellion that broke out here in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. For decades, much of the corridor remained in burned-out ruins, as real estate sharks and banks refused to invest in redeveloping the area. In so doing they drove down property values and many of the area’s more affluent residents and businesses fled, while poorer layers of workers remained. Real estate speculators have since gobbled up the cheap properties, ready to cash in on a new cycle of rising property values.

In the process of gentrification, which city officials hail as “revitalization,” the corridor is now strung with new restaurants, night clubs, flower shops, and other businesses that attract a largely middle-class, white clientele.

In August, Sisterspace and Books, a center which features books by and about women of color, was evicted from its offices at 1515 U Street. The store’s owners were in the process of finishing negotiations for a loan to buy the building just days prior to the eviction. The Trust Company, which owns the building, took advantage of a delay in funding sought by the bookstore’s owners in order to evict them. The beneficiary to the Trust Co. is a Black businessman who lives in nearby Maryland.

The owners of the bookstore have vowed to fight the eviction. “There seems to be little hope now,” said Raven Brown, a young woman standing outside the building a week later. “All signs of the place had been removed from the building. That’s what they want, to remove all signs of us,” she said angrily.

Alea Brown, a homeowner on U Street, saw it from a different point of view. In an August letter to the Washington Post, Brown defended the eviction, writing, “The closure of Sisterspace is the result of capitalism. Times change and so must business models if they plan to compete.”

Brown does have a point. The housing crunch that most residents of this city face certainly is the result of the normal operations of capitalism.  
 
 
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