Development
To remain affordable, Alexandria must get creative
Rents in Alexandria are skyrocketing. Virginia's state laws don't make it easy to create affordable housing for people earning less than the area median income, so the city has to think outside the box.
Photo by joanna8555 on Flickr.
True sustainability means that we provide housing options that mirror our workforce. This reduces people's commute times, and cuts down on regional congestion. Forcing people to live farther out consumes farmland, increases food costs, and harms air quality. Jurisdictions closer to DC have an obligation to help address the rental housing shortage.
For Alexandria, this work also strives toward the mixed-income and mixed-culture vision that we have long held on to. But rising rents are making this vision harder and harder to achieve.
Unlike other states, Virginia does not allow its cities to mandate that developers replace every unit of affordable housing lost to redevelopment, or to require a fixed percentage of affordable units. But affordable housing is a priority for Alexandria, so the City Council and Planning Commission are working together with staff, developers, and residents to find innovative ways to provide it.
Over the course of the next year, the City Council should adopt a new Affordable Housing Master plan. We just completed a plan for senior services that specifically called for new, affordable retirement living options. Soon our public housing authority should complete its own master plan. And the city should finish work on the Beauregard small area plan. All of these will have a significant impact on the future of affordability in Alexandria.
The Beauregard planning study demonstrates the limits of our power. Without a new plan, current rentals, which are barely affordable to people earning under $50,000, would become luxury rentals or townhouses. Thousands of currently affordable units would vanish. The city may be able to gain a small number of units out of these conversions, but it would be limited. We can do better.
The proposed Beauregard plan saves about 700 units of affordable housing. The Council has asked that this number be raised and that we find a way to provide housing to a broader range of incomes, especially those earning under $40,000 per year.
To maximize the number of units saved, the city will need to create a more flexible approach to housing. We need to increase the contributions from developers and use those funds to preserve existing units whenever we can because it is often much less expensive to preserve an existing housing unit than to build a new one. This helps us spread the value further.
We need to ensure that the structure of developer contributions makes it easy to combine with private and non-profit money to build new mixed-income projects over the 30 years it will take for the Beauregard plan to get fully built. Over that time, over $90 million in payments could go towards affordable housing. The scale those funds creates an opportunity to attract other investment.
We need better incentives for developers to create and preserve affordable housing and mixed-use development. The city should look at every new development as a chance to add affordable housing.
Alexandria should update its home ownership and rental assistance programs, to bring them up to date with national best practices. The city should revisit its zoning to allow "granny flats," so that families can rent out affordable spaces in their home and give seniors and others living options. The city should also encourage housing on top of retail strips.
The master plan won't solve all of these issues. There isn't a silver bullet, and no one jurisdiction can solve this problem on its own. Alexandria also needs help from regional partners to build more rental housing. The federal government should also step up. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been too silent on our national rental housing problems for too long.
Alexandria's problems are not unique. Rental rates are consuming more of people's monthly income than can be sustained all over the country. But hopefully, Alexandria's work in the coming months can provide a model for our region and state to follow.
 | Rob Krupicka is an Alexandria City Councilman and a member of the Virginia Board of Education. He lives in Del Ray.  |
Comments
@ggwash
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As prices rise, producers are willing to sell more. As prices fall, producers are willing to sell less. For consumers it is the other way around.
Sometimes, due to any number of different factors, commodity prices (in this case real estate) rise to levels where consumers will just say, "no mas". And at that point, prices will fall, simply because the economics just don't support consumers ability to pay those prices. All external factors can be put aside, it's simple supply and demand.
If the market demand for low-cost, new-urbanist style housing exists in Alexandria, realtors will build it. As it stands, they seem to be building what Americans want and are willing to pay for, large tract homes and luxury condos.
by Simon on Mar 21, 2012 1:18 pm • link • report
Instead of working to lower the value of rents (which, when viewed from the other side of the transaction, are simply someone else's income), wouldn't it make more sense to raise the value of individuals ... so that they don't find themselves in a position of finding their housing being 'unaffordable'?
I'm just very suspicious of any 'do gooder' plan where the goal is to lower the value of something. Intuitively, raising the value of our assets and our people is better than working to lower either of them. If there's a mismatch, then let's work to fix it ... but NOT by lowering the value of anything or anyone.
by Lance on Mar 21, 2012 1:28 pm • link • report
Why? I don't see Georgetown mandating affordable housing at that price point. When has living in the city ever been cheap? While you're at it, eminent domain the Waterfront and drive the nimbys into the Potomac. Seriously, if you don't want to live in a city, WTF are you doing living in a city? It's "Old Town" in name only, people.
by monkeyrotica on Mar 21, 2012 1:29 pm • link • report
You want affordable housing as a societal goal, everyoen needs to kick in.
by Crickey7 on Mar 21, 2012 1:30 pm • link • report
With the advent of China (or for that matter any BRIC nation), the American worker (in whatever profession) is less valuable on average than he was before. That's because you can get a harder worker (fear is a good motivator) at a lower cost. At every professional level you have more people than you necessarily need. However at the lowest level of employment, when you have an oversupply of undereducated population, you have too many people competing for brainless work: cashiers, fast food chain employees, etc. This is a built-in, inherent part of globalization and the raising of 3rd world economic standards.
Spending money on housing people that are oversupplying a fixed number of local jobs hurts the economy. Spending money on training people for jobs that are actually needed, is a more enlightened goal.
The additional benefit is that it gives the individual a sense of personal control and purpose.
by ahk on Mar 21, 2012 1:34 pm • link • report
What would be the problem with a mono-income (high-end, naturally), mono-culture vision?" It seems to work quite well. And you don't get all the issues from poverty and crime, and from power jockeying/in-fighting between this ethnic group and that one. You can't legislate that people will mix. It has to happen on its own if it happens at all.
by a_BradP on Mar 21, 2012 1:44 pm • link • report
by Corey on Mar 21, 2012 1:48 pm • link • report
georgetown is not an independent jurisdiction. The district of columbia, of whigh Georgetown is a part, does mandate affordable housing via inclusive zoning.
Look, Alexandria can't by itself eliminate poverty. Many citizens of alexandria want a community that reflects the national distribution or at least closer to in than the market would generate in the absence of pro affordable housing interventions. I dont see why people can't respect that desire.
The best comment is Crikeys. Given that Alex wants that, the real question is how. To some degree it can be accomplished by the dereg steps people here like - ADUs, grannie flats, increased density and relaxed parking regs. But if Alex wants more than that delivers, someone must pay for it. IZ essentially makes the purchasers of new market rate units pay for it - as it happens thats not allowed in Va anyway. Density bonuses for affordable units are either a win win, or at the expense of immediate neighbors, depending on your view of density impacts. even if win win though, the amount that can be accomplished with those is limited. The fairest and most direct way is subsidies from city funds - if ALL of alexandrians benefit from diversity, and not just the inhabitants of new units, or their neighbors, why shouldnt ALL alexandrians help pay for it? In that sense diversity is just another amenity of life in Alex, like the library, or the town crier.
by AWalkerInTheCity on Mar 21, 2012 1:48 pm • link • report
We should be building more dense housing period in the transit-rich areas that can support it and including affordable housing in that. Prices are high in these dense areas because lots of people want to live in those homes. Building enough to satisfy that demand will keep prices at or below the level of inflation.
Thinking that you can wave a magic wand and somehow have janitors, sandwich makers, etc. making more money is lala land. That's a national problem, not one that can be solved locally.
by MLD on Mar 21, 2012 2:18 pm • link • report
Once you go above three or four stories and leave the realm of stick building, construction costs skyrocket. The Tysons landowners are struggling in their attempt to find ways to build workforce and affordable housing within TOD areas. Taller building are most often more expensive buildings. Density brings benefits, but also problems and additional costs.
by tmtfairfax on Mar 21, 2012 2:53 pm • link • report
The supply of housing is being restricted by policy. You don't need MORE goofy regulations to add affordable housing-- you actually need FEWER regulations.
by Adam on Mar 21, 2012 3:10 pm • link • report
Hi, I'm a degree-holding worker at a non-profit in Old Town Alex with 12 years of experience. I have some administrative duties as well as running one of the major programs of the association. I am well-read, well-educated, and highly organized. I'm working for this association because they hunted me down, not the other way around.
I make $40,000 annually. Not because I'm not valuable, but because that is what the association can afford to pay. This may be low for the area, but it's in line for what someone in my field and my experience would make nationally. I don't think lack of skills is the problem - I think it's really expensive to live in the metro area. A lot of companies can afford to give their workers higher wages to make up for it, but many can't. One of the major things making living here expensive is housing. If the Metro area can bring housing costs under control, then area companies won't have to pay their workers disproportionately high wages and will be able to innovate and invest in other areas.
by Lisse on Mar 21, 2012 3:18 pm • link • report
by Lance on Mar 21, 2012 4:17 pm • link • report
AFAICT Alexandrians value the socio economic diversity of the city as much as you value quiet streets and free parking.
by AWalkerInTheCity on Mar 21, 2012 4:22 pm • link • report
Private landlords can't offer street parking permits. there are a few ways to go underground on this but it prevents a lot of private rentals. I don't know the RPP rules in Alexandria, however.
by charlie on Mar 21, 2012 5:02 pm • link • report
But if Alexandria really wants that, they can do like DC and pay higher taxes to fund these subsidies.
by Lance on Mar 21, 2012 6:15 pm • link • report
you havent actually been reading my posts, have you?
by AWalkerInTheCity on Mar 21, 2012 7:07 pm • link • report
Let's say for sake of argument this is a fact.
> so the City Council and Planning Commission are working together with staff, developers, and residents to find innovative ways to provide it.
It isn't working. You can't legislate your way out of free market economics. It isn't working for health care, it isn't working for education, and it certainly isn't working for real estate. The price is what the market will bear. If you subsidize, the market will bear more. If you want prices to go down you have to increase supply. If the private market won't produce the supply you want, buy the properties and do what you want with them. Are we willing to do that?
Getting back to my initial comment, are we sure that affordable housing is a priority for Alexandria?
by movement on Mar 21, 2012 7:37 pm • link • report
Is that really the best and fairest use of $90m when teacher salaries have stagnated and govt pension systems remain underfunded?
by Falls Church on Mar 21, 2012 11:03 pm • link • report
by EH on Mar 22, 2012 1:38 pm • link • report
Don't you remember that referendum they held?
by Vicente Fox on Mar 22, 2012 2:14 pm • link • report
if you look at the discussion on the City of ALexandria site for the Beauregard Small Area Plan you will see that many individuals and community asscns cited affordable housing as a concern. If you think running for office in Alex on the platform "we should stop worrying about affordable housing" is a way to win election, you are free to try that (certainly the Fairfax GOP has come close to that, though even they didnt go quite that far).
by AWalkerInTheCity on Mar 22, 2012 2:29 pm • link • report
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