On March 20th, the Office of the DC Auditor released its report on the DC Department of Housing and Community Development’s (DHCD) management and oversight of the Housing Production Trust Fund (HPTF). Established in 1998, the Housing Production Trust Fund provides crucial gap financing for projects affordable to low and moderate income households. The HPTF is one of the most important tools available to increase the stock of affordable housing in the District. The City Paper describes the report and its most pertinent findings, and you can read the full report here.

We recently attended a meeting with DC Auditor Kathy Patterson, convened by the Coalition of Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development (CNHED). Together with other nonprofit affordable housing developers, we offered our comments, questions and concerns. We highlighted the fact that the report’s primary conclusion – the HPTF has been chronically mismanaged and is limited in its usefulness –  ignores the original intent of the HPTF and its relationship to other key mechanisms that make affordable housing development possible in the District.

CNHED released a detailed statement that provides necessary context of the affordable housing landscape in the District, and outlines the misunderstandings and omissions in the report. We urge you to read their full statement, here.

Housing Up strongly supports the Housing Production Trust Fund, and we encourage DHCD to continue improving its data collection and monitoring so that future audits more accurately reflect the achievements and value of the HPTF.