A new mural will be installed in Crystal City this month.
The entrance to the Mount Vernon Trail at the (recently revamped) Water Park will be the site of the 245-foot mural, which will highlight the area’s connectivity, according to artist J.D. Deardourff.
Election Season Safety Planning — “The specifics for public consumption are – not surprisingly – left a little hazy, but Arlington public-safety officials say they are taking steps to ensure election season is not interrupted for one reason or another… Among law-enforcement leaders in the Washington region, ‘this is a consistent topic,’ Police Chief Andy Penn told County Board members.” [Gazette Leader]
More Road Safety Installations — From Arlington’s Dept. of Environmental Services: “Crews have completed installing centerline hardening devices at five locations around Arlington,” including Ballston, “to slow vehicles making left turns near crosswalks. Another Vision Zero safety project pilot.” [Twitter]
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…)
A pedestrian was seriously injured in a hit-and-run collision in Arlington’s Maywood neighborhood tonight.
The incident happened around 7 p.m. Thursday on the 3300 block of 22nd Street N., a narrow street with houses, a small park and a sidewalk on one side.
Good Thursday 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 — May 23, 2024.
Here is what’s going on Friday in Arlington, from our event calendar.
Expect a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms early in the day before 8am and between 8am-11am, with patchy fog before 8am. Later, expect mostly cloudy skies to gradually clear up, reaching a high near 82°F with a light north wind. Precipitation chance for the day is 20%. In the evening, partly cloudy skies and a low around 65°F with a light south wind are anticipated. See more from Weather.gov.
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
– Mark Twain
The MonumentCam screenshot above is used with permission of the Trust for the National Mall and courtesy of EarthCam.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to discuss the day’s happenings in the comments.
*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.
The first of three towers in a major office-to-residential conversion project has opened in Skyline.
Three Collective, a trio of older, 16-story buildings converted to apartments on the 5000 block of Leesburg Pike, will ultimately lease 675 units with one-, two- and three bedroom configurations. Resident amenities include a large indoor dog park, a bowling alley, a VR gaming lounge and arcade, “social kitchens” and an indoor/outdoor amphitheater, a press release says.
A Fairfax man was jailed after he allegedly rammed a police cruiser.
The incident happened early Monday morning on the western end of Columbia Pike in Arlington. Police say an officer spotted a car with stolen tags in a parking lot, leading to an unsuccessful attempt to flee by the 25-year-old suspect.
Arlington Beer Garden will soon open for business.
Sunday will mark the grand opening at 3217 10th Street N. in Clarendon, starting a new chapter for the establishment formerly known as The Lot.
As the sun peeked over the horizon this morning, nearly 1,500 shadows danced across Arlington National Cemetery’s 639 acres as soldiers placed flags at each grave, including of those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Starting at 6 a.m., members of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, the Army’s oldest active-duty infantry unit — known as the “Old Guard” — began the solemn task of placing flags at the base of approximately 260,000 headstones as part of their annual “Flags In” tradition, held just before Memorial Day.
Last week Rosslyn-based Politico broke the news about a big rift at Washington Golf and Country Club in North Arlington.
Some 240 members and spouses at the tony club at 3017 N. Glebe Road reportedly signed a letter expressing concerns about the plan to include a men’s bar and grill in a $5 million renovation project.
