{"id":134,"date":"2019-02-01T20:28:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T20:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/?p=134"},"modified":"2019-02-01T20:58:10","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T20:58:10","slug":"amazons-arrival-should-force-real-action-on-affordable-housing-advocates-say-wamu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/134\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon’s Arrival Should Force Real Action On Affordable Housing, Advocates Say | WAMU"},"content":{"rendered":"

wamu.org\/story\/19\/01\/30\/amazons-arrival-should-force-real-action-on-affordable-housing-advocates-say\/#.XFSr16ROnYU<\/a>
\nAmazon\u2019s Arrival Should Force Real Action On Affordable Housing, Advocates Say Housing advocates in Northern Virginia are sounding an alarm: With Amazon on its way to Arlington, local leaders need to seriously commit to creating and preserving more affordable homes in the area.
\n\u201cThe announcement by Amazon that Crystal City was selected for HQ2 will provide significant benefits for the region,\u201d says a recent report from the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance. \u201cHowever, this announcement should create a regional sense of urgency and commitment to address our housing supply and affordability gap.\u201d
\nBecome a sponsor ? Speculation over the company\u2019s arrival has already begun to raise home values in the Crystal City area, real estate data show.
\nThe affordability gap exists throughout the Washington area \u2014 not just in Northern Virginia \u2014 but Arlington\u2019s housing market is already the priciest in the region, according to multiple analyses. To solve the problem, advocates say increasing public subsidies is important, but not the only solution.
\nHere are a few more ways the housing alliance says local officials could spur development of more affordable and \u201cmissing middle\u201d homes in Northern Virginia.
\nLoosen Up Zoning Rules
\nIn Northern Virginia and across the country, zoning and land use policies have historically been shaped by \u201cthe intertwining of explicit racial segregation policies with economically exclusionary policies,\u201d the report says.
\nExplicitly racist policies like restrictive covenants, which for decades barred African Americans and other minorities from buying homes, combined with practices like racial steering and redlining to perpetuate segregation. The 1968 Fair Housing Act cracked down on legal segregation, but affordable housing advocates say racial and economic segregation is alive and well in places where certain types of housing are restricted.
\nTake Arlington and Fairfax counties, where most residential land is zoned for single-family, detached homes \u2014 the most expensive form of housing to build and occupy.
\nMaking it easier to build less costly forms of housing, such as apartments or townhomes, chisels away at a roadblock to affordable housing. \u201cAt a minimum, allowing more diverse housing types in detached single family neighborhoods reduces the barrier to entry into those neighborhoods,\u201d the report says.
\n Most developable residential land in Fairfax and Arlington counties is set aside for single-family homes, limiting development of more affordable housing types, such as apartments.Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance It also recommends easing restrictions on alternative forms of housing, including \u201caccessory dwelling units\u201d such as tiny homes and in-law-suites. (Responding to a shortage of affordable housing, lawmakers in nearby Montgomery County, Maryland, have proposed relaxing regulations on accessory dwelling units to make them easier to build.)
\nThe report acknowledges, though, that building more housing won\u2019t solve the affordability problem on its own, especially for the most vulnerable low-income residents. In fact, it says, building more can actually raise home prices on the neighborhood level, which is why jurisdictions also have to preserve existing affordable homes and raise more money for housing subsidies. The report gives kudos to Alexandria, Virginia, which recently increased its meals tax to help pay for affordable housing.
\nBuild On Community-serving Land
\nThere\u2019s not much land left to develop in Northern Virginia, and competition over it is fierce. That\u2019s why the report recommends that jurisdictions find ways to put housing on community-serving land controlled by entities like hospitals, faith-based institutions, universities and charities.
\nThe report cites several examples of this practice, including a recent development that put 70 affordable rental units on the same site as Clarendon Baptist Church. It also mentions The Residences at the Government Center, where 270 units of affordable housing share space with the Fairfax County Government Center.
\nIncentivize Growth
\nWhen communities resist growth through exclusionary policies like restrictive zoning, the report says, they effectively raise housing prices and deepen segregation. That\u2019s why it recommends that governments reward communities that accommodate \u201cequitable supply growth.\u201d
\nMassachusetts has done this well, the report says. If a jurisdiction isn\u2019t hitting its own affordability goals, a state program lets it override local zoning to build more affordable homes. The state also offers increased school funding for municipalities that embrace \u201csmart growth\u201d development plans.
\nBut advocates know well how politically fraught \u201cupzoning,\u201d or allowing more density, can be \u2014 which is why they also call on leaders to change the narrative around development.
\nChange The Way People View Growth
\n\u201cAwareness of the socioeconomic bias that shaped low-density and exclusionary zoning is not widespread,\u201d says the report, and residents routinely fight new development for a perfectly legitimate reason: They think it will worsen traffic, crowd schools and generally make their lives harder.
\nBecause there\u2019s a link between building more housing and reducing housing prices overall \u2014 and many new developments are required to provide some affordable housing \u2014 it\u2019s important for residents to understand how they can benefit from growth, the report says.
\nGovernments can do that by being fully transparent about the development process and offering up lots of data to the public, so residents and leaders are working from a common set of facts.
\n\u201cImportant data points for consideration can include property tax revenue generation, school capacity, new student generation, infrastructure capacity [and] the costs of building and maintaining new infrastructure,\u201d the report says.
\nThat transparency should be the norm at all times, not only when new development projects are pitched, the report says. Residents should always have access to information about how existing housing relates to infrastructure capacity, public finances and schools.
\n\u201cThis more holistic approach may mitigate the tendency to view existing development as an asset and new development as a potential liability,\u201d the report says.
\nAlways Keep Transit Front Of Mind
\nBut for any of this to work, jurisdictions must also show they can handle growth, the document says. When roads are already clogged, Metro is struggling and schools are crowded, residents have good reason to believe that ramping up housing construction will only worsen those problems.
\nThat calls for behind-the-scenes changes within governments, such as better cross-departmental coordination to make sure infrastructure capacity is in line with development plans. But it also demands a \u201cforward-thinking\u201d approach to planning.
\nOne of those methods is called \u201ctransportation demand management,\u201d which tasks leaders with understanding why people get around the way they do. If residents are choosing car travel because their other transit options are too inconvenient or expensive, growth will continue to be unmanageable, and residents will continue to fight development they believe could worsen traffic or take away their parking.
\nGetting this part right, the report suggests, is crucial to building neighborhoods that are sustainable, centrally located and above all, accessible to a broad range of people \u2014 not just highly paid tech workers who move to the D.C. region to work for Amazon.<\/p>\n

Mary Bolton 202-390-1208<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

wamu.org\/story\/19\/01\/30\/amazons-arrival-should-force-real-action-on-affordable-housing-advocates-say\/#.XFSr16ROnYU Amazon\u2019s Arrival Should Force Real Action On Affordable Housing, Advocates Say Housing advocates in Northern Virginia are sounding an alarm: With Amazon on its way to Arlington, local leaders need to seriously commit to creating and preserving more affordable homes in the area. \u201cThe announcement by Amazon that Crystal City was selected for HQ2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housingarchive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}