Arlington Missing Middle Housing Q&A

[Anonymous]

Did anyone listen to this tonight? I just got home from work and missed the whole thing. Does it sound like they are approving multi-family housing county-wide? What happened?

[Anonymous]

Link? I'm not in Arlington, but that sounds interesting.

I thought missing middle is not high rise condos/apartments but other options (duplexes, quads, piggy back townhouses, etc.) that have more of a neighborhood feel but are more affordable than SFH. Or in Arlington, do they mean ADUs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Link? I'm not in Arlington, but that sounds interesting.

I thought missing middle is not high rise condos/apartments but other options (duplexes, quads, piggy back townhouses, etc.) that have more of a neighborhood feel but are more affordable than SFH. Or in Arlington, do they mean ADUs?

There was a Q&A tonight on this proposal.

https://www.arlingtonva.us/files/sharedassets/public/housing/documents/missing-middle/mmhs-phase-2-public-presentation_final_04.28.pdf

[Anonymous]

I’m for it.

[Anonymous]

So let me get this straight - by upzoning the entire county, and being able to fit 2-4x more units in a single lot, they estimate the net increase in students to be 9-13 per year? Come on. What's the math behind that? This is a joke. The authors had a certain outcome in mind and just hand-waived away any actual tradeoff discussion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So let me get this straight - by upzoning the entire county, and being able to fit 2-4x more units in a single lot, they estimate the net increase in students to be 9-13 per year? Come on. What's the math behind that? This is a joke. The authors had a certain outcome in mind and just hand-waived away any actual tradeoff discussion.

Yeah it's farcical. They predict roughly 100 units will deliver each year, so basically each student only adds 0.1 students to APS. They used the student generation figures for orange line highrises and then applied that for housing in predominately SFH neighborhoods that have much higher student generation rates

You should also note they did NOT use the student generation rate for affordable housing (0.45ish), even though that's probably the closest approximation.

And let's not even start with their assumption that only 20 lots per year would be converted. . .

[Anonymous]

I'm going to turn this political but if you care, even if you're generally hard core blue, this is why we need to vote independent or R in the county board elections. One-party town ends up with a very cushy relationship between ACDC and the developers.

What I find interesting is that those in the community who push for missing middle are often baby boomers who bought their houses for less than $100K forty years ago. I asked one neighbor who keeps pushing if she would commit to selling her own house for not more than $400K when the time comes so that middle class families could afford it, even though houses in our neighborhood are upwards of $900K. You can imagine how that went.

[Anonymous]

That’s hilarious, thank you for a chuckle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m for it.

Could you be more specific? Which parts and why? Or are you just for maximum density without restriction or regard to infrastructure? Or do you believe the County will be able to work through any infrastructure issues?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m for it.

And you don’t live in an area where they want to implement this. 2-3 households on a 5k square foot lot is not feasible. There are parking problems already without this zoning, and the schools are overcrowded, as it is. Another idiotic idea from the board. Please vote these clowns and crooks out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m for it.

And you don’t live in an area where they want to implement this. 2-3 households on a 5k square foot lot is not feasible. There are parking problems already without this zoning, and the schools are overcrowded, as it is. Another idiotic idea from the board. Please vote these clowns and crooks out.

Are you kidding? I grew up in a twin (nicer version of what they call a duplex here) on exactly that size lot. My street was a mix of SFHs, duplexes, and the occasional quadplex apartment building. The result was a thriving neighborhood with price points accessible to a variety of middle class working people. I don’t understand why Arlington is so afraid of this.

And from what I’ve seen, it’s the boomers who have gone full NIMBY. As if a 2 bedroom cottage on a 10,000 SF lot was a sustainable building choice for an inner ring suburb of the nation’s Capitol. Us working Millennials want choices we can afford, given that we make too much for all the affordable housing aimed at the poorest of the poor, and we can’t afford a $2m McMansion. In the limited places they exist in Arlington, fee simple row houses and duplexes are some of the fastest properties to move because they are affordable to more people and give you at least 1-2 walls to yourself. They also provide a good option for older folks looking to downsize from their own 5 bedroom SFHs.

Of course they aren’t going to be cheap when they’re brand new, but they are always going to be cheaper than similarly aged housing stock that’s SFH. And it’s only a matter of time before every existing postwar house is either torn down or remodeled/expanded beyond the affordability of a two middle income earner home. We need to start planning for that by putting more homes in the pipeline now.

[Anonymous]

PP, I see your point but in Arlington the problem is that the CB has zero plans for funding all the required infrastructure including schools. Millennials are going to have kids. Our schools are overcrowded, even with Covid departures, and they have zero inclination or opportunity to build more schools. Transportation isn't complete enough to provide bus service into far reaches of the county.

It's a nice idea but cramming more people into a space that doesn't have the necessary infrastructure only hurts both current and new residents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP, I see your point but in Arlington the problem is that the CB has zero plans for funding all the required infrastructure including schools. Millennials are going to have kids. Our schools are overcrowded, even with Covid departures, and they have zero inclination or opportunity to build more schools. Transportation isn't complete enough to provide bus service into far reaches of the county.

It's a nice idea but cramming more people into a space that doesn't have the necessary infrastructure only hurts both current and new residents.

Arguably, we don’t have the infrastructure to support 6,000 SF McMansions with 5 toilets covering nearly every inch of an 8,000 SF lot, but all we seem to require for those are planter boxes of questionable efficiency and paver stones for their 8-car driveways. Not every smaller home is going to be filled with kids. And at any rate, you use the taxes from these properties to build out the additional marginal infrastructure needed.

I much prefer market solutions to building more homes accessible to a variety of people all over the county, then pretending we are doing our part by giving away a lifetime of free or cheap housing along the Pike to a limited number of poor people who more often than not have zero connection to Arlington and who almost certainly have kids.

I’m a N/A homeowner, by the way.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know of this is now a done deal? What are the next steps? Can someone explain that please before we debate the merits of the policy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know of this is now a done deal? What are the next steps? Can someone explain that please before we debate the merits of the policy?

The next steps are at the last page of the link. There will be an opportunity for feedback and the board will make some type of change to the zoning ordinance. Something big is happening and it will likely be very similar to this proposal.