Reply to Arlington is the worst

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "Arlington is the worst"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP  I am African American and  was raised in a once predominantly black neighborhood in North Arlington and most of my siblings and parents have moved from Arlington in the last ten years because it is no longer the Arlington we loved.  During the pandemic we pulled our last two children out of Arlington schools because we saw it as an opportunity to get them away from the bullying that was never ending in their predominantly white North Arlington school.  Their private school has a wide range of racial and economic diversity and the way Arlington school were I grew up.  The moms at our neighborhood school gave me a wide berth because someone described me as "an angry black woman" when I questioned a school board member about the re-districting that would turn our neighborhood walking school into a bus school.

When my older children were in elementary school, the moms were nicer but I began to see the change as more new homes were built in our neighborhood.  The birthday party invitations stopped and I heard from one mom another mother could not explain the presence of our child to her parents.

We both have businesses in Arlington and are making plans to sell them earlier than expected.[b] If Missing Middle goes through the County will become even more white and more affluent, especially in the North. [/b] We have finally reached the point that we don't care about leaving Arlington because it is no longer the place we love.

[/quote]

Missing Middle Housing (MMH) relates to housing stock between Single Family Homes (zoned R-6) and apartment/condo complexes, the 2 through 8 unit properties that you just don't see much of in Arlington. Duplexes, three-deckers and side-by-side triplexes, 4-plexes, etc. Note the vociferous opposition to the concept comes from SFH's in the 22207 area code (north of Langston Blvd) plus Lyon Village. These households in 22207 plus Lyon Village reflect a lot of land (relative to Arlington) and money, but not so many actual people. These are also the people who would by far be most likely to treat OP so poorly, if OP is real and not a troll.

At present developers max out the structure they build on a SFH lot, right up to the setbacks and as tall as possible. With R-6 restricted to SFH's, you get the new structures containing one household, and as few as one person living there. With the zoning change County staff recommends, any structure must conform to the same setbacks and height restrictions on R-6 lots. So you would have the same structure built, but now it would contain multiple households. How many? Whatever makes the most economic sense for the developer. Frequently that would still be the SFH, but it may very well be multiple units within that structure. With MMH, there's a chance that buyer/s who would shelter two or more households can outbid the person who would do a tear-down to build themselves a maximum-sized SFH. Sometimes it would be one entity creating a MMH on that same lot and in the same building size, where multiple tenants pay rent. Or it could be a small number of condos within the MMH structure. But you'd be able to have people of more modest means, either by paying rent or purchasing outright, who band together to outbid the prospective SFH owner.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics