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Washington, D.C. · guides

For anyone holding a Washington report

How to read a Washington report

Who keeps which record in the District, why an address here needs a quadrant, and the pair of numbers this city publishes that most cities do not.

One government keeps nearly all of this. The District is not part of any state and has no county government, so it does for itself the jobs that elsewhere are split between a city and a county. The split between city hall and a county assessor that shapes a report in Ohio or California does not exist here. The Office of Tax and Revenue keeps the roll, the Department of Buildings the permits, the Metropolitan Police the offences, and the Office of Unified Communications the 311 requests.

An address here has four parts, not three

A Washington address is a number, a street, and a QUADRANT: NW, NE, SW or SE. The quadrant is not a flourish. 1st Street runs in all four of them, and so do M Street and 14th Street. Leave it off and the register has four answers, so this product asks which rather than guessing. There is a whole guide on it.

The two numbers at the top

The District publishes this year's assessment and last year's on the SAME ROW, so the report shows both and the change between them from a single read. That is a convenience rather than a rarity: Alameda County publishes seven roll years and this product reads all seven for Oakland. What it buys you here is that the direction costs nothing. A building revalued upward by a third since last year is telling you something a single figure cannot.

What the area counts compare against

Every count in the area section is set against what an average patch of the District the same size records over the same years. That is why a count arrives as a multiple rather than as a bare number: 776 offences means little until you know it is 1.3 times the District rate for a circle that size.

Counts run 15 September 2026.

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