housing

From rail yards to residential towers: Rosslyn’s half-century transformation

By James Jarvis
1/16

(Updated 10:30 a.m.) Where the prosaic golden arches of the stand-alone McDonald’s once perched, a residential high-rise now joins the many skyscrapers defining Rosslyn’s changing skyline.

Some old landmarks have been incorporated into new high-rises, including the McDonald’s now beneath Central Place Tower on N. Lynn Street and the former Fire Station 10 at the base of The Highlands.

Others, such as Tom Sarris’ Orleans House, a fixture for nearly 50 years, were replaced with offices and a newer generation of businesses like Compass Coffee and Cava.

Although commercial office buildings have been a constant feature of Rosslyn’s skyline over the past 40 years, the last decade has seen a shift towards more living space.

Anthony Fusarelli, Arlington County’s planning director, says that out of the approximately 8 million square feet of new development planned in Rosslyn, nearly half is designated for residential use. Office space accounts for roughly 2.8 million square feet, retail occupies 171,459 square feet, and the remaining space is allocated for hotels.

The transformation reflects a broader shift the county undertook over the last 20 years to steer urban planning toward residential and mixed-use development to accommodate a growing population, boost economic activity and adapt to people’s waning enthusiasm for the conventional workplace.

This trend is likely to persist, not only because of changes in work patterns post-pandemic, but also because Arlington County is encouraging residential development in Metro-oriented Rosslyn to help address its reported shortage of housing supply.

Planning Rosslyn’s future

To understand how and why this shift occurred, Fusarelli pointed to Rosslyn’s history.

Sixty years ago, if someone had ascended the 555-foot Washington Monument and looked westward across the Potomac River, they would have seen a very different Rosslyn. The view would have been dominated by rail yards, pawnshops, oil storage tanks and other retail and industrial operations.

“So, just this mix of varied uses that is quite different from what we have today,” Fusarelli said.

Aerial view of Rosslyn circa 1962 (via Arlington County)

After  World War II, Fusarelli said the Arlington County Board recognized the area was valuable because of its proximity to D.C. Eager to establish Rosslyn as an auxiliary office hub for the growing federal government, the county embarked on an aggressive campaign to transform the area into a vibrant business district.

“Back in the early ’60s, Arlington established a new zoning tool called the ‘site plan process,’ which incentivized private landowners to build much taller buildings, much bigger buildings, in exchange for providing certain public benefits,” Fusarelli said.

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Arlington couple sounds alarm on internet rental scam

By James Jarvis
1/3

When Penrose resident Pete Giannino answered his doorbell one day this March, he was surprised to see his neighbors standing there, looking concerned.

“They said, ‘Hey, are you guys planning on renting your home?’ And I said, ‘No. Why do you ask?’ And they pointed out there was a listing on Zillow or Redfin for our home that we own,” Giannino told ARLnow.

Now, the local couple is sounding the alarm on an internet rental scam falsely advertising that their 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom home on the 600 block of S. Wayne Street is on the market. They say the scam appears to target people who are lower-income or who speak limited English and has defrauded several people and families.

In the last six months, Giannino and his wife, Kate Colwell, said upwards of 20 people have come to their door asking to tour the house while another half-dozen have contacted them via social media. They say the home is listed as available for rent, for $2,400 a month, on real estate and social media platforms, including Zillow and Facebook.

Giannino and his wife have gotten many fraudulent listings removed from mainstream real estate websites. Despite seeking help from law enforcement, they’ve struggled to eliminate listings on Facebook Marketplace, where scammers continue messaging potential renters.

“We’re just really angry that this person on the internet is cheating people, stealing from people,” Colwell said. “There’s no accountability and we really want them to be stopped.”

Rental scam depicting house on S. Wayne Street on Facebook Marketplace (courtesy Kate Colwell)

Giannino and Colwell are convinced they are not the only ones to whom this is happening. When Giannino filed a police report in late March, an Arlington County Police Department detective told the couple he had heard of similar scams happening to other newer homeowners in the area.

On April 5, Giannino said he got his hopes up after the detective said the department’s financial crimes unit would handle the case. About a month later, he got a letter in the mail from the police department stating that their case was closed.

The department did not immediately respond to ARLnow’s request for comment.

“In a rage, I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’And just like, I threw it away because I was just so upset by the fact that they were turning a blind eye to this,” he said.

Meanwhile, strangers asking to tour their home continue knocking on their door. So far, Giannino and Colwell say most do not speak English as their first language and there will typically be a translator with them.

Colwell noted that one Hispanic couple who came to their door in early April said they paid a $1,800 security deposit.

“She had like text conversations with the scammer. She had phone conversations with the scammer… and they showed up for the tour. And we’re like, ‘Oh, we’re here for the tour,” Colwell said.

While it’s been emotionally draining to keep turning away hopeful renters, Colwell said that any “annoyance or discomfort we feel with people wanting a tour of the house… pales in comparison to how it feels actually to lose your hard-earned savings.”

Giannino said he had filed an addendum to the initial police report to try and get ACPD to reopen the case.

But, just in case, the couple has also filed a complaint with the FBI.

In the interim, Giannino and Colwell have posted signs in front of their house and spreading the word to prevent more people from falling victim.

“It’s a good thing to shine a light on it, too, because it’s harder for an internet criminal to operate [than in the] darkness,” Colwell said.

Hat tip John Antonelli

Morning Poll: Missing Middle Twitter war (can you take it anymore?)

By ARLnow.com
A row of townhouses in Portland, Oregon (courtesy of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability)

Arlington didn’t start the ‘Missing Middle’ fire — localities across the country and around the world have been trying to figure out how to deal with rapidly rising housing costs.

While Arlington’s approval of new zoning regulations allowing small-scale multifamily housing in previously single-family-detached only neighborhoods was not the first time a major jurisdiction made such a move, the underlying debate is still raging in certain pockets of cyberspace.

ARLnow’s comment section aside, one place where the fire is still burning is on Twitter. (The social network was recently renamed “X” in a bid to incorporate additional features, arguably making it the National Landing of tech companies.)

On Twitter, a persistent anonymous account named Arlington Transparency has been posting side-by-side images of older homes set to be redeveloped as Missing Middle housing, next to speculation about how much those new units may cost given the price of existing, similar homes in the area.

In each case, the detached home set for demolition is less expensive than a newer townhouse or other multifamily home.

On the other side of the debate are local housing advocates like Jane Green, who point out that, yes, the resulting Missing Middle homes will likely be more expensive than the tear-down that’s being replaced, but they’re much less expensive than the “McMansions” that would otherwise be going up.

Plus, the more affordable homes being replaced would need “significant work” to be viable for buyers seeking to live there.

Unsurprisingly for Twitter, there’s a counter argument to the counter argument: that $900k+ townhouses benefit “elites” and not buyers in need of greater affordability.

Given the arguments above, who’s got the winning team, in your view? (With apologies to those who feel that this debate has been burning since the world’s been turning.)

A first-time home buying program faces headwinds from Arlington’s hot real estate market

By Jo DeVoe
Real estate for sale sign in the Arlington Heights neighborhood (file photo by Jay Westcott)

(Updated at noon on 7/10/23) Recently, a family of five with three boys bought a two-bedroom home with a den in Arlington, thanks in part to a little-known county program that helps first-time homebuyers secure a mortgage with small loans.

“They were completely comfortable with that,” says Karen Serfis, a program manager with Latino Economic Development Center, who helped the family work with the county to get the loan. “Not everybody wants to live in a two-bedroom with a den but they wanted to stay in Arlington.”

Since 2018, Arlington County has operated the Moderate-Income Purchase Assistance Program (MIPAP), which helps income-eligible people buy homes that cost less than $500,000. Last year, it issued 13 loans to applicants, 65% of whom were single and 25% of whom belonged to two-person households. They were able to buy one-bedroom or small two-bedroom units.

The number of loans issued last year could be a program record for the last decade, according to data provided by Serfis and the county, which is seeing more people interested in accessing the funding.

As interest in the program grows, however, applicants are finding few housing options under $500,000. On top of an income eligibility restriction of 80% of the area median income (AMI), that makes the program difficult for many to effectively utilize.

“There’s been a huge uptick in people trying to use MIPAP in the last year and I don’t know why,” Serfis said. “Is it because it’s so impossible to buy? I don’t know. Is the county doing better outreach? Possibly. Or are people more aware of these programs because they’re on the internet?”

Arlington County says it could be because applicants were confident in post-pandemic economic recovery and could be taking advantage of another county program that uses state funding to lower loan interest rates one percentage point.

Despite the uptick in recent years, MIPAP is just now reaching the numbers of people helped in the late 2000s, when the program was run by a local nonprofit affordable housing developer. In the years before AHC, Inc. ceded it to Arlington County to focus on rentals, the number of loans issued fell to four to six per year throughout the 2010s.

Some say the program’s structure and requirements are getting in the way and it should be revamped. They say Arlington County should raise the $500,000 purchasing price limit as well as the income restrictions, rebrand the program and spread the word.

“MIPAP is an anemic program and represents a significant underinvestment in helping Arlington residents successfully transition to homeownership,” says Kellen MacBeth, a housing policy advocate and member of the Arlington branch of the NAACP. “Homeownership offers unique opportunities to bridge the racial wealth gap and we need to step up county support for residents, especially residents of color, looking to become homeowners.”

The program is funded by the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, which stipulates households must earn at or below 80% AMI, or $120,560 for a household of four, and qualify for a conventional first-trust mortgage. Under both these conditions, lenders typically say applicants can qualify for homes priced below $400,000, according to the county.

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NEW: More than a dozen Missing Middle permit applications are in the works so far

By Jo DeVoe
1/4

(Updated at 4:05 p.m.) Eight permit applications for Missing Middle housing proposals have been accepted by Arlington County since Saturday, the first day for such filings.

Another seven are at various stages of completion, marked “application complete” or “awaiting plans and documents,” according to permit records, as of Wednesday afternoon.

There are several other placeholder permits — those that people have started but not yet finished.

Some were at the ready on Day 1 of the Missing Middle — also called Expanded Housing Options — permitting process. Nine permits were filed on July 1, while another two each have come in on Sunday, Monday and yesterday, per the records.

The homes proposed for redevelopment are typically concentrated in or near Metro areas, such as East Falls Church, Ballston, Virginia Square, Clarendon and Pentagon City, per the addresses associated with each permit.

So far, all eight accepted applications are located in R-5 and R-6 zoning districts, or those with 5,000 to 6,000-square-foot lots, respectively, Arlington County Dept. of Community Planning, Housing and Development spokeswoman Erika Moore said.

Specifically, three are in R-5 and five are in R-6 districts, according to the county. This means only four more permits can be issued for homes in R-5 districts this calendar year, as the county capped the permits for this zoning district at seven annually. Meanwhile, 30 total permits can be issued for R-6 districts in one year.

Another 21 permits are allowed annually across zones with 8, 10 or 20,000-square-foot lots (R-8, R-10 or R-20). None have been issued in these districts yet.

One-third of the permit applications so far are for 3-unit townhouses. Duplexes and six-plexes each comprise roughly one-quarter and the remaining two are quad-plexes.

As for off-street parking, five have one parking space per unit, four have more than one space per unit and six have less than one space per unit. Earlier this year, critics predicted (and some incorporated this into a lawsuit) that lower parking minimums — and thus greater reliance on on-street parking — would clog narrow streets.

Arlington County has launched a web page with information about applying for an EHO permit, in addition to a page tracking these developments. The tracker includes the address and zoning district for each property, the number of units proposed, the permit number and submission date, among other information.

“The County has committed to tracking EHO permit submissions and approvals so both potential applicants and interested community members can see how many EHO projects are proposed — and where they are located,” per an Arlington County email newsletter.

“Work is underway on connecting permitting system data to the County’s Open Data Portal to create a user-friendly dashboard. Until that tool is available, County staff will post weekly updates on applications and their status online,” the email continued. “Tracking will begin on Friday, July 7.”

The tracker was updated almost two days early, on Wednesday evening.

Currently, the EHO permits issued do not authorize construction, according to the webpage. A separate county staff review is needed before builders can start construction.

There is no fee associated with this permit though one may be proposed next year.

The county recently published a how-to video, below, demonstrating the application process.

Photos 1, 2, 3 and 4 via Google Maps

Seven years after speaking out, a few residents of an affordable housing building say problems persist

By Jo DeVoe
The Shelton in Green Valley (staff photo)

Residents of The Shelton, an affordable housing development in the Green Valley neighborhood, are raising concerns about property management and poor treatment of residents.

They previously raised these same issues in 2016, along with other quality-of-life that they say plagued the building, owned by local affordable housing developer AHC Inc.

“We are having problems in my apartment complex,” Frank Duncan, who has lived there since it opened, told members of the Tenant-Landlord Commission earlier this month.

He described an exorbitant water bill, errant late fees, a whole week without hot water and disrespectful management staff. He articulated a feeling among residents that their housing situation is not guaranteed because rent has been paid month-to-month since the pandemic started.

The testimony before the commission comes as AHC Inc. says it is making it easier for residents to report complaints. Some current and former commission members say these complaints reinforce their powerlessness to do more than advise residents. ARLnow has previously reported on how limited mediation options in Arlington, compared to Fairfax County, dissuade residents from bringing up issues.

Duncan said residents feel mistreated when they try to raise issues with management, which causes them to let issues go unresolved.

“When you go to the rent office, the manager is so disrespectful,” Duncan said. “She does not have the time to listen to what we have to say. So, they don’t go in there. They come to get me to go in there and talk.”

Disrespectful management was one of the complaints levied against management at the Serrano Apartments on Columbia Pike two years ago. AHC received public and county scrutiny after ARLnow reported on complaints about poor living conditions at the complex.

Since then, AHC made changes to its operations, including getting new leadership and committing to third-party management at The Serrano, though advocates and some residents say issues persist, WAMU/DCist reported in April.

The nonprofit developer says it is working to address concerns at The Shelton.

“AHC’s mission is to put residents first. Thus, we value resident feedback, take resident concerns seriously, and do not tolerate poor customer service from anyone interacting with residents,” AHC President and CEO Paul Bernard said in a statement. “When we learn about issues, including disrespectful behavior, we act swiftly and follow up with our property management companies.”

AHC spokeswoman Jennifer Smith said the nonprofit developed and distributed a Resident Concern Guide for all residents at all Arlington communities to ensure residents know how to report — and, if needed — escalate issues.

She says the management company, Harbor Group is working extra hours and through staffing shortages to certify residents meet income eligibility requirements to live there. After this is done, Smith says, eligible residents can get back on year-long leases.

Harbor Group is also trying to make bills and late fees for rent easier to understand, she said. The company also scheduled a meeting with residents to discuss concerns and issues. This was planned before the Tenant-Landlord Commission meeting, Smith notes, and was attended by AHC staff and Bernard.

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Democratic County Board hopefuls say it is time to heal from Missing Middle divisions

By Jo DeVoe
County Board hopefuls at Arlington County Democratic Committee forum (via Arlington Democrats/YouTube)

The specter of Missing Middle haunts the slate of candidates for Arlington County Board.

Two months ago, the County Board allowed the by-right construction of 2-6 unit buildings on lots previously zoned for single-family homes.

Prior to voting for the changes, Board Chair Christian Dorsey and member Katie Cristol announced that they would not be seeking reelection. Those vying to replace them vary widely in their stances on Missing Middle, though a forum last week hosted by Arlington County Democratic Committee revealed areas of common ground.

Some Democrat hopefuls opined about how the process leading up to the zoning changes divided the community and revealed how renters are underrepresented in civic life. Mostly, the candidates suggested that they are focused on life after Missing Middle and supporting other policies to help people afford to live in Arlington.

“We don’t get a do-over. There is no do-over, there is only a do-next,” said policy analyst Maureen Coffey. “We need to learn from this process, what went wrong — never repeat that ever again — and move forward, bringing everyone to the table to talk about how this is going to play out and what we need to solve our housing and larger issues.”

All of the candidates agreed the county will need to analyze data before deciding on next steps.

“Monitoring closely is going to be really important — especially monitoring on elements of diversity and affordability,” said Susan Cunningham, who has run for County Board before as an independent and criticized the zoning changes.

Cunningham suggested modifying rules for accessory dwelling units and for lot coverage, which could curb the development of large homes oft-derided as “McMansions.”

“My biggest problem with Missing Middle was not just the process but the fact that we did not do a comprehensive look at housing,” Cunningham said. “Housing is complicated and housing this whole community in its diversity and amazingness is also complicated, and we oversimplified that in my opinion.”

To that end, another candidate opposed to the changes, real estate agent Natalie Roy, detailed her views on housing in a three-part plan. It includes implementing a proposal from the Arlington branch of the NAACP to prevent the displacement of low-income residents.

Roy said the county should provide a public dashboard showing where and what kind of permits are issued, as well as the selling price for completed units. Arlington County has already committed to publishing this data once it becomes available.

Missing Middle supporter Jonathan Dromgoole said he too is watching where the units are built. Next, he said, the county should focus on shoring up the dwindling supply of relatively inexpensive, market-rate units. This is something Arlington County is already looking at as these units are continuously lost to redevelopment and rehabilitation.

Former NAACP Arlington Branch president Julius “J.D.” Spain, Sr. said he is thinking farther outside the box.

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Plans to turn Reeves Farmhouse into group home head to Historic Affairs board

By Jo DeVoe
1/12

(Updated at 4:50 p.m.) After a pandemic-era hiatus, Habitat for Humanity has revived plans to turn a county-owned historic farmhouse into a group home.

Habitat DC-NOVA and HomeAid National Capital Region are propose to restore the exterior of the Reeves Farmhouse in the Bluemont neighborhood, modernize and renovate the interior, construct two new, historically compatible additions and update the landscaping.

The public would still be able to use two acres of parkland around it, including a milk shed, sledding hill and the Reevesland Learning Center gardens.

The nonprofits will be meeting with the Historic Affairs and Landmark Review Board tonight (Wednesday) to discuss plans for the home, which is more than 100 years old. Given the home’s local historic district designation, this board has the authority to review and approve major alterations, per a county report.

The farmhouse sits on the Reevesland property, notable for being the last operating dairy farm in Arlington County before closing in 1955. The local historic designation of the farmhouse and milk shed , from 2004, recognizes the property’s “architectural history and association with the rural and agricultural history of Arlington,” the report said.

“The Reevesland farmhouse is a two-story building with a stone foundation,” the report says. “The wood framing remains as underlying physical evidence of a number of additions and remodeling undertaken over more than 100 years, with the major changes occurring from 1878 to 1911.”

Arlington County purchased Reevesland in 2001 and began searching for appropriate uses for the “endangered” historic place in 2010, putting forth requests for proposals that never led anywhere. During these doldrums, some community groups suggested the county turn the property into a museum or learning center.

High renovation costs convinced the Board to move toward selling it in March 2017, despite some community opposition. Two months later, Habitat came to Arlington County with an unsolicited proposal to reuse the farmhouse for a group home for people with developmental disabilities.

It took three years, but the county and Habitat reached a non-binding letter of intent. One month after that was signed, the nation shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic and the project stalled.

Talks among the nonprofits and L’Arche Greater Washington — which will use the facilities for their core member program — and county staff about the project resumed in September 2022. DPR met with the Boulevard Manor Civic Association in January to provide an update on the project, a neighbor and a spokeswoman for Habitat told ARLnow after publication.

Plans include a two-story addition at the back of the house and a one-story addition at on the southwest side. These will increase the number of bedrooms to seven and provide access and gathering spaces suitable for people with mobility impairments.

A paved area west of the farmhouse will be expanded to provide parking and clearance for Metro Access vans that will provide transportation for future residents. It will also build a stormwater management bio-facility, which could be something like a rain garden.

A tree near the proposed two-story addition will be removed as the addition will conflict with some roots that are critical to its health. Habitat will discuss ways to mitigate this loss with the county’s Urban Forester.

In the county report, Historic Preservation Program staff say they support the project because the addition will be distinct from the historic structure and the landscaping changes will not harm the property’s setting.

“The proposed one- and two-story additions will not detract from the scale or massing of the historic farmhouse, as their designs are compatible with the existing vernacular architecture and can be distinguished from what is historic and new construction,” per a county report.

Planners say region needs to add services and housing as population ages

By Jo DeVoe
Brookdale Senior Living in Arlington (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

Over the next 25 years, the D.C. area will need to invest more in housing and services tailored toward a rapidly graying population.

That is one of the takeaways from a presentation of job, population and household growth forecasts presented to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments today (Wednesday).

Overall, the region is set to gain one million jobs, 1.5 million people and 700,000 new households by 2050.

Job growth may not be as robust as previously projected, with new forecasts projecting 200,000 fewer total jobs for each forecast year, due to the lingering effects of the pandemic and a “dampening” caused by an aging population, COG Community Planning and Services Director Paul DesJardin said.

These forecasts are intended to help local and regional agencies gauge the demand for public infrastructure and transportation. They can also use it to develop policies tackling regional issues — including an aging population.

In 2020, the region had 757,000 people over the age of 65 and, by 2050, this population is projected to swell to 1.2 million, a growth rate of 64%, per the presentation. At the other end of the age spectrum, school-aged children will remain fairly steady, growing from just over 1 million in 2020 to 1.1 million in 2050.

“This is a national and a local trend,” said DesJardin. “Our economic competitiveness is imperative on our ability to attract and maintain talent. Then, there’s the concomitant challenges of the human services an aging population will need. We still have a growing and steady workforce population but we are aging.”

Later, DesJardin said the aging population may also require the construction of more dwellings accessible to those with physical challenges, from single-family detached homes to apartments. That would be part of a continued push to increase housing overall.

“We still do need to do more to address our housing challenge. We need to do more for production, and certainly affordability,” he said.

Arlington County Planning Director Anthony Fusarelli says the county has been preparing for this population shift.

“We in Arlington over the past several years have been focused increasingly more so on the needs of that older population,” he said. “The County Board has approved zoning ordinance amendments to make it easier and provide more flexibility for things such as assisted living and senior living facilities.”

County staff are studying homeownership and will be looking at housing options for seniors. Fusarelli also mentioned the recent adoption of “Missing Middle” zoning changes allowing the by-right construction of 2-6 unit buildings in areas previously reserved for single-family detached homes.

“One of the benefits we see as a community in allowing duplexes or small apartment buildings across much of Arlington that currently isn’t permitted, or hasn’t been permitted historically, is it does provide the opportunity for that aging demographic to expand their property or find another housing unit in the neighborhood they’ve been in for some time that otherwise wouldn’t be there today,” he said.

Overall, he says, the COG forecast plays an important role “in really grounding our community conversations about planning for growth over the next 20-30 years.”

“It’ll account for changes in the ramp-up of Amazon’s headquarters, the Pentagon City Sector Plan — which our County Board adopted more than one year ago, which can potentially double the amount of development in that Metro station area — as well as other studies for our Shirlington area and others as well.”

Arlington County Board Chair Christian Dorsey says this information helps the county explain to constituents why it is always working on a planning project.

“I know it helps us in Arlington address one of the fundamental questions we get in the community. ‘All this stuff you’re planning and doing, what are you solving for?'” Dorsey said. “This really gives us a ‘for’ that we’re trying to solve, and it’s based, really, on the broadest possible set of data for our entire interconnected region.”

In Arlington’s ‘townhouse districts,’ only single-family homes can be built by-right

By Jo DeVoe
1/3

(Updated at 12 p.m.) A lone, aging single-family detached home surrounded by townhouses and apartments and close to the Ballston Metro station could be redeveloped to house two families.

If the home at 1129 N. Utah Street were in any of Arlington County’s lowest-density zoning districts, the project could be done by-right — in other words, without seeking special permission beyond standard construction-related permits — starting this summer as part of the “Missing Middle” zoning changes.

Last month, the Arlington County Board unanimously approved the changes allowing the by-right construction of 2-6 unit dwellings, also dubbed “Expanded Housing Options,” in Arlington’s neighborhoods previously zoned only for single-family homes.

But D.C. area developer BeaconCrest Homes is not building in one of these residential zones, and the project instead has to go through the more time-consuming and expensive site plan review process. It’s somewhat ironic given that the zoning of the transit-accessible Utah Street property was intended to be more permissive than the lower-density residential zones now approved for Missing Middle.

“It’s kind of a funny thing: After all the effort put into Missing Middle — that only impacts R zones,” project representative Robby Malm tells ARLnow, musing that the county could have could have incorporated the by-right flexibility afforded by the changes in townhouse districts.

The home is located in a “Townhouse Dwelling District” (R15-30T). This district encourages townhouses as a transition between tall apartment and commercial buildings within Metro areas and neighborhoods with single-family detached housing. Anything beyond a single-family detached home, however, requires a county-approved special exception site plan.

“This aspect of the R15-30T district isn’t really a quirk; rather it’s the express permissions of the district, which was intended to allow townhouse developments in Metro Transit Corridors and on properties with ‘low’ residential and ‘low-medium’ residential General Land Use Plan designations,” Dept. of Community, Planning, Housing and Development spokeswoman Elise Cleva tells ARLnow.

Since districts such as this one already allow Missing Middle housing forms (albeit not by-right) and regulate their height, setbacks and other characteristics, they were not studied as part of the zoning code updates, says Cleva.

Malm says he met with county staff and they have been helpful during the process but he feels he did not get a clear reason why townhouses and semi-detached duplexes cannot be built by-right in townhouse districts.

“They politely shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘That’s the way the code is written,'” he said. “They couldn’t give us a rationale as to why the code was written that way.”

Typically, Cleva says, R15-30T properties were rezoned from a lower-density zoning district and then associated with a site plan to allow for the townhouses to form a transition.

“As County planners analyze the site plan application for 1129 N. Utah St., they’ll learn more about the history of that parcel,” she wrote.

Malm said his firm deliberated building a single-family detached home but decided the additional time, cost and uncertainty involved in a site plan process to build a side-by-side duplex is “what the property deserves, given where it is located and its proximity to everything Ballston has to offer.”

He says he hopes for a speedy process.

“Because of where it’s located and the feedback we’ve received, we don’t foresee a lot of pushback,” he said.

Arlington County, nonprofits nab $3M to fund homelessness prevention efforts

By Jo DeVoe
A sleeping bag and roll of toilet paper in an alcove of the elevated walkway in Rosslyn (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

Local nonprofits and the Arlington County government have received $3 million in federal funding to address homelessness.

Nearly $200,000 will go to two new programs from the organizations Doorways and PathForward, formerly A-SPAN. The rest — save for about $81,000 for the county — will support existing programs provided by Bridges to Independence, Doorways, New Hope Housing and PathForward.

“This HUD funding helps ensure survivors of intimate partner violence have access to housing and additional pathways out of shelter, so that they can find healing, harbor, and hope for a brighter future,” Doorways President and CEO Diana Ortiz told ARLnow in a statement.

To date this year, Arlington has received $4.2 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to combat homelessness.

“HUD funding is a vital part of Arlington’s efforts to prevent and end homelessness,” said Arlington County’s Department of Human Services Director Anita Friedman in a statement.

“This announcement confirms that our strategic planning, policy development, and service delivery are effective and that we are changing lives for individuals and families who are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of becoming homeless,” she continued.

The county delivers these services in a partnership with local nonprofits called the Arlington County Continuum of Care (CoC). For more than a decade, the CoC has worked to improve the county’s response to homelessness by focusing on providing permanent housing, working with 1,070 people in 2022, per the county.

Nonprofits receiving this money will use it in one of two ways. The first, called “rapid rehousing,” places people living on the street or in an emergency shelter in existing, empty affordable apartment units. The second, called “permanent supportive housing,” combines housing with services such as health care and employment help.

The funding breaks down as follows:

  • Doorways: $127,398 for a new rapid rehousing program
  • PathForward: $1.85 million for four existing programs and $68,116 for a new permanent supportive housing program
  • New Hope Housing: $586,269 for three existing programs
  • Bridges to Independence: $289,419 for an existing rapid rehousing program

“HUD grant funding supports a broad array of interventions designed to assist individuals and families experiencing homelessness, particularly those living in places not meant for habitation, located in sheltering programs, or at imminent risk of becoming homeless,” per a county press release. “Because grants are competitive, localities must demonstrate need as well as an ability to address those needs.”

Arlington has demonstrated that ability in the past, when, in 2015, it functionally ended homelessness for veterans, according to a presentation on the county’s efforts.

That does not mean Arlington literally eradicated homelessness for former service members, however.

Rather, it means that the number of actively homeless veterans is less than or equal to the average monthly rate at which individuals and families find and move into stable housing, per the presentation. This is known as “functional zero.”

Arlington aims to reach functional zero for all populations experiencing homelessness by 2026, which would mean seven or fewer single adults and three or fewer youth and families with children actively experiencing homelessness at one time.

To reach this goal, Arlington is partnering with Community Solutions, which is a nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness, and updating its strategic plan. As part of that process, the county held listening sessions earlier this year to discuss how homelessness affects specific population groups and hear solutions from the community.

In the presentation, Community Solutions representative Elise Topazian said Arlington is on the right track. Over the last 12 years, the Continuum of Care reduced overall homelessness by 66%, including a 52% reduction in sheltered and 90% reduction in unsheltered homelessness.

“Arlington is on the brink [of] ending chronic homelessness,” Topazian said.

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