Arlington Greens panel for first time candidates had about 15 people at Shirlington Library on March 31. The four panel members were Joe Galdo, former candidate for Congress in Fairfax, Dan Robinson, candidate for the Maryland General Assembly from Takoma Park, Maryland; Miriam Gennari former candidate for Arlington School Board; and John Reeder, former two time candidate for Arlington County Board. All candidates ran as Greens. Also on hand was Gretchen Reinemeyer of the Arlington Voters office to explain the legal issues of filing for office in 2015. There are two county board seats, one school board seat, all four General Assembly seats and the state senate seat open in 2015, and all the constitutional offices such as sheriff.

Panelists left to right” Gretchen Reinemery of the voters office, Joe Galdo, Miriam Gennari, John Reeder and Dan Robinson

Arlington Greens are looking for qualified first time candidates to run. Greens are independents; accept no corporate or PAC funds, and run against the two major parties.

Much of Arlington County’s housing assistance is wasted or directed to high income persons, doing relatively little for the low income and those particularly in need of Arlington.

Arlington County resident can be proud that our county government spends over $36 million annually from its local tax revenues for housing assistance, but unfortunately a high amount is wasted or used to subsidize either developers or high income persons, and relatively little goes to help persons earning less than $40,000 a year. Arlington is the second most expensive rental area in the Washington, D.C. region, and the housing cost burden is greatest for persons earning under $40,000 a year. Housing assistance should go to help the lowest income persons before helping those making over $60,000.

The largest county housing assistance segment is called “AHIF” (Arlington Housing Investment Fund), and it mainly benefits persons earning generally between 60-percent and 80-percent of area median income (roughly $60,000 to $85,000 for a family of four). Most of the $13 million housing subsidies for AHIF actually go to developers and operators of these apartments rather to tenants in the form of dramatically lower rents.

According to data of the Virginia Tech Center for Housing Research, there were 21,800 rental households in 2012 in Arlington who faced a housing cost burden (spending more than 30 percent of their incomes for rent and housing expenses), about 20 percent of all Arlington households. About 70 percent of these households earn less than $50,000 a year. Meanwhile a high proportion of Arlington’s housing assistance goes to the 25 percent earning above $50,000 a year. www.housingvirginia.org

One Arlington housing assistance program is well targeted, administered, and benefits lower income tenants-the housing grants program or direct rental subsidy. Under this program about $8 million is spent annually to directly help about 1,200 low income households with a monthly housing grant of $400-500. Only persons earning less than about $32,000 a year for a single person and up to $46,000 for a family of our can benefit and in addition must be disabled, a senior citizen or a working family with a child.

Thus, AHIF, the largest county assistance program, does little to help lower income persons and mostly provides funds to developers and little for tenants in the form of sharply lower rents. However, the second largest program-housing grants program is well targeted and efficient.

Comments of John Reeder, treasurer of Arlington Greens, speaking at the county board hearing on Feb. 24, 2015 (these comments do not necessarily reflect the position of the Arlington Green Party):

Dear County Board members:

I oppose the approval of the zoning request and the $20 million in county AHIF funds to build these two apartment buildings in west Columbia Pike area located at 1010 S. Frederick Street, off Columbia Pike. APAH a nonprofit developer has requested about $20 million in county loans from the Arlington Housing Investment Fund (AHIF).

I have spoken several times against excessively costly affordable housing projects that are simply not affordable to low income people in Arlington. This is yet another such wasteful project. Please reject this proposal and send APAH back to the drawing board to come up with lower priced units for low income persons, namely those earning below 40-percent of the area median income (AMI) which is roughly $30,000 to $43,000 a year income).
Please read over details in the staff report presented to you:

l. 80 percent of the 229 units in the two new buildings are only affordable to persons earning above 60-percent AMI ($45,000 for a single person and $64,400 for a family of four).

2. Only 4 percent of the units are affordable to low income persons making less than 40-percent AMI. You have set your housing goal that at least 25% of new CAF units be affordable to 40-percent AMI renters: NONE of the AHIF projects for new CAFs have come close to your 25% goal.

3. Each new unit will cost about $$394,000 each-nearly four hundred thousand bucks. The $90 million total cost is very high-$7 million in developers fee, $6 million in “soft costs,” and $10 million in land/acquisition costs. The hard construction costs are $67 million or $227,000 per apartment which are well above Washington, DC regional costs. Are they building the Taj Mahal or affordable basic housing?

4. The land is quite expensive at $10 million or $44,000 per apartment. APAH claimed publicly that it owns the parking lot land and that the land is free. In fact, it does not own the land at all and it will cost taxpayers $10 million to buy a parking lot in western Columbia Pike. There are entire commercial buildings for sale in that area for less than $10 million.

Approving AHIF projects to build very expensive new CAFs which ipso facto cannot be rented to low income people in Arlington is a terrible waste of our public local dollars that could be used better t provide other forms of housing assistance to the needy rather than subsidies for developers and contractors like APAH.