A $225 million tax abatement for Howard University sailed through the D.C. Council on Tuesday, a day after an ethics probe revealed how the university offered to create a job for a high-ranking city official even as it was seeking the official’s support for a bigger tax break.
The legislation lowers Howard’s future property tax bills in an effort to boost the university’s planned redevelopment of land it owns along Georgia Avenue NW, which would include a new hospital and mixed-use development.
It’s part of a broader effort to improve health-care access in D.C. and build better hospitals for some of the city’s poorest residents — a project that has drawn widespread acclaim and, later, ethics concerns related to then-City Administrator Rashad M. Young’s involvement.
Lawmakers who voted unanimously to back the project stressed the importance of addressing the racial health disparities in the nation’s capital, where the life expectancy for Black men is 17 years less than for White men.
