With varying degrees of success, the Wakefield Warriors, Washington-Liberty Generals and Yorktown Patriots participated in different spring-break baseball tournaments in recent days.
Yorktown (7-5) had the best record of the three high-school teams, finishing 3-2 in the competition at Patriot Park in Fairfax.
Campbell Knisely, a sophomore on the Bishop O’Connell High School boys soccer team this past fall, recently was chosen a member of the under-17 U.S. Olympic Development Program National Select Team.
The squad of 18 players is training and participating in matches against top European Youth Academies this month in Italy. The selection process included progressing through district, state and regional training camps.
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…)
The Wakefield Warriors are outperforming expectations in boys lacrosse action, hitting a high-water mark in the team’s final pre-spring-break contest.
The rescheduled Liberty District high-school game was against the host Marshall Statesmen on a rainy Friday night the weekend before spring break.
The bats were alive and the run-scoring plentiful for the Yorktown Patriots in most of their last seven girls softball games.
Yorktown (6-7) finished 4-3 in those high-school contests, scoring double-digit runs in four of the outings and plating 58 overall.
*Mamistad Groups meet IN PERSON-only the introductory Zoom call is virtual. :)
Pregnancy and new mom groups are a lifesaver when it comes to normalizing those feelings we just can’t be prepared for.
An organization giving Arlington wrestlers wanting a place to compete outside the winter high-school season is gaining in popularity.
The Arlington Wrestling Club, for girls and boys, offers practice sessions and various competitions for the months following and leading up to the winter high-school campaign.
An Eagle Scout project completed by a Washington-Liberty High School junior will support the school’s outdoor track-and-field program for years to come.
Thomas Lee planned, designed, organized, oversaw and helped build the landing area of the shot-put pit for the school’s girls and boys track-and-field teams. Lee is a member of the W-L boys squad as a triple-jumper and sprinter.
Torey Ortmayer, who has led the Yorktown Patriots to numerous team championships, recently stepped down after eight seasons as the head coach of the high school’s swimming and diving teams.
Ortmayer is leaving to start a new year-round club swimming organization named Hydra Aquatics. It will be located at the Tuckahoe Recreation Club pool in McLean, and will open this fall.
The Bishop O’Connell Knights and Washington-Liberty Generals had no individual winners but enjoyed some top finishes at the PR Northern Virginia Invitational track-and-field competition held at South Lakes High School.
The meet included many of the top girls and boys athletes throughout the area.
Two Yorktown High School wrestlers recently were recognized with all-state selections for their standout performances during the winter season.
Seniors Cambyses Khani and Basheer Hadi were chosen to Virginia High School League Class 6 all-state teams as a result of top finishes in the state-championship meet.
