A lottery ticket from a Falls Church wholesale store was worth $50,000 in a Powerball drawing over the weekend.
BJ’s Wholesale Club (6607 Wilson Blvd) sold the ticket, which was one of five $50,000 winners statewide. The winner beat roughly 1 in 900,000 odds to successfully match four numbers plus the Powerball.
A long-awaited confectionery shop in Clarendon has opened just in time for the Christmas season.
Kilwins, located on the ground floor of The Hartford Building at 3101 Wilson Blvd, opened for business on Friday. Joining other locations in D.C. and Alexandria, it offers an array of chocolates, ice cream and other classic treats.
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…)
Trash collection will be pushed back a day on Thursday while various Arlington County facilities shut down for Christmas.
No waste will be picked up on Christmas Day, so Thursday routes will be serviced on Friday, and Friday routes will move to Saturday.
September jobs data delayed by the federal government shutdown show a 34% year-over-year increase in Arlington residents reported as unemployed, with the rate increasing 54% in Falls Church.
A total of 148,251 county residents were reported employed in the civilian workforce in September, according to figures reported Dec. 18 by the Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement.
Join the Rosslyn BID and Arlington Arts at the 34th Rosslyn Jazz Fest 2026 featuring live jazz, food trucks, local vendors, and family-friendly activities in the heart of Rosslyn! This year’s lineup is bringing a diverse mix of performers and bands redefining the jazz music genre including Plena Libre, Sally Baby’s Silver Dollars, Parlor Greens, and Dogo du Togo & the Alagaa Beat Band.
The county government’s arborist is pushing back on accusations that an iconic tree was removed needlessly from a Lyon Park median.
But local residents aghast at the removal aren’t letting the county government off the hook for its actions.
New APS Labor Agreement –“The Arlington School Board today certified a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between Arlington Public Schools (APS) and the Arlington School Administrators (ASA)… The APS–ASA successor agreement signed today is the most comprehensive administrative collective bargaining agreement in the Commonwealth.” [Press Release]
County Tops LGBTQ Rating — “Arlington County earned a perfect score – 100 out of 100 – on the Human Rights Campaign’s 14th annual Municipal Equality Index (MEI). The MEI examines how inclusive municipal laws, policies, and services are of LGBTQ+ people who live and work there. Arlington again received a score of 100 – plus an additional 16 bonus points – on the MEI Scorecard.” [Arlington County]
Video: Pentagon City Crash — “The changes @ArlingtonDES made with the Army Navy Drive Complete Street Project seem to have greatly reduced the number of crashes at this intersection (once the lights were better aligned). This is the first one I’ve seen in a while.” [Dave Statter/X]
Trees Cut Along Route 50 — “Looks like someone took a machete to all of the young recently-planted sapling trees along Arlington Blvd between N Courthouse Rd and 10th St N. There are now yard signs warning people that damaging the trees is a class 3 misdemeanor.” [Adam Theo/Bluesky]
New Chick-fil-A at DCA — “Christmas came early and Chick-fil-A is back and better than ever!!!!!!! The newly expanded restaurant reopened today, bringing back fan favorites, just in time for your holiday travels. National Hall, near the D Gates.” [Reagan Airport/X]
Spanberger’s Latest Plans — “Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D) began rolling out specifics Thursday of how she plans to deliver a more affordable Virginia, offering proposed legislation in areas of health care, housing and energy that she said uphold the promises that got her elected last month.” [Washington Post]
Latest on Legion Bridge — “The Trump administration appears to be growing impatient with a perceived lack of progress by Maryland to replace the American Legion Memorial Bridge. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced last week (Dec. 9) that the Federal Highway Administration will seek feedback and proposals on ways to accelerate the delivery of a new bridge in the hopes of relieving congestion on the Capital Beltway.” [FFXnow]
Trump’s Name Now on Kennedy Center — “The Kennedy Center installed President Donald Trump’s name on its exterior Friday morning, a dramatic change to a building established by law as a “living memorial” to a slain president.” [Washington Post]
It’s Monday — The skies will gradually become cloudy, reaching a high temperature of around 44 degrees, accompanied by a light southwestern wind. Monday night, there is a 40% chance of rain and snow occurring from 1 am to 4 am, followed by a possibility of rain after 4 am. With an expected low of 35 degrees, the light south wind will intensify to 5-10 mph later in the evening. [NWS]
Today’s Morning Notes are brought to you by Industrious. ARLnow has been decking the halls at an Industrious office for years and we love the convenience — you get to focus on your work rather than worrying about brewing your own coffee or keeping the copy machine stocked. Industrious has several Metro-accessible coworking locations in Arlington to keep your season merry and bright.
Photo courtesy Tom Mockler/X
Good Friday evening, Arlington. Let’s take a look back at today’s stories and a look forward to tomorrow’s event calendar.
The following articles were published earlier today — Dec 19, 2025.
Since it’s Friday, we’ve also compiled a list of the most-read articles of the week, below.
Here is what’s going on Saturday in Arlington, from our event calendar.
Here are the events planned for Sunday:
Expect a mostly sunny day with a high temperature near 44 degrees, as calm winds in the morning shift to the south, ranging from 5 to 9 mph. For Saturday night, skies will be partly cloudy, with the temperature dropping to around 36 degrees and a south wind blowing between 8 to 11 mph. See more from Weather.gov.
“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”
– Buddha
The MonumentCam screenshot above is used with permission of the Trust for the National Mall and courtesy of EarthCam.
We hope you have a great weekend, Arlington! 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. 👋
County education leaders are still evaluating new accountability ratings that showed a mix of success and shortcomings among Arlington schools.
Eight Arlington schools were categorized as “Needs Intensive Support” under new rating system and first results released earlier this month by the Virginia Department of Education, Superintendent Francisco Durán told School Board members at their Dec. 18 meeting.
Thursday was a busy night of vehicular incidents for Arlington County first responders.
Less than two hours after a pair of pedestrians were struck and injured in an alleged road rage hit-and-run, another pedestrian was struck a few blocks away in Ballston. A woman crossing in the crosswalk at Fairfax Drive and N. Utah Street was hospitalized, police say, after she was struck by the driver of a pickup truck.
