Some affordable-housing advocates fear an advisory panel set up by the County Board earlier this year won’t deliver tangible results.
“I’m not optimistic this working group is going to come up with a substantive solution,” Housing Commission chair Kellen MacBeth said at the commission’s Oct. 8 meeting.
Concerns were raised that the end result could be similar to 2025, when an earlier working group made proposals on affordable-housing issues that ultimately resulted in no action.
“It looks like it’s just revisiting the scene of the crime,” said Joe Ventrone, a Housing Commission member.
County Board members earlier this year set up the Affordable Housing Ordinance Working Group, with membership drawn from both the development community and county commissions.
The panel was set up after county leaders tried and failed to win more authority from the General Assembly on what affordable-housing requirements could be imposed on developers in the county.
The development industry successfully scuttled the proposal in the House of Delegates, contending there had not been enough community engagement by Arlington leaders. Legislators advised county officials to get buy-in from developers and return in 2027.
Arlington’s working group has met three times in recent months, with its next and possibly final meeting set for Monday, Oct. 26. At that meeting, members will discuss a second draft of proposed changes to the county’s affordable-housing ordinance, and potentially make recommendations to County Board members.
The goal is “crafting some possible solutions,” said Bryan Coleman, a Housing Commission member who serves on the working group.
“Hopefully there is some agreement at that meeting,” said Danny Ross, another Housing Commission member serving on the working group.
Coleman was hopeful the 2026 panel could reach consensus before it wraps up work.
“What is the deliverable? What are we trying to put in front of the County Board?” he said.
Without consensus, “we’ve just kind of circled around, allowing folks to talk around the problem,” Coleman said.
MacBeth suggested that may be what developers on the panel want — talk but no consensus.
“Do I think the development community wants any action of the General Assembly? Absolutely not. I think they just want to kill the whole thing,” he said.
Ventrone countered that putting bureaucratic hurdles or economic disincentives in place of new development might not be the way to go in 2027.
“We are in a precarious economic situation,” he said. “Even though we’re doing good, we’re not doing that good.”
Ventrone pointed to challenges facing housing developers as interest rates rise, throwing off financing plans.
“We’ve approved a lot of stuff and [it doesn’t] come to fruition, because they can’t get the money,” he said.
MacBeth said the goal should be to get new authority from Richmond, then decide what parts of it could reasonably be imposed on developers.
“When you have a Democratic [political] trifecta in Richmond, now is the time,” he said, adding:
“I would be surprised, if Arlington County got this authority next year, they would be in a hurry to make any changes. They just want the authority, because they know the window can close.”
“The County Board is sensitive to what economic realities are,” MacBeth said. “They’re not going to go ahead and make changes and increase requirements that are going to stop developments.”
Coleman concurred, saying county leaders would use “due caution given our current economic environment.”
“Just because Arlington would have the authority doesn’t mean they’d be doing things just willy-nilly,” he said.
But that may not be enough to sway developers, Coleman acknowledged.
“There is a persistent anxiety around granting the County Board this power, because there’s some fear that once they have it, they’ll immediately go to try to get more money out of developers.”
Typically, developers seeking land-use changes from the county government for new development are required to support affordable-housing goals in one of three ways: providing affordable units on-site, providing a larger number of units elsewhere in the county, or providing a cash contribution to the Affordable Housing Investment Fund.
