DCHA Rent Changes

[Jack Seiden]

https://www.dchousing.org/word...

It looks like dcha finally did away with its frankly insane “Zone” System. For those unfamiliar with the system, dcha would set rents at the neighborhood level, but the neighborhood rent levels never really made sense and we’re never updated, so you had some areas of the city where hud rents were 30-50% higher than market rents and other areas than paid well under market, A loss for landlords who gamed the system, but probably sound public policy. The big question is it seems like if you don’t ask for a rent increase you will be grandfathered in if hud is paying you above market, but if you ask for an increase they can pull rents down, probably acts as de facto rent control in the areas potentially for years.