A study of potential rent-stabilization efforts to address rising apartment costs could be in Arlington County’s future.
Katie Wenger, vice chair of the Arlington Housing Commission, last Saturday (Nov. 16) asked County Board members to direct staff to look at the pros and cons of such a policy — one that is related to, but distinct from, full-blown rent control.
Currently, Virginia localities have no independent authority to embrace either rent stabilization or rent control. The goal of advocates appears to be to have a discussion during 2025 in case political winds in Richmond are more favorable in 2026.
Housing Commission members are not unanimous in their support of a rent-stabilization policy, but were unanimous in requesting the study, Wenger said.
The request resonated with Board member Maureen Coffey. She made the cost of housing, especially rents, one of the themes of her successful 2023 election bid.
“We all need to have the same universe of knowledge” in order to “have a coherent discussion with the General Assembly,” Coffey said.
Rent-stabilization policies “can be implemented many, many ways,” she said, acknowledging not all prove successful over time.
In September, Housing Commission members opted against asking that anything related to rent stabilization be included in the county government’s 2025 legislative-priorities package.
“It’s probably premature [and] there wasn’t consensus,” commission chair Kellen MacBeth said at that meeting.
Instead, the subcommittee that developed proposals for the full Housing Commission to consider focused on items that “directly, immediately” could impact Arlington residents, commission member Nikki Blake said.
At the Saturday meeting, Board Chair Libby Garvey said officials would follow up on the request to move forward informally on rent-stabilization matters.
“We do have the letter. We’ll be in touch,” she said.
But it’s unlikely the matter will be attended to until sometime in the new year. At that point, Garvey will have been succeeded on the Board by JD Spain, Sr., who was elected Nov. 5.
Any discussion is unlikely to happen in a vacuum, given potential impacts on local rental property owners.
Kate Bates, president/CEO of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, told ARLnow it was too early for the business organization to become actively engaged, but she “would anticipate us weighing in later, should things move forward.”
One group getting in front of the issue is the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington (AOBA). Scott Pedowitz, director of Virginia government affairs for the trade group, took aim at the proposal on behalf of his organization:
Rent control, stabilization, and similar policies have been exhaustively studied. These studies show that these policies stifle housing supply, worsen affordability, and force properties into a state of disrepair. We would rather see Arlington County invest its limited dollars into creating new housing and assisting low-income renters than spending them on studying a policy that we know chokes off new housing investment and worsens housing quality.
Governments mandating lower rents without providing any subsidy forces housing providers to triage maintenance and defer building investments. The challenge is particularly acute for older communities, which provide much of our market-rate affordable housing.
That Arlington’s rental costs are high and climbing higher is a fact of life.
A Zumper survey released earlier earlier this month pegged Arlington as the priciest location for apartments in the D.C. region, with a median one-bedroom monthly rental price of $2,410 and median two-bedroom price of $3,220.
Apartment List, another firm that analyzes rental rates, reported slightly different figures but reached the same conclusion — Arlington rents lead the pack regionally and continue to go higher.
Wenger noted that D.C. has embarked in a rent-stabilization program, as have Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.
In Montgomery County, rent increases for many rental units are capped at the lesser of 6% or the local region’s annual consumer-price index increase plus 3%.
There are some exemptions to the Montgomery County policy. A landlord may increase rents higher than the limit to account for improvements that go beyond ordinary repair and maintenance, or if it can be proved that a higher rate is needed to provide a return on investment that is comparable to “other enterprises with similar risks.”
In each case, however, it would be up to the Montgomery County government to approve any requests.
AOBA’s Pedowitz anticipates communities moving forward with new policies regulating landlords may experience some of the pitfalls faced by those that previously approved them.
“The city of Takoma Park [in Maryland] has one of the longest established rent-control policies in our region, dating back to 1981, and not a single new multifamily rental property has been constructed there since its adoption,” he told ARLnow.
Pedowitz warned of financing “drying up” for future housing investments in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.
Flickr pool photo by Brian Gannon
