The Alliance for Housing Solutions (AHS), Inc. is a trade association composed of housing contractors, banks, and commercial builders, and Democratic Party cronies to the County Board. AHS recently issued a broadside attack against the Arlington Housing Authority referendum. This is not a surprise since this group relies on Arlington County housing progam dollars to support the lavish executives salaries and profits, and an authority would more carefully spend public dollars on housing assistance and would cut their profits, high salaraies, crony status and waste. http://www.allianceforhousingsolutions.org/save-dates-2/

We answer their allegations and half truths, and often totally bogus statements below:

AHS says, A Housing Authority would bring no new resources….
As we have elaborated before, an Arlington housing authority would enjoy Virginia and U.S. housing benefits not available to Arlington today, among them guaranteed access to Federal tax credits, access to HUD credit guarantees on housing bonds issued, and access to some of the over $2 billion given out to U.S. public housing authorities by HUD.

AHS says, Arlington County has created more affordable housing units per 1,000 people than any other county in Northing Virginia….Arlington County has built or preserved about 300 affordable apartments each year over the past decade, mostly for higher income people making above $60,000 annually, but meanwhile private market and developers destroyed about 1,000 affordable apartments annually, meaning a net loss of over 700 affordable apartments each year since 2000. If Arlington does nothing different, all private market affordable apartments are gone in a few years. Yes, Arlington County is spending money, but ineffectively and not enough to even stop the loss.

AHS says HUD has provided no new funds or funding for new housing authorities since 1994.
This is totally wrong. According to an article in the Arlington Mercury Newspaper in March 2013, HUD indicated that a housing authority would be eligible for some of the funds from the HUD Capital Fund that last year gave out $2.41 billion public housing authorities. http://arlingtonmercury.org/countywide/elections-2013/hud-funds-for-housing-are-available%2C-but-worth-it%3F/

There is no evidence that a housing authority can do better in private financing than the county’s existing private affordable housing developers.
This is bogus on many accounts. There are a half dozen or more private housing developers in Arlington, all with their own financial staff and costs attempting to issue bonds and get financing. A single county agency can do this for much less in total costs. Moreover, according to the Fairfax County Housing Authority, it is able to issue housing bonds at a lower cost in both underwriting costs and bond rates than private bond issuers. Fairfax Housing Authority receives a credit repayment guarantee from HUD that lowers the interest rate it pays on its bonds issued to finance housing projects in Fairfax County. Most private housing providers operating now in Arlington also operate in Fairfax County and operate under the Fairfax Housing Authority funding and direction.

AHS says A housing authority would need a staff.The Fairfax Housing Authority has NO staff of its own, relying on existing Fairfax Planning, Housing and Human Services staff. The Housing authority board members are volunteer citizens who serve without salary. Arlington County already employees abundant and competent housing staff to handle the housing functions, no need to hire more immediately, and in fact our current staff would work better together working as a team. As importantly, Arlington County already pays for a bloated and overpaid private employees working at cross purposes in many of these private housing developers; we could cut these wasteful expenditures and reduce staff costs of both public and private contractors, saving public funds.
AHS says A housing authority would lessen competition (for housing development funds).
Actually the opposite has occurred in Fairfax County: the Fairfax County Housing Authority builds new affordable apartments at about half the cost of Arlington units (even in cases where the land is free). Fairfax Housing Authority forces the housing developers to compete strongly to keep the costs of affordable units low. Arlington housing developers today are crony contractors who cannot deliver quality at a low price, frequently overcharge rents or provide lousy conditions to their tenants. An authority will cut government costs per unit. This waste includes the lavish salaries these housing contractors receive: the largest housing developer in Arlington pays its chief executive over $250,000, a salary higher than the county manager or the school superintendent!

AHS says Arlington commits more local resources per capita to affordable housing programs than either Fairfax or Alexandria and produced more committed affordable units per person than either jurisdiction.Yes, Arlington County spends more funds than Fairfax or Alexandria, but that is because Arlington has virtually no private market rate affordable housing left. According to the Virginia Tech Center for Housing Research, Arlington has the second most expensive rental housing in the Metro DC area and about one-seventh of Arlington households (14,000) need affordable rental housing because their high rents cause them to be “housing cost burdened.” Unfortunately, the funds that Arlington has spent have generated few apartments, and those mostly very expensive. In June, over 3,000 people applied for one of the 120 new Arlington Mills apartments, each of which cost about $250,000. Mostly only people earning $65,000 a year can qualify to rent one of these subsidized, overpriced units.
AHS says the creation of a housing authority would actually slow down or suspend these efforts (to build or retain affordable housing in Arlington) at the worst possible time…Nearly all of the housing developers operating in Arlington have operated for years in Fairfax County and the City of Falls Church under the auspices of the Fairfax Housing Authority. That Authority has won awards and plaudits from HUD for its efficient and speedy process to issue bonds and get funds for its projects. That Authority automatically obtains the critical Federal Tax credits for its new projects, whereas Arlington has to compete and wait and hope that its projects MIGHT get federal tax credits that typically provide one-third or more of the funds for a housing project.

September 21, 2013: Speech to the Arlington County Board meeting

Good Morning Board Members,
I’m Stephen Davis, and I’ve been living in Arlington for over 33 years. I’m here today to talk about Arlington’s affordable housing problem.

Recently Arlington County touted the opening of the new Arlington Mill Community Center and the completion of 122 units of “affordable” housing at Arlington Mill Residences located nearby. But the price tag on Arlington Mill shows why the County’s approach to affordable housing isn’t working.

The apartments cost $31 million to build, which comes to about $250,000 per unit. The Washington Post reports that there’s already a waiting list of 3,600 people for those units, and families earning less than $64,000 per year need not apply, as most units aren’t affordable to people earning less.

According to the financial director of the Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority the cost of constructing an affordable unit in Fairfax is about $100,000. So why did Arlington pay 2.5 times that amount even though the county owns the land on which the Arlington Mill apartments were constructed?

Arlington housing non-profit Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing got the no-bid contract to construct the units, and therein lies the problem. When non-profits don’t have to compete for business and County Board itself measures compassion in dollars spent rather than dollars spent wisely, there’s no incentive to economize, and both the taxpayers footing the bill and the tenants paying the rents are short changed.

I f Arlington had a non-partisan housing authority like Fairfax County, it could shop around for a better price. Thus more people could be served at lower cost, and taxpayers and tenants would win.

Instead of propping up a flawed system the County Board should focus on preserving the existing diminished stock of affordable housing through a non-partisan, citizen-led housing authority whose top priority would be to ensure that all income groups have access to Arlington’s housing.

The Committee of One Hundred, a civic group in Arlington, will present a panel discussion on the pros and cons of the proposed Arlington housing authority on Wednesday, October 9, 2013.
Speakers: Proponent speaker - Aseem Nigam, finance director of Fairfax Housing Authority; Con- speaker Mary Margaret Whipple; and neutral speaker Christian Dorsey.
Meet-and-greet social hour 7:00 p.m.
Dinner 7:25 p.m.
Program: 8:00 p.m.
Where
Marymount University, 2807 North Glebe Road, Arlington. The meeting will be held in the dining room of Gerard Phelan Hall.
Reservations
“Program-only” seating will be available to accommodate members and guests who arrive after dinner. No reservation is necessary to attend only the program.

Reservations for dinner may by made by email or telephone. To make a reservation for this month’s meeting, email your name, the name(s) of your guest(s), and the total number of reservations to [email protected] or call 703-921-1124.
The price of dinner is $26 for members and $28 for nonmembers or guests. Pay at the door with cash or check.
For more info, http://arlingtoncommitteeof100.org/meetings/oct2013.html

Don Rouse, our dear friend and comrade in all things Green and good passed away on September 10. Don has been an active Green in the Arlington local as well as the Nova Greens Local and the Green Party of Virginia for many years. He was also a reanaissance man in many ways, a superb jazz clarinet player; a tv producer and tv host for the Green Hour program on the Arlington Independent Media (AIM); and excellent writer, and a lover of nature and good walks.

Goodbye our dear friend.

Below is his obiturary published in the Washington Post:
John Donald Rouse, 76, of Arlington VA died Sept. 10, 2013 at his residence in Arlington VA. He is survived by his wife of 43 years, Sandra Hertlein Rouse, sons Philip and John (Amy Morilla) of Brooklyn NY and grandchildren John Carlito and Colette Morilla Rouse. He is also survived by sisters-in-law Sarah Hertlein, Portland OR and Linda (Michael) Gentry, Lima OH. There will be a celebration of life held for family and friends on Saturday, Sept. 14 at 11 AM at Murphy Funeral Home, 4150 Wilson Blvd., Arlington VA. Memorials may be made to Capital Caring Hospice, 2900 Telestar Court, Falls Church VA 22042.

The Washington Post article below aptly illustrates the acute shortage of rental apartments that persons making under $60,000 can afford in Arlington.
According to the VA Tech Center for Housing Research in 2010 there were 14,000 households (about 28,000 persons) lacking afforable rental housing in Arlington, using the HUD recommendation for maximum housing expenses. Today in 2013, with the rapid rent increses (13 percent in 2012 alone), there are many more, possibly 15,000 to 17,000.

Arlington in 2013 has about 6,500 subsidized units, but probably 16,000 more units are needed, and not just for low income and disabled people, but by many who earn as much as $65,000 for a 4-person family. Landlords and developers are squeezing tenants by raising rents and demolishing modest apartments for luxury ones.

While it is commendable that 122 more units were built, this does nothing really to meet the needs of the over 14,000 families who need to be able to rent an apartment within their budgets.

The Arlington Mill apartments will be rented mainly to people making 60% of the area median income ($64,000 for a family of four); those making only 40% or 50% AMI will not have access to the majority of th 122 units. The Mill units cost about $250,000 each even though Arlington County donated the land to the developer; thus, lower income folks will not qualify to rent these new apartments.

All County Board chairman Tejada can do is mumble platitudes. The county’s current housing assistance program has failed nearly every goal set by the county board over the past ten years.

The Washington Post,
3,600 apply for 122 new Arlington apartments
By Patricia Sullivan, Published: September 6, 2013
In a display of the demand for affordable housing in Northern Virginia, more than 3,600 people have applied for a chance to rent one of 122 new affordable apartments still under construction along Arlington County’s Columbia Pike.
The volume of applicants surprised even the nonprofit developer of the Arlington Mill Residences. Hundreds of people were expected to seek a spot in the complex via lottery, but on the first of four days that the waiting list was open, they began lining up before dawn. By 6 p.m., 949 people had applied.
Nina Janopaul, president and chief executive of nonprofit developer Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing, called the outpouring of interest “a case of a dramatic rise in demand for affordable housing in the close-in area.”
The new construction on Columbia Pike, next to a new community center, she said, proved highly desirable.
The increasing cost of living in the inner suburbs, especially in northern Virginia, has taken a significant toll on the number of apartments considered affordable to families. In 2000, about 20,000 of the 35,000 rental apartments in Arlington were ranked as market-rate affordable; now, only 6,000 of the county’s 43,000 rentals are.
Those who lined up early last week for the chance at the new apartments attested to the difficulty of finding affordable rentals.
“I pay $1,600 for a one-bedroom” on the west end of Columbia Pike, said Senait Worku, a coffee shop cashier who works two jobs, as does her husband. “We have lived here seven years, and we want to try for lower rents.”
Among the taxi drivers, computer techs and disabled senior citizens, a pregnant Melkam Tebeje turned up at the rental office with several members of her family.
“We need to have an apartment without paying a lot of money,” she said. An Alexandria grocery store cashier, Tebeje said she can’t save for school because her rent is so high. “If I get one of these [apartments], I can go to school, too, but now I don’t have time because I work two jobs.”
The four-story apartment building, at 901 S. Dinwiddie St. just behind the newly opened Arlington Mill Community Center, will be affordable to people or families earning less than 60 percent of the area’s median income, which would mean a family of four with an income of $64,000 or less could qualify. Most of the apartments have two or three bedrooms. A dozen of the units will be set aside for those with very low incomes, and another dozen are wheelchair-accessible apartments. A wing with eight efficiency units has been set aside for those who are the very hardest to house, such as the homeless, APAH officials said.
APAH’s Janopaul said the high demand is not restricted to Arlington Mill.
“We have a huge waiting list at our Parc Rosslyn [building], but they didn’t apply all at once,” she said.
Local and state governments have been trying to subsidize the creation and preservation of apartments for area residents, because pushing the non-affluent to outer suburbs exacerbates the Washington area’s traffic congestion and because many communities value a mix of people who earn a variety of incomes.
The $31 million Arlington Mill Residences are being financed with an $8.9 million loan from Virginia’s low-income housing finance agency, and with $22 million in federal tax credit housing money from Bank of America. It sits atop a parking garage, built with a loan from Arlington County that’s since been repaid. The property is on land owned by the county and APAH has a discounted 75-year lease.
The demand for the rentals “is amazing, no question about it,” said J. Walter Tejada (D), chairman of the Arlington County Board, who made increasing affordable housing the board’s top priority this year. “At the same time, it doesn’t surprise me. It validates the challenge that we recognize and we have to meet. . . . These are not giveaways. We make loans, we work with developers — this is how we do affordable housing in Arlington.”
Half of all four-person family households in the Washington region this year earned more than $107,500; half earned less, including beginning teachers, police and firefighters, retail employees, construction workers and many professionals. Most are priced out of the home-purchase market and often struggle to find adequate rental housing. The average rent in Arlington last year ranged from $1,422 per month for an efficiency to $2,782 for a three-bedroom unit, the county reported, rising 13 percent from 2011.
Affordable housing advocates say that the situation has been getting worse over the past decade and is now a crisis.
“If you are not safely and decently housed, it’s hard to hold a job, it’s hard to do well in school, and you are more likely to have health issues,” said Michelle Krocker, executive director of the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance.
APAH and its construction partner are still sorting through the applications, entering them into a spreadsheet and determining how many of the 3,600 applicants qualify for the Arlington Mill apartments. The lottery to award the units is expected to be held late next week.

© The Washington Post Company

Arlington Voters To Consider Whether To Create Housing Authority By: Michael Lee Pope
September 5, 2013 2 Commentscommentshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/24736216@N07/4540896591/Affordable housing is slowly disappearing in Arlington, and some believe that a housing authority is needed to preserve it.When voters head to the polls in November, they will be confronted with a hotly contested race for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. In addition to that, every seat in the House of Delegates will be up for election.

But voters in Arlington will see something extra, a ballot initiative asking the following question: Is there a need for the redevelopment and housing authority to be activated in Arlington County?

“The average rent in Arlington right now is only affordable to people earning $60,000 or more per year. If you are earning anything less than that, you can’t afford your rent,” says Audrey Clement of the Arlington Green Party.

She helped collect thousands of signatures to get the issue on the ballot. She says voters should approve the creation of a housing authority because Arlington has lost two-thirds of its affordable housing since the year 2000.

“So if you are concerned about maintaining an affordable apartment in this county, you will want a housing authority,” she says.

Supporters of the authority question the county’s affordable housing strategy of working with nonprofit groups and private developers to build units. They say Arlington would have more affordable housing units if the county operated them directly.

Opponents say an authority is not needed because the County Board encourages developers to set aside affordable units using money from Arlington’s affordable housing investment trust fund.

“I am not at all convinced that a housing authority would be either efficient or effective,” says county board member Libby Garvey. She says the county already has a strategy to protect affordable housing, and creating a new agency would only add layers of bureaucracy.

“I think it’s something that we’ve done years ago when there was a lot of federal money for affordable housing and there’s simply not that money right now,” she explains.

Voters in Arlington have rejected similar initiatives in 1958, 1982 and 2008.

http://wamu.org/news/13/09/05/arlington_voters_to_consider_whether_to_create_a_housing_authority

We encourage everyone to attend a candidates debate and to support our Green candidate for county board Audrey Clement. Below is the tentative schedule for the so far announced candidate debate forums:

10/09/13 7:30 pm Ashton Heights/Lyon Park Civic Association
Lyon Park Community House, 414 N. Fillmore Street

10/16/13 7:30 pm Cherrydale Civic Association Candidates Night Cherrydale Volunteer Fire Station, 3900 Lee Hwy

10/21/13 8:00 pm Lyon Village Candidates Night Lyon Village Community
House at 1920 N. Highland Street

10/23/13 7:00 pm Rosslyn/Ft. Meyer Heights Civic Association (RAFOM)
Candidates Night, location to be announced