D.C. GOVERNMENT’S APPROACH TO URBAN DEVELOPMENT
The Consequences of Chasing Speculative Capital
1. District Elected Officials Serve as Middlemen for the Real Estate Industry
The District’s approach to economic development is largely dictated by the demands of the private real estate industry:
a. The industry sets the terms. Developers argue that without speculative private capital, they cannot build housing—and without more construction, the housing crisis will worsen.
b. Elected officials subsidize private development. The District transfers valuable public land into private hands and provides taxpayer subsidies and tax incentives to attract developers.
c. Developers build to maximize investor returns. Private capital favors luxury apartments and high-end condominiums capable of generating premium rents, strong resale values, and attractive returns.
d. Communities are planned around wealth. Economic development prioritizes attracting high-income residents rather than meeting the needs of existing working-class communities.
e. Private profit dictates public planning. The financial interests of private developers and investors shape the District’s economic future.
2. What Are the Consequences?
What happens when the District relinquishes responsibility for planning and development to an industry organized around maximizing investor profits? Look at the conditions facing Washington, D.C.’s children.
Reading and Math Proficiency: East of the River High Schools
2024–25 School Year | DC CAPE Assessments
Neighborhood High School Reading Math
Anacostia 6% 1%
Ballou
14%. 1%
H.D. Woodson 23% 2%
At all three neighborhood high schools East of the River, fewer than 3% of tested students demonstrated proficiency in math.
Source: DCPS School Profiles, 2024–25 DC CAPE assessments. Proficiency = Level 4 or 5.
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Reading and Math Proficiency: Districtwide
2025–26 School Year | DCPS and Public Charter Schools
Subject Students Proficient
Reading / English Language Arts 39.6%
Mathematics
28.5%
More than 60% of tested students in D.C. public schools are not proficient in reading.
Source: D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), August 20, 2026.
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Student Homelessness in Washington, D.C.
2024–25 School Year | DCPS and Public Charter Schools
9,104 students experienced homelessness during the school year—approximately 1 in 10 children attending D.C. public schools.
This includes children living in shelters, temporarily staying with other families because of housing loss or economic hardship, and experiencing other forms of homelessness.
Source: OSSE, 2024–25 Homeless Student Enrollment Report.
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Economic Disadvantage Among D.C. Public School Students
2024–25 School Year | DCPS and Public Charter Schools
49%—nearly 1 in 2 students. Approximately 45,000 students attending D.C. public schools are classified as economically disadvantaged or at risk.
Source: D.C. Policy Center, State of D.C. Schools 2024–25.
3. A City of Growing Inequality
These statistics reveal the conditions facing children in a city where enormous wealth exists alongside profound deprivation. Washington, D.C., increasingly resembles a city divided into two worlds.
In one world, wealthy residents send their children to private schools, live in neighborhoods with abundant resources, and enjoy relative economic security. In the other, working-class families struggle to afford housing, children experience homelessness, and neighborhood public schools face extraordinary challenges.
The lawyers, lobbyists, developers, and political class who wield enormous influence over the District’s economic priorities are largely insulated from the conditions facing working-class Washingtonians. Many do not depend on the neighborhood public schools attended by the children whose futures are shaped by their decisions.
Working-class residents are treated as essential to the functioning of the city but expendable when it comes to sharing in its prosperity. They clean the offices, prepare and serve the food, maintain the buildings, and perform the labor that keeps Washington running. Yet the economic development policies pursued in their name too often make it harder for them to remain in the communities they call home.
And what happens to their children? Too many grow up facing housing instability, under-resourced communities, and educational disadvantages that limit their opportunities. They enter adulthood in an economy where wages struggle to keep pace with the rising costs of housing and other necessities.
As inequality deepens and legitimate economic opportunities become increasingly inaccessible, informal and underground economies can take root. Some involve survival work; others involve drug markets, exploitation, and petty crime. These conditions do not make criminal activity inevitable, but economic exclusion can contribute to instability and violence.
This is not simply a failure of housing policy. It is a failure of economic development.
The District has organized too much of its economic future around attracting private investment and wealthy residents, rather than investing directly in the people who already live here.
What would Washington, D.C., look like if elected officials invested in working-class children and their communities with the same determination that they spend chasing speculative real estate capital?