Arlington Affordable Housing: County Board’s Pike Trolley will Eliminate Most Remaining Market-Rate Apartments, Says Arlington Greens leader, Jan. 30, 2011

The Arlington County Government’s redevelopment on Columbia Pike should be called by one of its real names– “the minority removal plan,” says Arlington Greens chairman John Reeder. Just the the cost of the trolley alone will exceed $240 million, much of which will likely come from county revenues, Reeder said.

County board Democratic chairman Mary Hynes tells us that she wants to keep current moderate income renters along the Pike, but the economic impact of the trolley makes that impossible, says the chairman of the Arlington Green Party. The county’s own economic consultant, Partners for Economic Solutions (PES), concluded that the cost to the county of subsidizing preservation of 5,000 of the existing affordable apartments along the Pike would be roughly $300 million ($60,000 per unit).

Over the past decade, the county government was unable to meet its annual countywide goal of adding 400 committed affordable apartments, in 2010 adding only 141 units and spending $5 million from its Affordable Housing Investment Fund for this purpose. It is highly unlikely that the county government will be able to come up with at least $300 million to keep 5,000 affordable apartments along the Pike, particularly given the severe school overcrowding, and need for more school classrooms.

“The County Board’s urban renewal for the Pike should be described as to what it really is: minority and low income people removal and a gift of public money to developers.” John Reeder, Chairman, Arlington Greens, www.greensofarlington.org

If you are concerned about affordable housing, fiscal responsibility for schools and and preserving your historic communities, Reeder says that the Arlington Greens county board candidate Audrey Clement will help by working to block the trolley and the inevitable loss of nearly half of the remaining market-rate rental housing in Arlington County. To help go to AudreyClement.org.

In its November 5 editorial endorsement of Arlington County Board incumbents Walter Tejada and Mary Hynes, the Washington Post depicted Arlington as a latter day Camelot where yuppies frolic, and the streets are paved with gold:

“Arlington County has been substantially remade in the last couple of decades mostly for the better. An influx of shops, restaurants and apartment buildings, mainly near Metro stations, has attracted a new generation of ambitious young professionals and lent the county a cosmopolitan gloss,” etc. etc. (more…)

Sun Gazette, Letter to the Editor:
If Board Isn’t Owned By Developers, It Is Rented by Them Tuesday, October 18, 2011 9:30 am

Editor: Your Oct. 13 endorsement of Democrats Mary Hynes and Walter Tejada for re-election to the County Board started out as a well-reasoned indictment of the incumbent Democrats for their failure to address substantive issues (“too stuck in the weeds on issues where the big-picture view is sorely needed”), and for their sponsorship of a failed Columbia Pike trolley idea.

Then, you rapidly went off into outer space, delivering nonsense instead of your usually excellent analysis.

You criticized Green Party candidate Audrey Clement for her notion of “the popular but laughable refrain that developers are the real power behind the scene in Arlington.”

Oh really? I would like the Sun Gazette to cite just one major development project that Democrats Hynes and Tejada have halted or opposed in their years on County Board. In the past two years, Hynes and Tejada supported a 50-percent increase in density (i.e. development) in Crystal City and increased density around the East Falls Church Metro station.

May I ask where the children of the thousands of new Crystal City residents will go to public school, with nearby Oakridge Elementary School using 116 percent of its capacity this school year?

In August, another Democratic politician, state Senate candidate Jaime Areizaga-Soto, in his primary race against current Democratic County Board member Barbara Favola, accurately described the dollars that she received from her developer friends.

If the current County Board is not “owned” by the developers and related business interests, then perhaps they are “rented”: involved in a cozy, incestuous relationship that puts the interests of the broad Arlington community last, and the profits of the developers first.

Arlington Greens have consistently said that the County Board’s regulation of developers does not take a holistic approach, counting all the social, environmental, transportation, housing and secondary financial costs of development on the Arlington community.

Our pubic schools are overcrowded; our streets are congested during rush-hour; the Metrorail system is running dangerously beyond its own rush-hour capacity; and many moderate-income residents are displaced owing to higher rents and taxes.

Under these circumstances, do we want a County Board that routinely rubber-stamps site plans, or one that looks skeptically and rigorously at any new development?

The Occupy Wall Street protests in recent months throughout the U.S. highlighted that the lower-income 99-percent of Americans are dissatisfied with an incumbent government that protects the business interests and wealthy, and shifts those costs onto the middle class.

We need an Occupy Arlington Courthouse movement to turn our rascals out of local office here in Arlington as well. Vote Green this year.

John Reeder, Arlington
Reeder is chairman of the Arlington Greens.

http://www.sungazette.net/arlington/commentary/if-board-isn-t-owned-by-developers-it-is-rented/article_d8bc5800-f977-11e0-9e06-001cc4c002e0.html

It seems Arlington County is obsessed with development. Having approved plans to increase the density of Crystal City by 50 percent, construct a 600,000 sq. foot high rise on the EFC Park and Ride lot and redevelop Columbia Pike at triple density, County Board will soon approve plans to construct a 532 unit apartment complex on Wilson Blvd. between Kansas and Lincoln Streets in Ballston (Virginia Square Towers) and a new six story headquarters for Lockheed Martin in North Crystal City (Monument View). Also on the drawing boards are plans to construct a 22 story office tower (Penn Square) behind Costco’s in Pentagon City. County Board touts these projects as proof of its commitment to “Smart Growth,” i.e. dense development along transit corridors. (more…)