(Updated at 4:25 p.m.) The draft plan to allow more small-scale multifamily housing in Arlington has picked up another influential enforcement.
The county’s Missing Middle Housing Study draft framework recommends allowing everything from townhouses to an eight-unit apartment or condo buildings on land currently zoned exclusively for single-family detached homes. The lot size would determine the maximum number of units and the structure would be no bigger than what’s currently allowed by-right as a single-family home.
Following an endorsement by the Arlington branch of the NAACP two weeks ago, the framework — which is still under discussion and would require County Board action later this year to go into effect — has now picked up the support of the Potomac River Group chapter of the environmental organization.
In a letter to the County Board, the group says building more housing closer to jobs helps prevent sprawl and pollution from longer commutes.
The Sierra Club supports the Missing Middle Housing Study Phase 2 Draft Framework and urges its adoption by the County Board. This letter outlines the rationale for our support.
Adding missing middle housing to existing low-density development is an antidote to suburban sprawl. It results in far more compact and energy efficient housing located closer to jobs, transit, goods and services. It results in sharply reduced greenhouse gas emissions from both buildings and transportation when compared to housing developed in the outer suburbs, or to the enormous single-family homes typically erected in place of smaller homes in Arlington.
The environmental destruction caused by suburban sprawl also is well-documented. Entire ecosystems are bulldozed to create homes far from jobs. The environmental destruction caused by adding missing middle housing, in contrast, is minimal, as each multi-unit building will be no larger than the size already allowed for a single-family home.
Not every Sierra Club member is on board, however. Long-time civic activist Suzanne Smith Sundburg wrote an email to the group in response to the “missing middle” endorsement calling its leaders “shameless, green-washing political hacks.”
“That is the kindest description I can offer,” she wrote. “[The] group has now endorsed an upzoning plan in Arlington County that will reduce the tree canopy replacement requirement by half.”
“The Sierra Club’s endorsement of paving over the last bit of Arlington that isn’t already paved — with an 8-fold increase in housing density and the loss of half of our remaining tree canopy — has left many Arlingtonians speechless,” Sundburg added.
Her remarks were echoed by other “local environmentalists” she quoted and identified only by first name, as well as by several local residents on the Nextdoor social network, where debates over missing middle housing have been raging since ARLnow first reported on the framework.
The Sierra Club, however, pushed back on the critics and refuted their assertions of significant tree canopy loss as “unsubstantiated.”