Ranked-choice voting, a climate resolution, the contentious Melwood development proposal and the draft Fiscal Year 2026 county budget are all on the agenda for a County Board meeting slated for Saturday (Feb. 22).
Among the highlights:
affordable housing
Legislation to give Falls Church more tools to promote affordable-housing development is moving forward in Richmond.
Two companion bills, if approved by the legislature and signed by the governor, would add Falls Church to the list of Virginia localities allowed to craft a program related to affordable dwelling units through their zoning ordinances.
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The Arlington County Board has approved $18 million in revenue bonds to support the redevelopment of the Goodwill on S. Glebe Road.
The funding will benefit AHC Inc., which is partnering with Goodwill to develop affordable housing on the site, located at 10 S. Glebe Road in the Alcova Heights community.
Some Falls Church officials are hoping 2025 will be a year of moving from conversation to concrete decisions in addressing affordable-housing goals.
“It’s the action side of things that has always been the problem — not the aspirational nature of what we want,” City Council member Erin Flynn said during a discussion of how city leaders will move forward on housing issues in the new year.
Despite ongoing concerns from residents in the surrounding neighborhood, the Melwood redevelopment project near Crystal City appears on track to be green-lighted early in the new year.
“This project is going to be approved. It is going to be approved 5-0 by the County Board in February,” predicted Nicholas Giacobbe, one of several neighbors who voiced concerns about the proposal at a Dec. 19 meeting of the county government’s site-plan review committee evaluating the plan.
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After years of working to expand access to food aid, Arlington County’s food assistance infrastructure is being stretched to its limits as rising living costs drive up demand.
Food insecurity is nothing new to Arlington, and neither are private and public initiatives to combat it. In recent years, the county has hired a food insecurity coordinator and ramped up efforts to connect residents with existing resources.
Advocates of a more streamlined way to get affordable housing built on religious-owned land on Saturday (Nov. 16) made one more appeal to Arlington County Board members.
But they may be facing an uphill battle convincing Arlington, and other Northern Virginia localities, to come on board with the proposal during the 2025 General Assembly session.
The concept of granting religious organizations more flexibility to create affordable housing on their properties is a good one, Falls Church officials say.
But city leaders remain wary of pending legislation in Richmond that could handcuff local-government zoning powers in order to obtain that outcome.
The legal limbo of Arlington’s Missing Middle policy could impact other planned housing initiatives.
Members of the county government’s Housing Commission on Nov. 7 were briefed by county staff on new proposals to address housing affordability and to diversify the county’s housing stock.
The two contenders for an open seat on the Falls Church City Council used the same word to describe how city leaders should address housing policy going forward.
“We have to attack it in different ways. We have to be aggressive,” said Laura Downs.
It could be an uphill battle at best, but an Arlington government advisory body wants the state and local governments to loosen restrictions on religious congregations seeking to turn their parcels into affordable housing.
Members of the Housing Commission in September voted to include the proposal on a list of priorities for consideration by the County Board in advance of the 2025 General Assembly session.
Six months after it was first submitted, a request to bestow historic-district status on an Arlington parcel slated for a major redevelopment continues to await action.
The request, formally submitted in April, came from local residents upset with plans by property owner Melwood to redevelop a 1.96-acre parcel on 23rd Street S. in Aurora Highlands as a mixed-use property and, likely, demolish the former Nelly Custis Elementary School on the site.