Arlington Housing Policy With Reparations Offered As Better Option Than Missing Middle

ARLINGTON, VA — Arlington residents and their descendants who were harmed by past housing policy decisions could see greater benefits from a reparations program than from a policy that calls for simply increasing the number of housing units in the county, according to an opponent of the county’s Missing Middle housing plan.

Arlington County could consider establishing a program of reparations through its housing policy, featuring down-payment assistance to these residents, said Jim Schulman, executive director of the Alliance for Regional Cooperation, a nonprofit group dedicated to economic development in the Washington, D.C., area.

Schulman said he believes such a program could be patterned after similar programs in Evanston, Illinois, and Rochester, New York. Not only would the program directly benefit past victims of racial discrimination in housing policies in Arlington and their descendants, it would help other people who have been priced out of housing in the county, he explained.

"I see a reparations program as a more successful way for Arlington County to achieve the objective of making amends for historic racist exclusionary practices than a program of Missing Middle Housing — or its newest moniker, Expanded Housing Options — and one which will actually help people who were historically harmed and who currently need it," Schulman said in an email to Patch.

Since loosening the county's single-family zoning policy under the Missing Middle housing plan has the potential to significantly exacerbate gentrification through the inflation of land values and reduce the number of single-family homes in the county, desirable to many demographic groups, a program of reparations is a reasonable alternative, he argued.

The Arlington County Board voted unanimously on Jan. 25 to move into the final phase of crafting its Missing Middle housing zoning changes. The board’s approval started a nearly two-month period when more public hearings on the proposal will be held, with the county developing a final version of the changes to the county's housing zoning policy.

Arlington County Board members contend the Missing Middle housing zoning changes are needed in part to address the lasting impacts of housing policy decisions that excluded people of color from many neighborhoods, through racially restrictive deed covenants and the banning of rowhouses, which were popular among Black people.

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

The board is expected to adopt a form of its Missing Middle housing zoning plan at its meeting on March 18.

At an information session hosted by the NAACP Arlington Branch on Wednesday, Bryan Coleman, second vice president of the group, said the county is still living with the consequences of decisions made more than 80 years ago, when Black residents faced discrimination in all parts of life, including restrictions on where they could live and uncertainty on whether they could borrow money to purchase a home.

Coleman, who also serves as the NAACP Arlington Branch housing chair, said these past racist housing policies in Arlington contributed to the decision by the local branch of the NAACP to support the abolishment of single-family zoning in Arlington.

Alice Hogan, a housing policy consultant for the Alliance for Housing Solutions, a group that supports the Missing Middle housing proposal, said at Wednesday's event that there are "big, huge open spaces in many parts of the county" where single family homes exist now.

Hogan, based on her research throughout the Missing Middle housing deliberations, emphasized Arlington has "a lot of inefficient use of land" on more than 75 percent of the land in the county because of the zoning laws put in place almost a century ago that only allowed one home per lot, regardless of lot size.

"It's time to allow owners a chance to build something else on their land, and thereby open up neighborhoods to a diversity of housing for more diverse residents — be it by income, age, ability, race, etc.," Hogan wrote in a comment to this article.

Across the Potomac River in Southwest D.C., different types of new housing units were built over the past 15 years as part of a housing boom, increasing density in many cases by filling in vacant lots. Between 2010 and 2020, census tracts in areas along the waterfront in Southwest D.C. went from 66 to 41 percent Black people and 22 to 40 percent white people, according to The Washington Post.

“Just saying 'build more' does not actually achieve racial equity. We’ve got to build affordable. Even the affordable units are not possible for Black families,” Coy McKinney, a member of Southwest DC Action, a group that advocates for equitable development, told The Washington Post.

Speakers at Wednesday's event acknowledged that the Missing Middle proposal would not address the affordable housing crisis in Arlington. But if adopted by the board, the major zoning change would provide an entry point for some Black and Latino people to purchase a home in the county.

In Evanston, Illinois, north of Chicago, officials are taking a different approach in their housing policy as part of an attempt to address past discrimination against its Black residents.

In 2021, the city adopted a reparations program to pay money to Black residents who faced barriers to buying the home they wanted due to past racist policies. To be eligible for the reparations, adult residents had to have lived in Evanston before 1969, when housing discrimination was at its height.

"The Program is a step towards revitalizing, preserving, and stabilizing Black/African-American owner-occupied homes in Evanston, increasing homeownership and building the wealth of Black/African-American residents, building intergenerational equity amongst Black/African-American residents, and improving the retention rate of Black/African-American homeowners in the City of Evanston," a draft of the Evanston resolution read.

Evanston's reparations take the form of grants of $25,000 that can only be used for house repairs, to pay down a mortgage, or as a down payment on a house. Under the law, Black residents who now live in an apartment or do not have a mortgage can use the reparation to pay their children's mortgages in the city.

READ ALSO: Historic Marker Honors Arlingtonians Buried At Cemetery In Halls Hill

In his testimony submitted to the Arlington County Board, Schulman said the county’s Missing Middle zoning plan misses opportunities to "establish a program of reparations via housing policy."

There are many ways a reparations program could work. Schulman suggested that a small portion of all county revenues — 0.25 percent, or $50 million — could be set aside for housing assistance to people who qualify by providing documentation that they or their parents or grandparents used to live in Arlington, and left due to increasing rents or property taxes, or direct discrimination. Based on their current income, the people could show they could not afford to move back without assistance.

Funds would be disbursed for significant — around 33 percent — rent abatements in five-year increments, substantial down-payment assistance totaling $50,000, or substantial mortgage reductions totaling $50,000 or more, according to Schulman.

"Since the pool of those who were harmed is great, housing reparation grants would be distributed each year to approximately 1000 households or until the fund is depleted," he told Patch.

The Arlington County government has posted a new questionnaire seeking community feedback on the different Missing Middle options the county board voted to advertise on Jan. 25. The county board has set March 18 as the date for its final vote to approve the Missing Middle zoning plan.