Housing affordability has become an increasingly urgent concern in D.C., and a group of business leaders is challenging the region to invest $1B over the next two years to help solve the issue.  The Housing Leaders Group of Greater Washington launched the Capital Region Housing Challenge, an effort to spur the D.C. region’s public and private sectors to each add $500M in affordable housing investments above their current baseline by the end of 2020.  Housing Leaders Group co-convenor David Bowers, also the market leader for Enterprise Community Partners, announced the challenge at Bisnow’s Metro D.C. Affordable Housing Summit Wednesday morning in a rousing call to action.  “The challenge is the call to work collectively, across sectors and geographic boundaries, to fundamentally move the baseline of thinking and investment and connect capital to solutions,” Bowers said. “Those of you that are already investing, we’re challenging you to do more.”

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Opening Punjab Grill was a decades-long dream for Karan Singh.

“Ever since I started coming to the U.S. and saw that Indian food wasn’t so well represented here, I’ve been wanting to do something to make Indian food more of a mainstream cuisine,” said Singh, co-owner of the Tysons Corner restaurant American Tandoor and CEO of Punjab Grill US, which has locations in India, Singapore, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.

And planning for that dream was no small feat. Unlike other restaurants that take about a year to build out their space and open their doors, Singh spent five years planning the design and development for Punjab Grill, located on 11th Street NW, just a few blocks from the White House.

“The floor that you’re standing on right here, it was cut and pieced together painstakingly then taken apart, numbered and sent to us. And we actually put it back together here like a jigsaw puzzle,” said Singh, who sent his American contractor to India to spend time with the artisans and builders to “coordinate everything down to the last screw.”

Read more @ WTOP