Reply to What to do about Affordable Housing in Arlington?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The affordable housing study shows that the number of "market rate affordable" units -- the apartments that a family of four making 60% of the average median income of $107,000 can afford -- dropped from over 10,000 apartments in 2004 to just over 3,000 units in 2014. That is the [u]displacement [/u] of 7,000 moderate income families who lived in Arlington--for example, the huge Arna Valley complex that was knocked down and replaced with "The Avalon" and "The Harlowe," or the blocks and blocks of Buckingham Village apartments that are now $800,000 townhouses.

While yes, this is market forces at work and developers have the right to build on their property to its highest use within the zoning laws, its also not unreasonable that the county should try and do something to help out lower income county residents by trying to staunch the losses. If you immigrated from here in the 90's, had your kids at VHC, send them to APS schools, work in Arlington or DC or Fairfax, whatever---it sucks that your landlord can kick you out and you have to move to Manassas that is an hour from your job and pull your kids out of school and where you don't know anyone. No one is entitled to live anywhere, but it's not crazy to say that as an extremely wealthy county--that is wealthy in part because the value of real estate has increased so much--we should spend some of that wealth to help out those displaced by its acquisition. [/quote]

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

Also to the PPs talking about "poor" people and their limited choices--I moved to Arlington to work as an RN.  I previously worked as a teacher before changing careers.  I would be hard pressed to afford an apartment as either a teacher or a nurse.  When you talk about affordable housing remember that you're not just keeping out people's maids or nannies but also nurses, teachers, EMTs, police, firefighters....[/quote]

Actually it's cab drivers and construction workers...

https://arlingtonva.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2014/02/Occupations-of-Tenants-of-CAFs-Feb-2015.pdf[/quote]

That study says:

[b]6 of the 7 persons categorized in “education” were classroom teachers or
aides, although none worked with Arlington County Public Schools (see
section 5 below).[/b]

Okay, none of the teachers or aides worked for Arlington County? So where DO they work? Why don't they seek affordable housing in the county in which they are employed? If they are working for a PRIVATE SCHOOL, why are we subsiding the private school's cheapness by having to pay for their employee's housing costs?

Here's the breakdown. It's really ridiculous that we're paying housing costs for 28 taxi drivers. As said earlier, the top occupations are those that are "cash based" (in other words, easy to conceal cash payments and underreport income and thus be able to qualify for affordable housing).

Number of persons in category / percentage / category:
56 16.7% Restaurant, food services
38 11.3% Construction
31 9.2% Office and administrative
28 8.3% Taxi, other drivers
27 8.0% Retail
21 6.3% Other
20 6.0% Personal care and service
18 5.4% Building and grounds cleaning/maintenance
13 3.9% General services
12 3.6% Computer/IT
11 3.3% Transportation
11 3.3% Arts and entertainment
10 3.0% Healthcare support
10 3.0% Property management
8 2.4% Hotel
8 2.4% Health practitioners
7 2.1% Business/financial
7 1.8% Education[/quote]

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