Candidate Wants 'Bottom-Up' Process Used To Develop Arlington's Affordable Housing Policy

ARLINGTON, VA — A candidate for one of the two positions opening on the Arlington County Board released a position paper Thursday that lays out what she believes should be done to address the county’s housing affordability crisis.

Natalie Roy, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for County Board, wants to convene a group of housing and urban planning experts to work with the Arlington County Board, county staff and the community to craft a county-wide plan on affordability and diversity in housing.

Under Roy’s plan, the group also would be charged with developing tracking mechanisms to determine if the plan's goals on affordability and diversity in housing are being met.

Roy, CEO of the Bicycling Realty Group, is the only candidate among the five Arlington residents who have announced their plans to seek the Democratic nomination for the board to publicly oppose the county's Missing Middle housing zoning changes.

All five current members of the County Board support getting rid of the county's single-family housing zoning policy as part of the Missing Middle housing plan, despite a large portion of the county's residents, including several neighborhood civic associations, opposing the plan.

At last Saturday's public hearing on the Missing Middle housing plan, Roy acknowledged that the county needs to do more to create affordability and diversity. But she told the board members that she does not believe the county’s Missing Middle housing proposal would achieve those goals.

The Arlington County Board voted unanimously Wednesday to move into the final phase of crafting its Missing Middle housing zoning changes. If the board adopts the basic structure of the Missing Middle housing plan approved for advertisement on Wednesday, it would upend the county's single-family housing zoning policy and would possibly represent a greater policy change governing land use than when the county agreed to plan for transit-oriented growth in the mid-1970s.

READ ALSO: Arlington's Missing Middle Plan Moves Forward After County Board Vote

The board’s unanimous vote on Wednesday starts a nearly two-month period when the Arlington County Planning Commission and County Board will hold more public hearings on the proposal and then work to develop a final version of the changes to the county's housing zoning policy for the board to vote on by the end of March.

In her position paper, Roy said that if the current version of the Missing Middle housing program is adopted, it would be prudent to put an advisory referendum question on the ballot in November to get a true gauge of the community’s support.

"This issue warrants taking the pulse of the entire community, to see if this is truly the direction Arlington County wants to go," Roy said. "Without support from the community, we will not achieve the vital goals of creating more affordability and diversity."

The two members of the board who favor the greatest density of housing on single-family plots, Chairman Christian Dorsey and Katie Cristol, are not seeking re-election in 2023 after serving two terms on the county board. Their decisions to step down at the end of the year caused a rush of residents to announce their candidacies.

One of those candidates, Julius (JD) Spain Sr., former president of the NAACP Arlington Branch, has come out in support of the Missing Middle plan. At last Saturday's public hearing, Spain suggested that single-family housing zoning policy is intrinsically racist and must be overturned.

"We are attempting here today to unwind historically discriminatory and exclusionary zoning," Spain said. "It's a start in the right direction."

Spain also noted that groups like the NAACP, the Sierra Club and YIMBYS of Northern Virginia represent "thousands of vulnerable citizens" and have spoken out in favor of the Missing Middle housing proposal.

In her position paper, Roy said that while the plan will add density to Arlington County, it will not create housing that the most vulnerable members of the community can afford.

The current Missing Middle proposal is sweeping, "with no clear goals other than to create more density," she said.

"The plan rests on the belief that more housing will result in affordable housing and promote diversity, which is not credible," she argued. "It relies on the private sector to build affordable homes without incentives to reach those objectives, nor guardrails against unintended consequences."

The group of housing and urban planning experts proposed by Roy also would convene public listening sessions with community members from every neighborhood in Arlington to provide input on a draft plan. The draft plan would then be created based on "careful review and community input."

"Arlington is known as a national leader on planning, where collaboration and consensus building are core to how we develop comprehensive programs," Roy said. "We need to continue this strong tradition to ensure that the path forward has community support and is bottom-up, not top-down."

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