Reply to What to do about Affordable Housing in Arlington?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So I encountered two members of the Arlington County Council this morning in my upper end North Arlington neighborhood.  One was campaigning for the other.  I wasn't aware about the affordable housing issue until I read this thread yesterday.  I asked them what they thought about it.  I have never seen two people try to get away from me so quickly. She thrust her campaign material at me and he said "we have a lot of ground to cover today." and off they went.  Doesn't sound like it is something council wants to discuss[/quote]

Haha, of course not.  The way affordable housing works in Arlington is like this: there is a small group that is HIGHLY supportive of it.  Think professional service providers, AH developers, and community activists like VOICE[b] (the group that advocated converting public parks into AH complexes)[/b].  They are highly informed on the AH issue, and personally benefit from it.

There is a much larger group that is reflexively sympathetic but have less information on AH and how much the County spends on it.  This is the bulk of the Arlington Democratic base, who are the bulk of Arlington voters.

All the AH crowd has to do is not do anything to piss off these lower information voters.  That means minimal information, general platitudes in press releases, and repeated claims that AH is about keeping Arlington teachers/firefighters/cops living in Arlington.  It's not true, but it sounds good and is enough to keep AH funded.

There MIGHT be enough for a turn around today. [b] People still remember VOICE's ridiculous proposal to build affordable housing on County parks, [/b]and the inevitable fight over the Virginia Hospital Center Complex between building schools vs AH there will get this in front of the voters in a real way.  [/quote]

By park, you mean the parking lot of a County Rec Center, correct? The level of dishonesty of AH opponents is infuriating. 
[/quote]

She means the "Public Land for Public Good" initiative, which recommended putting AH into community centers. To line the pockets of developers, of course.

AH proponents are the ones who are dishonest. They are all getting kickbacks in some way -- money from development, a source of livelihood and grants, feel-good political support.

I grew up poor and rural, and I don't want people living here that can't afford to live here. I had to hustle for a decade to earn enough to live in Arlington. It's a small county. They can drive in from somewhere else. Heck, most of the AH residents I know (and yes, I know plenty of them, they are mostly very nice, but that doesn't mean I want to subsidize their lives) don't even seem to work here.[/quote]

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