As District residents, particularly those with low incomes and Black and brown communities, continue to grapple with the economic harm of the pandemic and an increasingly unequal economy, investing deeply and strategically in affordable housing is a step in […]
“With a modest tax increase on D.C.’s wealthiest residents, the council will raise over $170 million each year by fiscal year 2025 to help dismantle structural barriers to opportunity for Black and Brown communities and those living on low incomes,”
The DC Council cast its first, and arguably most important, vote to advance the fiscal year (FY) 2022 budget last week. The Council budget leverages over $3 billion in temporary federal recovery funds and maintains the Mayor’s strong investments in […]
“These are people who work, who are earning wages but still struggle to get by. So it’s basically allowing them to keep more of the money that they’re earning,” says Tazra Mitchell, the policy director for the left-wing D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.
In its first budget vote yesterday, the DC Council met the urgency of the moment by raising taxes on DC’s wealthiest to make ongoing, transformative investments in child care, homelessness prevention, and working residents.
“We have federal money to allow for some childhood stabilization grants, but we’ve not made investments in raising childcare worker wages,” says Erica Williams, the executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.
We’re in the final stretch of the DC budget process, when the DC Council will have the opportunity to make large strides towards an anti-racist, equitable recovery. Councilmembers are weighing choices that have the potential to usher in bold, transformative […]
Last month, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and DC Action commissioned a poll that found that 80% of District voters support asking residents making above $250,000 a year to pay more in taxes to fund greater investments in child care and housing.
The highest income residents in DC pay less as a share of their income than the rest of us. At the same time, low-income Black and brown DC residents have been economically devastated by the pandemic.
The District has an unprecedented opportunity to leverage American Rescue Plan (ARP) dollars by pairing federal funds with local recurring revenue for a set of targeted and meaningful public investments that advance racial and economic equity.
