Making Room

I am proud to be a board member of the Alliance for Housing Solutions, a nonprofit that advocates for affordable housing in Arlington. Below is my own modified and condensed version of the letter AHS sent to the Arlington County Board regarding the FY22 Budget.

During this time, we have become more aware than ever how vitally important a safe and affordable place to call home can be. Today, a home is not only where we rest our heads at night but it is also where children receive much of their education and many adults either work or take refuge from the danger created by this rampant virus.

The year-long (and counting) pandemic has caused a large increase in the apartment vacancy rate in Arlington.

While stories of an urban exodus are overblown, national research indicates that the pandemic has decreased the inflow of new residents. Some of Arlington’s landlords have responded to high vacancy rates by lowering rents. This is welcome news for renters who struggle to afford payment or want to upgrade their home.

Crystal City and Pentagon City have long been a patchwork of single-family homes, dense retail, and aging office buildings, cut up by wide roads. Nothing divides the neighborhoods more than Route 1, which is elevated as it comes from DC into Arlington.

Two years ago, when Amazon selected Arlington for its second headquarters, it pushed to include a plan to bring more sections of the highway to ground level. Although many urban highways should be removed, the Route 1 plan is imperiled by the decision to maintain current traffic volume.

Guest column by Kellen MacBeth and Michael Pruitt

Arlington County has an opportunity to develop critical policies to address the ongoing negative impacts of over 100 years of racial segregation and discrimination in our housing market.

Development planning in Arlington is guided by the idea that density is a burden which must be paid for with public benefits.

If a property owner wants to add more units to their planned apartment building that they are allowed ‘by-right,’ they must also fund something off the community’s wish list. But if the price of this is too high, the community loses both new homes AND the improved urban space.

This fall, the Arlington County Board will vote on a controversial proposal to make condo development easier along Columbia Pike. The County should reject this proposal and focus our bonus-density programs on low-income renters at risk of displacement and let market-rate development (fueled by better zoning) serve aspiring homeowners.

The Columbia Pike Neighborhoods Form Based Code (N-FBC) is a set of regulations that allows a developer to build to a much higher density in the corridor in exchange for public benefits, including Committed Affordable Housing (CAFs). Currently, a developer using the N-FBC must commit 20-35% of the net-new units in their project as Affordable for households making up to 60% AMI. This applies for both apartment buildings and condo or ownership projects.

My column talks a lot about single-family vs. multi-family homes. But what counts as a family?

The rules that govern who can legally occupy Arlington’s housing have changed to reflect our understanding and acceptance of diverse types of families. But even with significant progress to make our definition of families more inclusive, we have further to go to support the different forms that households take the 21st century.

We lost a tree in my neighborhood during the storms last month. It was a large tree that provided shade for the nearby tennis and basketball courts. It will take decades for a new tree to provide that benefit for the park. But as a forward-thinking community, we plant trees now knowing that they will provide shade in the future.

This is an apt metaphor for housing affordability. We need to build new housing now so that we have older homes that will be affordable for middle-income families in the future. Therefore, when we evaluate our zoning policy or a site plan, we shouldn’t only judge it by the cost of the new housing that will be produced, but also on the cost of the older housing that it will become.