Justice
An Illustrated Guide to the Insane Housing Boom in Washington, D.C.
A new report covers the meteoric growth of the city's real estate market.
It was as recently as the late 1990s when you could snag a single-family home in Washington, D.C., for under $200,000. Today, that fact seems inconceivable or even laughable, given the city's population boom and meteoric rise in real-estate costs.
The story of the U.S. capital's journey to housing affordability insanity is told in a new interactive essay by the Urban Institute, "Washington, D.C.: Our Changing City." The report features well-crafted visualizations that illustrate the city's massive changes, which have had locals alternately fretting over rising income inequality and building weird, towering "pop-up" rowhouses to exploit the rental market. Summarizes the institute: