As D.C. voters prepare to select their first new mayor in more than a decade, the high cost of housing and the slowing development pipeline have become prominent issues in the race.

The winner of the June 16 Democratic primary is likely to win the general election in the heavily blue city, and polls show the top two candidates are D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George and former Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie.

The front-runners have said they want to build more housing and released policy agendas to spur development. McDuffie participated in a 30-minute Zoom interview with Bisnow late last month. Lewis George’s campaign has declined several requests for an interview.

McDuffie, who has received more support from the real estate industry in the form of campaign contributions and endorsements, described a wide range of problems with D.C.’s housing system that he hopes to solve.

He said new affordable housing costs too much to build, and owners of existing affordable housing are struggling to stay afloat financially. He said delays in the permitting process have made developing in D.C. less predictable and more costly. And he said the city’s policies have led outside investors to avoid funding D.C. housing projects.

“People feel like a line has been drawn around Washington, D.C., and capital is going elsewhere and not being invested to build housing that is sorely needed in our city right now,” he said.

In each of the last two years, fewer than 2,000 multifamily units have begun construction in D.C., well below the 2022 peak of 9,441 units, according to the Washington DC Economic Partnership.

His solutions to these problems include creating a “cut-the-cost task force” and reforming the city’s key Housing Production Trust Fund to prioritize projects with lower costs per unit. He also wants to improve coordination across agencies to create a “fast lane” for permitting new housing projects. And he wants to allow more dense housing development in the next version of the comprehensive plan than Mayor Muriel Bowser‘s administration has proposed.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Bisnow: Where does housing rank among the biggest issues that people are concerned about, and how big of a priority is it for you?

McDuffie: So, in talking to thousands of District of Columbia residents over the course of this campaign, as well as the thousands that I’ve talked to over the course of my career in public service on the council, the top issues that I’m hearing about are public safety and affordability, and within that affordability category, one of the top issues is housing.

We have had a lot of fits and starts in terms of how we’ve approached housing over the last couple of decades. More recently, pre-pandemic, [we had] a lot of investment resources in our Housing Production Trust Fund. Not as much these days. We’ve built housing to try to match incomes, but we still are challenged about that.

This market, right now, though, is unlike one I’ve seen in quite some time, where investors don’t have confidence in Washington, D.C., right now for any number of reasons, but it has led to an environment where people feel like a line has been drawn around Washington, D.C., and capital is going elsewhere and not being invested to build housing that is sorely needed in our city right now.

Bisnow: You’ve talked about how one of your priorities surrounding housing development is to streamline and expedite the permitting process. How would you undertake that effort? 

McDuffie: When I think about the ways that the government can help really create a better environment and the tools that we actually control, we have to think about the challenges that people face. D.C. has been spending at least $100M a year on the Housing Production Trust Fund. Yet projects are costing anywhere from $650K, $700K to $1M per unit for affordable units.

We have to cut the cost, and I’m going to create a cut-the-cost task force to reform the Housing Production Trust Fund, really scoring for more units per dollar and thinking about issues that providers face, minimum private equity share, standardized underwriting timelines.