Arlington officials say they’re taking action behind the scenes to be ready for any possible surge in immigration enforcement locally.
“We have to be prepared,” Arlington County Board member Julius “JD” Spain, Sr., said at the Board’s Feb. 21 meeting. “We don’t want what happened in other parts of our nation to happen here, but if it does happen, we need to be prepared.”
Arlington’s deer culling operations began this month with sharpshooting in parks along the Potomac River and Four Mile Run corridors.
For security reasons, the county doesn’t announce the specific dates and times of the culls in advance. However, Jerry Solomon, spokesperson for the Department of Parks and Recreation, told ARLnow that they will continue through March at eight natural land parks:
This regularly scheduled column is written by Eli Tucker, Arlington-based Realtor and Arlington resident. If you would like to work with Eli and his team in Northern Virginia and the greater D.C. Metro area, you can reach him directly at [email protected].
Question: How much of an impact do you think the ROAD to Housing Act will have on housing affordability in Arlington?
Answer: The Road to Housing Act became law ten days ago, with the stated goal of improving housing affordability in the United States.
I don’t see many policies in the Act that will improve affordability in the Arlington/Northern VA/DC Metro markets, outside of incentives for more affordable multi-family housing, but there are policies that should improve affordability in other markets that are more saturated with institutional investors that own swaths of single-family homes (e.g. Atlanta and Phoenix) and for manufactured/mobile homes.
The Local Conversation Needs to Change
If we are going to improve affordability in our market, most of the change has to be done locally/regionally, not nationally, but it requires a paradigm shift in how we discuss and solve for housing affordability.
Affordability Disconnect: Near Term Expectations Not Realistic
A disconnect between housing affordability expectations and reality prevents the right community and political conversations from happening. We expect/demand housing affordability immediately, ignoring the difficulty, and consequences, of achieving it that quickly.
Stable and healthy housing affordability is a long-term process requiring gradual change over a 10-15+ year period.
Demand-Side Solutions Won’t Work
Demand-side solutions, such as lower interest rates or easier financing, artificially inflate home values, as seen during the COVID-era housing boom and early 2000s. They are not a good long-term solution to affordability because they push values even higher (along with your property taxes) and affordability gets worse when rates/lending normalize and no longer provide artificially low monthly payments.
Supply-Side Solutions Are Not Immediate
Most policy discussions focus on supply-side solutions: building more/faster and denser housing (e.g. Arlington’s Missing Middle/Expanded Housing Option), incentivizing more existing home sales, or disincentivizing concentrated ownership by companies and individuals. Econ 101 tells us that more supply = lower prices = affordable housing (winner winner!).
This is the only path to stable, long-term housing affordability…BUT, at current interest rates, prices must drop 30-35% in the United States to become affordable, at current income levels. A 30-35% drop in home values would devastate the economy, so a supply-side solution won’t (shouldn’t) provide immediate affordability. (more…)
One of the biggest names in chicken wings has flown the coop in Arlington.
Sunday was the final day in business for the Buffalo Wild Wings location in Crystal City, capping off a 15-year run, an employee told ARLnow.
Join us on August 1 between 10 AM to 2 PM for a drop‑in event for the whole family! Explore our Dojo—the high‑tech, STEAM‑driven space where you can dive into activities like MakeCode Arcade, Roblox, Minecraft, robotics, 3D printing, drones, VR, and more. While you’re here, take advantage of our amazing enrollment specials, or simply enjoy a fun day of coding, meeting new friends, high fives, and plenty of Hi‑Yahs!
The Marshall Statesmen proved to be kryptonite for the Yorktown Patriots boys basketball squad this season.
If not for Marshall, Yorktown would have gone undefeated in the Liberty District regular-season play, then might have won the league’s postseason high-school tournament, as well.
Join us for the Little Lambs Academy Open House! Families with children ages 3 months to 12 years are invited to tour our classrooms, meet our caring staff, and learn about our educational programs. Discover our STEAM curriculum, Christian learning environment, language enrichment, music education, and other unique opportunities we offer. Parents are encouraged to bring their children to explore the facility while enjoying complimentary snacks and refreshments. We look forward to meeting your family and answering any questions about enrollment!
A skincare center offering facials, lip filler, Botox injections and other treatments is opening in Virginia Square this week.
Skin Pharm plans to open its doors on Thursday at 3901 Fairfax Drive. It’s offering complimentary skin consultations, discounts and a giveaway in its opening days.
The Washington-Liberty Generals were hoping otherwise, but the result in this season’s Liberty District girls basketball tournament championship game was déjà vu all over again.
For the second straight year, and again on the Langley Saxons’ home court, the second-seeded Generals (20-5) fell short — losing 48-37 in the high-school contest.
A tax rate increase, the closure of the Cherrydale Library and the elimination of a popular youth gymnastics program are key components of the new budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year.
The $1.69 billion spending plan, released at a County Board meeting on Saturday, is down a fraction of a percent from the adopted fiscal year 2026 plan. The almost unprecedented year-over-year decrease reflects ongoing concerns about declining revenue from commercial office buildings, hotel stays and the federal government.
What a difference a storm makes.
After January’s winter storm left nearly-impossible-to-plow snowcrete covering neighborhood roads in Arlington for days, local residents are waking up today to something very different: neatly plowed streets across much of the county.
Virginia’s two U.S. senators say they will try again to reduce air traffic and take other steps to address safety concerns at Reagan National Airport.
Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine are throwing their support behind the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) final report into the January 2025 midair collision near the airport
