This account advocates for policy changes that will help reduce the cost of living in Arlington, Virginia.
legalize more homes
run more buses and trains
This privately built entirely new rail line b/w LA and Las Vegas just broke ground today and is expected to begin running in 2027, three years sooner than the 1.8 mile new rail bridge between Crystal City and DC which began environmental evaluation in 2016
Brightline West broke ground today on what's being touted as America's first true high-speed rail line with speeds that will top out at 186mph.
The trip between Los Angeles and Las Vegas will take just over 2-hours, half of the 4-hour drive time today.
The "suburban" part of Arlington has completely priced out young families. No GS-13s will be moving here. Schools are running out of kids.
The "urban" part of Arlington contains homes that young people might actually afford.
Surprise!
The richest and "leafiest" parts of Arlington emit the MOST pollution per capita
Legalizing apartments, coffee shops and grocery stores in North Arlington will help our neighbors catch up with their more climate-friendly compatriots in less "exclusive" neighborhoods
Everyone thinks they are too cool for Ballston but maybe actually Ballston might be too cool for them 😎
97,000 people per square mile live here, densest in the DC area and in VA. And, personally speaking, a great place to work
NOVA: is justifiably proud of its great metro system
Also NOVA: heavily restricts building housing near said metro so condos are unaffordable to workers and ridership is low and needs to be subsidized
This is the single best thing the Bowser administration has done for DC, civic leaders around the country should take note including many in our own backyard.
If you aren't following, NIMBY groups in Arlington are fundraising thousands to sue Arlington County to stop implementation of our popular and UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED modest Expanded Housing Options ordinance which legalized only 58 missing middle permits per year
Why is the county still requiring hundreds of parking spots right next to the metro in 2024?
That drives up costs for the everybody and ensures that this building is more expensive to live in than it needs to be.
In
#Clarendon
, a developer is proposing fewer parking spots for the Joyce Motors project, from 155 to 119. Despite some objections, Arlington County staff support the changes, citing proximity (600ft) to Metro. These type of approvals should be administrative!
#Arlington
#VA
#TOD
I had no idea Arlington's R-10 zoning (big houses required by law, rich people only) would line up so perfectly with the map of the highest emissions per capita in the county. It's almost perfect. See for yourself!
Surprise!
The richest and "leafiest" parts of Arlington emit the MOST pollution per capita
Legalizing apartments, coffee shops and grocery stores in North Arlington will help our neighbors catch up with their more climate-friendly compatriots in less "exclusive" neighborhoods
The regional juggernaut
@fairfaxcounty
is holding everybody back and needs to legalize more homes, particularly near Silver Line phase II. 36 percent 🤮
ARL/ALX and even Falls Church City have stepped up.
County Board Chairman from the slowest growing jurisdiction in the DMV on zoning reform in ARL and ALX:
"They believe the only way they can address the ‘Missing Middle’ is to eliminate single-family [only] development. We are nowhere close to that point in Fairfax County."
France is building 4 new metro stations and tunnels for a lot less than the price it's taking us to build the Long Bridge?
The project plan to take 19 years seems like it might be related.
Need to reduce costs so we can build green infra!
€1.1 b contract signed for 8 km of new metro tunnels in Paris’ northern suburbs along Metro line 15, including 4 subway stations & 2 large associated TOD projects.
The new entrance is a worthy project, connecting metro to VRE and DCA and the bike path.
But spending 150M for an entrance is FAR out of line with international projects. We spend too much for too little.
VRE is going to take so much of traffic off 95 when it runs like regional rail, not commuter. Means running every day, both directions. Automated fares, no stairs etc
All of this is held up by the Long Bridge work which in turn is held up by wasteful 4 yr environmental reviews
“
@VaRailExpress
wants to start transforming its commuter rail operations by offering Saturday service. We’ve got to serve a much broader ridership base, and the System Plan 2050 is going to get us there with much more regular trains.” 🚆
@nathanielcline
The reason I blame local governments for our housing crisis is because our county is almost entirely zoned for only the richest people to live in $$$ single family houses
While squeezing all apartments and most renters between the cracks
Natalie Roy is running for County Board to ban apartments for working families from this neighborhood where the cheapest home sells for 2.3 million dollars
And is somehow running as a Democrat 😂
Great stuff. Metro owns a bunch of valuable (because it's right next to metro!) land and it should absolutely be building giant buildings, renting them out and using the rent to pay for its budget.
They should do this at East Falls Church ASAP!
Metro's prime half-acre property in Alexandria's bustling Eisenhower Avenue Corridor is up for joint development—right beside our Office Building. This marks the first of five joint development solicitations expected this year. Learn more:
#wmata
Good lord I didn't realize how bad it was.
Arlington is spending $150M for a new entrance to an existing station while Italy is building ENTIRE STATIONS for 25M
Congestion pricing in Northern Virginia awards funding to transit projects in the region as it does every year
Great idea, unpopular at first, now working great
Same in Arlington! Here are the relevant facts:
Avg house costs 1.2 MILLION
Avg townhouse/condo costs 600k
Legalizing townhouses and condos is so important.
A. Two candidates for Council are spreading misunderstanding about the effect of missing middle, saying new units are "not affordable" and will drive up prices of existing houses. Let me correct that
Every single road in our county gets a "massive subsidy" from the gov (roads aren't free to build or run) so God forbid we run a modest bus service allowing taxpayers to ride a bus along those roads
On
#MissingMiddle
trial: "This is going to drastically change our community & it's going to stress infrastructure, it's going to cause overcrowding & it's poor city planning"
Arlington has a whole swathe of the county with 6000 sq ft minimum lots. That means you cannot live in upper North Arlington unless you can afford 6000 sq feet of incredibly expensive dirt.
We can't let Texas be this much more inclusive than us!
MASSIVE YIMBY REFORMS PASS IN ATX
- 🏘️ 1,800 sqft minimum lot size, down from 5,750
- 🏠 10’ setbacks (5’ can be porch)
- 🏬 Compatibility buffer around SFH shrunk from 540' to 75' for multi-story buildings. Unlocks 60,000 new homes
- 🚊 More TOD
- AND MORE 🤯
There's so much wrong in here, it's hard to even know where to start. Also, if you're complaining that the Dem "establishment" didn't support you, but then you're citing Republican John Vihstadt as one of your top supporters, uhhh... cc:
@JDforArlington
Olympic 🥈silver in 4x100m freestyle for our very own Torri Huske! We can’t be more proud in
#ArlingtonVA
! Earlier she qualified to the 100m butterfly final after winning her semifinal heat. Wishing her the very best and more medals!
This looks like one big house, but it's really a 7-plex. It sold last year, brand new, for $364K/home. The median home price on the same street is $625,000. Allowing more density -- i.e., more homes on a given lot -- lowers the cost of each home, this time by at least $261,000.
Young middle class folks moving to Arlington obviously can't afford a big house today anymore. That's okay! We just need to legalize townhouses and condos instead of only allowing mcmansions on most of the county's surface area like we do with today's zoning.
It makes no sense for the Arlington Greens to support low-density zoning. It is why North Arlington is the worst polluter in the county. Nationally, this is how you get sprawl.
Does this look green to you 👇?
Similar to RFK stadium, we spent 2016-2020 determining if it is environmentally OK to build a rail bridge for passengers right here.
Except it's worse because that's four years where people could have been riding the train instead of driving!
cc
@MarkWarner
@NationalParksX
To be clear, we have spent five years studying whether or not it is environmentally permissible to demolish a derelict football stadium surrounded by empty parking lots or whether for some reason it should just stay there forever.
If you drive through Arlington, you are probably along a high-density corridor surrounded by mid-rise buildings so it may FEEL like Arlington is very dense.
But actually, most of Arlington is still low density by law and the corridors are a tiny portion of the land mass
Ok - this is not my point. My point is we should allow the 80 percent of Arlington's residential land that's basically 1930s-1950s suburbia to be more like Old Town!
Falls Church City is building the sickest transit oriented development at West Falls Church while Arlington does NOTHING with East Falls Church station😢
This 1600 sq ft starter home is going for 1.2 million dollars. How many future APS students will be able to afford it?
Land in Arlington is expensive. We need to continue legalizing ADUs, missing middle housing and apartments so we build more homes that require less land
Keep housing pools small, drive up costs, keep property taxes higher and higher. A strategy to make any county manager smile.
Then they divert tax dollars for “affordable housing”, a cost they created.
VA population shifts driven by housing costs
Our once in a lifetime Bipartisan Infrastructure Funds are being thrown into a giant trashcan of environmental review, NIMBYism and bureaucracy.
We already have a bridge (built in the 1800s faster than we ever could today), we just want to put another one next to it!
When the feds give money for infrastructure projects, they should wipe out exclusive zoning within half mile of the project to ensure it gets used. In
@ArlingtonVA
, any money WMATA gets should require us to allow people to live near East Falls Church metro
The condo in question is literally the cheapest 3bed 3bath for sale in North Arlington (hidden behind the 2.4M house).
Just another example of how condos are much more affordable than detached houses and should be legal to build.
Metro is doing great. Every year is another year to build more homes, coffee shops and offices near metro stations like East Falls Church.
Over time, that snowballs into better and better ridership, less tax needed and a greener and cheaper to get around D.C. metro area.
Check out these highlights from April! 📈🎉
•Bus & rail ridership ⬆️ 20% from April 2023
•Total ridership was 80% of April 2019
•April 30 set a new Metrobus post-pandemic record (~430k trips)
How do you use
#YourMetro
? Are you 🚇Team Rail, 🚍Team Bus or 🚐Team Access?
#wmata
Have the NIMBYs who enthusiastically supported Affordable Housing instead of Missing Middle legalization done anything to support any Affordable Housing at all since then?
Arlingtonians for our "Sustainable" Future don't want you to know this!
Big houses spread far apart create neighborhoods where everybody drives and pollute more than a place where people ride metro and the bus
Surprise!
The richest and "leafiest" parts of Arlington emit the MOST pollution per capita
Legalizing apartments, coffee shops and grocery stores in North Arlington will help our neighbors catch up with their more climate-friendly compatriots in less "exclusive" neighborhoods
Combining heavy rail, metro, an airport, our BRT, the bike path and many buses is a no brainer, please vote for the pedestrian bridge here.
It needs all the help it can get because it must contend with the dreaded National Park Service, sworn enemy of urban transportation
CC2DCA would put National Airport within an easy walk of Amtrak, VRE, MetroWay BRT, and the heart of Crystal City. Speak up to get this and other great car-free projects funded! We make it quick and easy!
Dear
@ART_Alert
: AC on Bus
#5063
(currently on line 77) is broken. Just measured interior temp: 89F. I don’t feel that this 🚌 is safe to operate, not for the driver, not for passengers, not in a heatwave
I love how rain gardens tank for our sewers when it rains. So cool how big of a difference these things are making preventing sewer discharges into the rivers in DCs older combined sewer system
It's a self-own for taxpayers to subsidize a bus and then allow no apartment buildings near the bus stops so few ride and pay the fare (purple is low density zoning)
@dctranspotwt
@ArlingtonDES
If the bus goes down Wash Blvd then we should allow larger apartment buildings on Washington Blvd so that more people can take the bus
It's very frustrating how hard it is to door-to-door canvass inside apartment buildings. It's legal, but the doors aren't open.
A reminder that Arlington is 60% renters but the county board composed of 80% homeowners
Relevant in Arlington. Groups like
@AuroraHighlands
are trying to block a modest building with subsidized affordable housing for disabled people in their neighborhood
These are not
@arlingtondems
values
A special Metrobus trip for some riders in Fairfax, Virginia. A group of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities were taught all about the ins and outs of the Metrobus, so that they can enhance their mobility.
#wmata
@nbcwashington
Simply shocked to find out that nobody was riding this bus that came every 30 minutes at best.
ART needs to be frequent and useful and people will ride it.
If we're raising the price of metro and buses we should at least bother to enforce the parking meters in Arlington.
And stop giving away ~free parking passes to homeowners under the regressive Residential Permit Parking program.
BREAKING - Metro passes its $4.8 billion budget for next fiscal year with limited impacts to service. However, a fare hike is coming - Bus fares and base rail fares increase from $2 to $2.25. The maximum rail fare will increase from $6 to $6.75
#wmata
@nbcwashington
Did you know that some Civic Associations in Arlington are only open to owners and renters have to apply for special permission to join?
The board should keep that in mind when listening to public comment bc these grps present as if they speak for everyone. Graph related 🧵
Note that the surplus is not evenly distributed! There are emptying schools like Nottingham which desperately need new kids, but the houses nearby are so expensive no young parents can afford to live there. This is why we need apartments and townhouses. In North Arl.
White House Targets Local Zoning Restrictions In Push To Address Rising Housing Costs
“Housing shortages and unaffordability have risen over the last 60 years, in large part because of local land-use policies that restrict housing density..."
.
Had a late meeting tonight with our neighbors of the Aurora Highlands Civic Assoc. Spirited discussion on
#AffordableHousing
! Then, on my way home, with fellow riders, we had the same conversation, albeit from a very different -yet not incompatible ! - standpoint.
💭 Just imagine: your new home 🏠 in Cherrydale, an urban luxury oasis complete with elevator access and only minutes from Georgetown in Washington, D.C. — ready for a virtual tour?
#sponsor
The MMH lawsuit is a group of NIMBYS who are suing the county to try and undo a UNANIMOUS county board vote to allow modest density in Arlington. Of course the county will defend itself against a lawsuit like that!
This kind of language is just unreasonable and too much 🙄
DC, Arlington, & Alexandria are among the US's wealthiest counties, but there's substantial income variation among their neighborhoods
Parts of NW DC/Arlington have median incomes above $250k while areas across the Anacostia River in SE/NE DC have median incomes <$40k
Republicans say that Virginians are moving to low-tax states like Texas, NC, Georgia and FL
All of those states have cheap, more abundant housing and fast-growing economies. It's not just the taxes. Virginia has the jobs but needs more homes
There is a common misperception that East Falls Church metro is undeveloped because of some sort of dispute between
@wmata
and
@VaDOTNOVA
over the parking lot.
But the exclusionary Single Family Zoning surrounding the station is entirely Arlington's poor planning 👇
@Alex_Goyette
@planArlingtonVA
I can only hope we do! Right now we have a Metro transfer station completely surrounded by single family zoning.
This is poor usage of public dollars spent building the metro and represents thousands of people who COULD live right next to rapid transit (red is SFH) 👇
These beautiful neighborhoods are illegal to build in almost the entire county because of exclusionary zoning from the 1930s. We should legalize them again!
In Arlington you can literally see this play out at Nottingham Elementary School, the most segregated school in the county.
NES is emptying out because young parents cannot afford the 3M houses surrounding it, and apartments are illegal (bar EHO).
Progressives have a family problem.
It's not the "childless cat lady" problem that Vance etc want to talk about. It's an urban policy.
Progressives preside over counties that young families are leaving. And that's bad.
The Melwood proposal is my favorite development in all of Arlington!
If you support letting an established local nonprofit build a small building on land they own with 100-plus affordable units and 30 for people with disabilities, share your thoughts here
I filled out this survey and expressed my support for the pedestrian bridge from Crystal City to DCA (known as CC2DCA).
This is a great project connecting thriving Crystal City with thriving DCA! Needs all the support it can get because it has to deal with the dreaded
@NPSGWMP
NVTA has BIG regional money for BIG projects. Should we be spending it on people or cars? On safely traveling to our communities or speedily zipping past our communities? Speak up today!
The East Falls Church metro has apparently become a well-known example of missed opportunity and bad land use.
We can
@planArlingtonVA
better than this! Why spend billions on a metro if nobody can use it?
@arlvabikelanes
@Alex_Goyette
@planArlingtonVA
I seem to recall
@mnolangray
once mentioned being radicalized by the poor land use around this specific station. It certainly had that effect for the year I lived nearby!
We built a billion dollar metro station for a handful of rich homeowners! Make it make sense!
Expensive elevators are terrible for accessibility because we build fewer of them.
Local government can help bring costs down by adopting international best practices for building code.
This Friday, I'm giving a presentation at the Center for Innovation on my elevator report and how it can be generalized to understand America's urban construction cost problem generally, 8 a.m. PT/11 a.m. ET. Free registration here:
It's because apartments, townhouses, condos and garden apartments are legal outside of "suburban" Arlington! Working young people can't afford a mcmansion here today, but that's all that's legal to build there.
Requiring developers to subsidize affordable housing means those developers build a LOT less housing and the subsidy comes out of the pockets of the renters who live there
It taxes renters instead of homeowners to pay for all new subsidized housing and it's regressive
Charlottesville’s new zoning code will be mostly useless if the city doesn’t include some form of city funding for the required income restricted homes in 10+ unit buildings.
The county should eminent domain the old marriott and build either a park or let
@APAH_org
build 2K units of new housing here.
Also put a protected bike lane on key bridge
We are failing our firefighters if we do not act quickly to deal with our cost of living crisis
A family shouldn't have to be rich or win a housing lottery to have children in Arlington and send their kids to our great schools
Our budget spends 100M on subsidized housing, but it takes 3 YEARS of red tape just to build a five story building.
We could save taxpayer money by implementing a shotclock-- if a proposal isn't rejected in 6 months it gets auto-approved.
On this day, 38 years ago in 1986...
The Orange Line extension to Vienna opened! Extending from Ballston, the 9 new miles of track included East Falls Church, West Falls Church, Dunn Loring, and Vienna.
Yes! NIMBY groups like Arlingtonians for our Sustainable Future claim that townhouses will make neighborhoods like this unaffordable to regular folks.
It's certainly a claim.