Housing

Let’s ease the restrictions on building apartments and mixed-use buildings in commercial areas such as along the Ballston corridor. This way, we can build more housing in our densest areas while maintaining our beloved green spaces. Arlington currently has a 22% office vacancy rate — we should be creating incentives and removing barriers for developers to convert unused space to homes.

Churches, Synagogues, Temples and other places of worship should be allowed to build affordable housing on their land. We have seen this work in our very own community, when Central United Methodist Church built 144 units above their newly renovated space.

Accessory dwellings or ‘granny flats’ are additional housing structures built on an owner’s property that can be rented out or accommodate additional family members. There should be a streamlined process to allow homeowners to build these as they are a key tool to help young Virginians get on their feet and allow our senior citizens to age in place.

The majority of new housing built in Arlington has been multiunit rental properties. While these residences are still critical to increasing the housing supply and necessary to accommodate our transient neighbors, we must focus efforts on the construction of homes that Virginians can buy. Home ownership invests citizens in their communities and is the cornerstone of the American dream.

To that end, we must streamline our permitting processes to make the construction of new homes quicker and more financially viable. I support any policies that assist older jurisdictions that wish to migrate from outdated pen-and-paper procedures to a modern digital portal. I also support focusing design and environmental reviews on the input of qualified technical experts. Finally, I support providing the option for localities to switch from the unpredictable voluntary cash proffer system to a simple system of impact fees.