Townhouses in Arlington by Ron Cogswell licensed under Creative Commons.

Arlington County and Alexandria City sit just across the Potomac River from DC, embroiling them in our region’s housing affordability crisis. Amazon HQ2 is spiraling skyward and so are home prices: The median new single-family home in Arlington is about $2 million, per county staff.

Alexandria’s market is a bit less dire, but still eye-popping. The leaders of DC’s two innermost suburbs recognize they simply must build more, denser homes — beyond what current laws allow — before the crisis becomes a catastrophe.

Building on Arlington County’s yearslong Missing Middle Housing Study, policy staff recently unveiled a proposal to permit multiplex housing with up to eight units in all single-family zones. The County Board could adopt this new scheme by the fall.

Meanwhile in Alexandria, the City Council’s official 2022 budget and policy priorities include, “Provide Diverse Housing Opportunities,” starting with reconsidering zoning.

So Arlington and Alexandria are taking a hard look at single-family zoning. YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, a group to which I belong, is supportive of these reforms. I summarize some of our stances below.

Missing Middle strikes a balance

Arlington’s Missing Middle draft framework is extremely ambitious and might serve as a model for the entire country if the county board gets the policy details right to enable new construction.

Our group supports the plan in part because of how policy staff balances various housing market realities and community interests. For example, the proposal recommends a lower parking minimum for multiplexes in part to preserve tree cover and reduce impermeable surfaces.

Multiplex construction would be permitted by right— requiring no discretionary approval — within Arlington’s expansive envelope for detached single-family homes, preempting red tape and building size fears. Unit floor space caps would also limit sixplexes and eightplexes to the largest single-family lots, where they would be more palatable to current residents.

Screenshot from Arlington County's Missing Middle Draft Framework

The by right process and reduced parking should make plex construction fairly feasible and insulate it from legal challenges, yielding lower-cost units. Tree canopy and stormwater standards are retained, defusing ecological concerns — though, of course, single-family homes have by far the worst environmental and climate impact. And the proposal would not affect neighborhoods currently zoned for small multi-family (shaded blue below), which contain much of Arlington’s market-rate affordable housing. Extending the plan to all current single-family zones enhances its equity and would disperse new construction.

Screenshot from Arlington County's Missing Middle Draft Framework

County staff estimate that units in a new eightplex would be affordable to 39% of Black households, 39% of Hispanic/Latino households, and 60% of Asian households in the Washington region.

Arlington’s County Board includes vocal housing advocates such as Chair Katie Cristol and member Takis Karantonis, whose leadership will be vital to making Missing Middle housing a reality.

Alexandria reckons with zoning’s legacy

Alexandria’s 2022 council priority for housing is not a concrete proposal, but gentle density is far from a foreign concept in Alexandria. The city’s two most desirable neighborhoods, Old Town and Del Ray, have around 10,000 residents per square mile.

Moreover, Alexandria’s mayor, Justin Wilson, has gone out of his way to tie zoning to racial justice in the city, knowing he would provoke the ire of some single-family homeowners. He is seeking out a fight against systemic issues.

In an interview about the housing priority, Wilson pointed to a legacy of white supremacy. “A lot of our zoning tools … were put in place to achieve some pretty horrible ends. They serve to reinforce racial segregation and housing access,” he told ALXnow. “That is absolutely true in Alexandria.” He added that the similarity between maps of the city’s racial demographics and zoning ordinances is “not an accident.”

The housing priority’s full text is revealing: “Reconsider our zoning model and explore other tools to better facilitate an Alexandria housing economy that provides the necessary range of price points, styles of housing, and associated services to meet the needs of a thriving city.” References to zoning and different housing styles are a clear signal of intent. Providing diverse housing opportunities will have to extend beyond detached single-family homes.

The 2021 Alexandria City elections gave the council a strong mandate to take systematic action on housing affordability. Wilson and other supportive incumbents were joined on the council last year by three new housing advocates who campaigned together as the beagle caucus: urban planner Alyia Gaskins, affordable housing professional Sarah Bagley, and congressional chief of staff Kirk McPike. This has led to some healthy internal competition:

As Missing Middle progresses in Arlington, it will be interesting to see how competitive — and serious — Alexandria’s leaders are about zoning reform.

Luca Gattoni-Celli is the founder of YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, a grassroots pro-housing advocacy organization. He lives in Alexandria West with his wonderful wife and children. They enjoy seeing friends, hiking, e-biking, and the stellar food in NoVA from around the world.