Arlington County Government, VA Specials and Lectures, 29 Jan 2014

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From YouTube: Jay Fisette on the Challenge of Affordable Housing

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Arlington County Board Chairman Jay Fisette on the County's continuing commitment to affordable housing. January 1, 2014.

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A second and perennial challenge is to ensure that persons of all economic levels can continue to live here. On this front too, we are victims of our own success between 2000 and 2011. Arlington lost more than half of its remaining inventory of market rate, affordable units, those of those that are affordable in the free market.

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Over 11, 500 of them lost high housing costs are squeezing out the low and moderate income earners, who are our teachers, our health care workers, our store clerks, our office workers, our neighbors.

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They are essential to the fabric of our community and to our economic health. Our community has responded aggressively from my eight years on the virginia housing development authority board in richmond. I know that arlington's housing efforts dwarf those anywhere else in the commonwealth for every local dollar dedicated to affordable housing. We leverage two to three dollars in state federal and private dollars.

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These investments have created over six thousand six hundred committed, affordable units homes contractually obligated to stay affordable for decades, accounting for 15 percent of arlington's multi-family housing rental stock.

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Last year, we adopted our most ambitious plan to date to ensure no net loss of affordable units along columbia, pike as it redevelops into a more transit oriented, walkable main street. We adopted several creative tools to help us achieve the goal. For instance, we will be the first locality in america to use tdrs the transfer of development rights to help preserve affordable housing, because this is a novel strategy.

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We are starting with caution and fiscal restraint. Another creative initiative is the county's partnership with non-profit developer appa, where we created 122, affordable units on county land next to the arlington mill community center. This board is committed to the concept of public land for public good.

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As noted above, we have directed the county manager to work with the schools to assess all public properties for their potential use for affordable housing, for schools, for open space and other public facilities during this year's capital improvement program process.

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In addition to better integrating county and school planning, we want to identify three to five sites with potential for future, affordable housing. We also expect significant progress on the ongoing, affordable housing study. Its working group is charged with crafting a shared vision of arlington's, affordable housing program and recommending priorities to help us allocate housing resources and, finally, in this area this year we will celebrate the opening of our first year-round homeless services center.

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This facility will provide up to 80 beds and integrated services to help many who have been living on the street to be more self-reliant and to rebuild their lives. This is the arlington way.