As safety-net advocates press for more funding to address homelessness, Arlington officials say more permanent and temporary housing options are also needed.
The county’s full “continuum of care” for this issue clocks in at $7.5 million annually — “not an insignificant amount,” Anita Friedman, director of the county government’s Department of Human Services, said at a budget work session last week. Without places for people to go, however, she said the problem festers.
“We need increased capacity,” she told Board members. “But affordable units are few and far between, and folks that come out of living on the street, it takes a lot to move them into a unit.”
As a stopgap, county officials are working to convert overflow space at the 2020 14th Street N. shelter to permanent sleeping areas for the unhoused. That effort is funded through the county government’s capital-improvement program, and design work has been done.
That building is also home to PathForward, known previously as the Arlington Street People’s Assistance Network, which provides homelessness-support services under contract to the county government.
Future plans call for converting an additional floor in the building specifically for senior citizens experiencing homelessness.
County officials estimate that it will be 2027 at the earliest before the project moves through the planning and regulatory process.
A 2024 report on homelessness in the D.C. region pegged the number of unhoused people in Arlington at 243, up 14% from a year before. The 2025 count was conducted by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments in January, with data slated to be released in May.
At the March 11 budget work session, Board member Maureen Coffey said she was satisfied with efforts being made.
“It’s good to know everyone is talking and planning,” she said.
But Kellen MacBeth, chair of the county’s Housing Commission, came to the budget session seeking additional funding for homelessness-prevention efforts among other housing-related funding requests.
Earlier, the commission had voted to seek additional county funding for direct housing grants, the Affordable Housing Investment Fund, eviction-protection efforts and homelessness prevention supports.
County Manager Mark Schwartz has included additional funding for multiple housing initiatives in his proposed FY 2026 budget. But given economic uncertainties, he seemed to push back on the request for more.
“We’re just a little bit anxious on where things are” at the moment, Schwartz said at the March 11 work session.
At the Housing Commission’s most recent meeting — held March 6 — MacBeth took aim at Arlington’s elected officials for, in his view, not being aggressive enough on housing issues, human-rights initiatives and protecting undocumented people.
“The county doesn’t want to become a target of the Trump administration,” MacBeth suggested, terming it “a disservice when you’re not willing to stand up and publicly support all of the different marginalized groups in your community.”
The Housing Commission on March 6 also reaffirmed its request from last November that county leaders embark on a study that could lead to implementing rent-stabilization policies to blunt rising rental-housing costs in the county.
Rent-stabilization efforts, which are one step shy of full-blown rent control, are controversial even within the housing-advocacy community. MacBeth said he didn’t expect county leaders to take up the cause.
“I’m not super-optimistic,” he said at the commission meeting, “but I think it should be included [as a request], since we’ve already committed ourselves to asking the county for that.”
The county government’s Tenant-Landlord Commission did not meet between the unveiling of Schwartz’s budget proposal and the March 11 work session, its vice chairman, Andrew Ferreira, said at the work session. Commission members would follow up with responses to the budget plan after their next meeting, he said.
