News

A man who struck a police officer with his SUV in Crystal City and fled the scene will spend the next six months behind bars.

Anthony Aquice, 25, was sentenced last week to five years — though four-and-a-half years of that time is suspended, the Arlington Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office announced on Monday.


News

Travelers heading south to Reagan National Airport should budget extra time this weekend because the Crystal City Metro station will be closed.

The station will be closed from Saturday, Feb. 14, through Monday, Feb. 16, in the first of 10 weekend closures between now and June.


Sponsored

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…)


News

Repairs on the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge will bring a detour to a heavily trafficked commuter route beginning this weekend and continuing for several months.

Starting on Sunday, Feb. 15, the bridge’s capacity will be reduced from three lanes to two lanes in each direction, and the Arlington Blvd eastbound ramp will be closed through early June.


News
Blocks of “snowcrete” around a fire hydrant (courtesy George Brazier)

No Major HQ2 Layoffs — “Amazon.com Inc.’s roughly 16,000 corporate layoffs announced in January won’t significantly impact the workforce at its second headquarters in Arlington County, a company spokesperson told me. While Amazon declined to provide specific workforce reduction figures at its HQ2 in Pentagon City, the company said the cuts won’t require it to file a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification with Virginia.” [WBJ]

More Sewage Issues — “600,000 gallons of raw sewage poured into the Potomac River Sunday night when wipes that had been flushed down toilets clogged 2 of the pumps that had been diverting sewage away from the river. @dcwater experienced an increased flow about half time of @SuperBowl.” [Mark Segraves/X, PoPville]

Special Election Result — “Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (D-5) is getting a promotion in Richmond. Voters in today’s special election gave the Democrat a sweeping victory against Republican Julie Robben Lineberry for a seat in the State Senate. The outgoing delegate received a decisive 83% of the vote, setting her up to succeed Sen. Adam Ebbin as he joins Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s administration.” [ALXnow, Arlington Democrats, Virginia Mercury]

Flyover Today — From AlertDC: “The U.S. Military will conduct an aircraft flyover in the National Capital Region (NCR) over Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday, February 11, 2026, at 11:00AM.”

Data Center Power Bill — “Sen. L. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, on Monday introduced an amendment to her Senate Bill 253, which would levy more energy costs onto data centers served by Dominion Energy and less on residential customers, a move the utility, state regulators and lawmakers say would immediately drop residential bills by about $5.50 per month.” [Virginia Mercury]

Va. Redistricting Update — “Virginia Democrats gave speedy approval Tuesday to legislation setting out proposed political maps that could give them a 10-1 advantage in the state’s congressional districts during elections this fall, setting the stage to send the matter to Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) to sign or veto as soon as later this week.” [Washington Post]

Peak Ice Cover — “Ice, ice everywhere. Major Mid-Atlantic waterway ice coverage peaked on Monday at 38.4 percent. As extensive as seen recently. Most of the Delaware Bay and Potomac River covered at peak. Large portions of Chesapeake Bay also locked up with ice.” [CWG/X]

Weekend Storm Chance — “Most models show a wintry mix fairly quickly changing to rain, or a mostly rain event. There is also a chance the storm just grazes us or misses our area to the south. A major accumulation of snow or wintry mix is the least likely scenario as of now, but it’s still early.” [CWG]

It’s Wednesday — Expect a mostly sunny day with a high temperature near 44 degrees and northwest winds ranging from 10 to 17 mph, potentially gusting up to 32 mph. The nighttime will be partly cloudy with a low temperature around 29 degrees, accompanied by northwest winds of 13 to 18 mph, and gusts reaching up to 26 mph. [NWS]


Around Town

Good Tuesday evening, Arlington. Let’s take a look back at today’s stories and a look forward to tomorrow’s event calendar.

🕗 News recap

The following articles were published earlier today — Feb 10, 2026.

📅 Upcoming events

Here is what’s going on Wednesday in Arlington, from our event calendar.

🌤️ Wednesday’s forecast

Expect a mostly sunny day with a high temperature near 44 degrees and northwest winds ranging from 10 to 17 mph, potentially gusting up to 32 mph. The nighttime will be partly cloudy with a low temperature around 29 degrees, accompanied by northwest winds of 13 to 18 mph, and gusts reaching up to 26 mph. See more from Weather.gov.

💡 Quote of the Day

“Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.”
– John F. Kennedy

🌅 Tonight’s sunset

The MonumentCam screenshot above is used with permission of the Trust for the National Mall and courtesy of EarthCam.

Thanks for reading! If you have something to say about an issue of local note not covered today, feel free to post it as a letter to the editor on our new forum.


Schools

School Board Chair Bethany Zecher Sutton launched her reelection bid last week with a pledge to fight for students — and against the Trump administration.

“We’re all feeling the impact of this administration’s attacks on our values. We will not back down,” Zecher Sutton said during Wednesday remarks to about 200 people at the monthly Arlington County Democratic Committee meeting.


Around Town

A group of kids in Arlington’s Woodmont neighborhood seized an opportunity during the recent snow days to build a heavy-duty fort made from “snowcrete.”

During their days off from school the week of Jan. 25, brothers Kaleb and Logan Sundsmo, 14 and 12, and neighbor twin sisters Zara and Carys Murphy, 13, teamed up to build a structure from icy snow and Amazon boxes.


Around Town

A Mexican street food-inspired eatery with an all-halal menu began serving diners last week in Ballston.

Eat More Taco opened earlier this month at 708 N. Glebe Road, adding another option for Latin-inspired cuisine near Ballston Quarter.


Around Town

Weeks after Facebook suspended a longstanding group where Arlingtonians shared memories of growing up in the county, the group has been restored.

“I Grew Up in Arlington, VA” was back online as of yesterday (Monday) morning, co-moderators Eric Dobson and David Tyskowski told ARLnow.