The nation’s capital has a homeless problem, even now as spring starts to heat up the streets. Need proof? Walk from Union Station to CNN headquarters north of Union Station and you will likely encounter an encampment of folks sheltering themselves in the H Street underpass beneath the tracks. Need a connection between the campers and the city’s general well-being and surging population? Let’s connect the dots: Talking heads and the various high-ranking individuals who populate the new office buildings behind the station will come face-to-face with D.C.’s impoverished side. Word will get out that the city cannot care for its most needy.
And if my brothers and sisters in the local news outlets would do a better job covering homeless families — of which we have hundreds — the luster of our spiffy city on the Hill might really fade.
I bring up this unhappy fact because Mayor Vince Gray’s budget cuts services for our homeless neighbors. He would close shelters from April 1 to October 31. City Council Chair Kwame Brown spoke eloquently Monday afternoon about restoring the cuts. But talk is cheap. Who’s going to pay for housing our homeless?
Taxing D.C.’s rich residents even more is not the answer.
Our wealthy neighbors already pay more than their share, for services they do not use. According to the 2010 D.C. Data Book, compiled by the chief financial officer, residents who make more than $200,000 — about 1 percent of the population — paid 47 percent of the total individual income tax revenue in 2008. By now I suspect they are responsible for more than half of the personal income tax revenue.
Mayor Gray’s current proposal would increase their tax rate to raise an estimated $20 million. That’s not that much dough, in the midst of a $10 billion budget, but there are better ways to raise it. Here are two:
Why, in the face of shrinking revenues, does the city keep hiring? It’s time to make the bureaucracy pay. Vince Gray won with the support of the public employees unions, especially the teachers. He protects them in his budget. The city council must help close the $322 million budget gap by cutting government workers, forcing workers to take furloughs and making all but the cops and firemen skip raises.
Texas has oil; we have office buildings. It’s time to make more from our natural resource. Rather than taxing our residents, it’s time to raise taxes on commercial real estate developers and owners in transfer fees and tax rates. These folks own the most precious real estate on the planet. The vacancy rate on offices is less than 10 percent. Much of the downtown property is held by institutional investors, such as public employee retirement funds in California and Europe. Make the absentee owners pay for their gold-plated investments in the nation’s capital.
I know the building owners will pass the costs down to renters. Will I weep if law firms or the federal government have to pay more rent? No. And it might be worth the cost, because then homeless families might not have to sleep right below their office windows.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
