Title: An Estimate of Long-Term Infrastructure Needs of the Nation’s Capital
Reasearcher (s): Royce Hanson, Karen Melanson
Funding Source: Trellis Fund
Research Status: Completed - August 2005

Summary
Low, middle, and high estimates of the infrastructure needs for the District of Columbia for the next 20 years by major category of facility are shown below in Table 1. All estimates are in 2005 dollars, unadjusted for inflation. A contingency of 5 percent is added to total costs to account for unforeseen expenses, while an annual 3 percent is added to account for restoration and modernization to sustain the useful life of facilities. Our findings suggest that, based on preliminary departmental estimates, the District may need to make investments on the order of $16 billion to $31 billion over the next 20 years. Click here for the report

Title: Building Blocks: An Examination of the DC Development Review Process and Its Current Challenges
Reasearcher (s): Vidhya Ananthakrishnan, Dan Cain, David Connolly, Christa Fornarotto, Alex Karr, Karen Melanson, Allison Morgan, Lauren Richards (The George Washington University)
Funding Source: Capstone Course
Research Status: Completed - May 2005

Summary
This MPP senior capstone project was completed for Alice Rivlin, co-chair of the DC Comprehensive Housing Task Force and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. The District of Columbia’s current development review process is unpredictable and cumbersome, involving more than a dozen different city agencies, departments, and boards. Housing regulations are intended to ensure that certain public health and safety objectives are met consistently in all development projects. Although the District of Columbia’s complex regulatory system is addressing these concerns, its cumbersome nature may in fact be an impediment to development in the city. This paper outlines the development review process in DC, identifies ten major issues, and makes recommendations on overcoming these problems to better streamline the process. Click here for the full paper

Title: Measuring Progress in the Greater Washington Region: 2001 Potomac Index
Reasearcher (s): Martha Ross, Patricia Atkins, Stephen Fuller, Gregory Goodwin, David Robertson, Margery Turner, & Hal Wolman (GWIPP)
Funding Source: Brookings Institution
Research Status: Completed

Summary
The 2001 Potomac Index charted the Washington region’s progress on a series of indicators grouped around five major themes. Research indicators show that the Greater Washington region has a strong economy, a highly educated population, and an extensive educational, philanthropic and nonprofit sector. It lags in performance on other indicators with a shortage of affordable housing, poor water quality in the Anacostia River, significant traffic congestion, poor air quality, and consumption of land in excess of population growth.  A survey conducted for the Index showed that four out of five residents rate the region as an excellent, very good, or good place to live.

Title: Thin the Soup or Shorten the Line: Choices Facing Washington Area Nonprofits
Reasearcher (s): Patricia Atkins, Mallory Barg, Joseph Cordes, & Martha Ross (GWIPP)
Funding Source: Fannie Mae Foundation
Research Status: Completed

Summary
Research on the state of non-profit human services agencies in the Washington, D.C. region during changing economic conditions showed that non-profits are taking short term responses to their rising client need, their increasing costs, their expanded reporting requirements, and their sluggish revenue growth. Many have dipped into reserve funds, frozen salaries, reduced direct assistance, or initiated staff layoffs. Some responsive non-profit human services agencies have begun to make longer-term adjustments by restructuring their organizations to acquire new sources of revenue, expanding private donor campaign efforts, and initiating revenue sources that are more market-based. The report particularly focused on the fiscal contributions of local governments to the human services nonprofit sector, discovering a multitude of support processes unique to each of the six jurisdictions examined.

Title: Intra-Metropolitan Area Fiscal Capacity Disparities and the Property Tax: The Washington DC Region
Reasearcher (s): Michael Bell, Lindsay Clark, Joe Cordes, Hal Wolman (GWIPP)
Funding Source: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
Research Status: Completed

The study adapts a methodology developed by the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, to calculate disparities in the revenue capacity of local governments in the Washington,DC area.  It then estimates the effect a shift to a real property tax on land only would have on these disparities.  We found that the major disparities were between suburban jurisdictions; Washington D.C., the core center city in the metropolitan area, had an average revenue capacity.  When revenue capacity was recalculated assuming a real property tax on land only, we found this had a slight positive effect on ameloriating differencesin revenue-rising ability.