The delicate but timely topic of historic racism in county housing hit the limelight this summer.

Eyebrows rose when D. Taylor Reich, an H-B Woodlawn alum and transportation researcher who worked on the Plan Lee Highway Community Forum, published a series in ArlNow on the history of local discriminatory zoning.
His portrait of famed early-20th century developer Frank Lyon as a racist who created whites-only subdivisions drew pushback in the online comments section.

I personally found the series thought-provoking but too quick to attribute bad actions to individual villains when those attitudes of excluding Blacks were, unfortunately, mainstream white thinking.

So I wasn’t surprised last month when ArlNow’s editor invited that author to (bravely) publish corrections. Among them: that Frank Lyon was mostly enamored of cars and also built apartments; and that Commonwealth’s Attorney Crandal Mackay conducted his raids of Rosslyn saloons more for moral reasons than to enforce white supremacy.

But correcting technical errors, Taylor’s apologia asserted, “does not change Arlington’s history of racial exclusion through single-family zoning and does not change our responsibility to end this exclusion by legalizing multifamily housing county-wide.”

Race will figure in the debate simmering over how to re-envision Langston Blvd. (no longer Lee Highway) and whether to alter the zoning to permit “Missing Middle” housing types in single-family neighborhoods.

The old zoning ordinance was enacted April 26, 1930, by board of supervisors chairman Edward Duncan at a time when Arlington’s white establishment was reacting against gains by Black communities.

It was critiqued recently by Hall’s Hill historian Wilma Jones in a June talk to the Arlington Committee of 100.
She highlighted passages in the old code that, amidst the legalese about setbacks, allowed an exception permitting homeowners to install a “necessary retaining wall” up to seven-feet.

That enabled white homeowners surrounding Hall’s Hill to construct — each on his own lot — segments of the (now memorialized) segregation wall.

“The zoning ordinances of the 1930s have directly impacted housing options in Arlington,” Jones told me. “They made it illegal to develop row houses, townhouses, duplexes, etc. That’s why Arlington does not have a variety of homes and neighborhoods like Alexandria.”

But efforts to loosen the modern ordinance to encourage less-expensive housing are being bashed by critics from, surprisingly, the liberal left. They object to higher building heights and portray the coming initiative as less a progressive housing plan than a gift to developers.

“We cannot build our way out of ending housing affordability,” says housing activist John Reeder. “If single family lots could be divided or duplexes built, this would initially lower the cost of the land for new houses, but a logical step would be that land prices of all lots appreciate and that short term lower cost disappears.” Building new units “is just a corrupt enterprise with most funds going to builders and operators.”

Right on cue, the evolving Langston Blvd. plan has won backing of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce. The business group “encourages creating flexible land use policies and regulations so as to attract investment to the Langston Boulevard corridor,” its president Kate Bates wrote in an Aug. 3 letter to Arlington Planning.

She called for design flexibility and welcomed “opportunities for bonus height and density for projects meeting community needs,” including “a framework for the construction of housing of various scales and types.”
Expect more fireworks.

Quiz time for black belts in Arlington trivia: Who was Wheeler “Johnny” Lipes?

Answer: The Navy Lieutenant Commander (1920-2005) is on a plaque at the N. 16th St. Healing Garden across from Virginia Hospital Center.

His wife Audrey gave the funds as part of a Campaign for Radiation Oncology to celebrate his career as a hospital executive. Lipes made his mark during World War II, when, as a pharmacist’s mate first class, he performed an emergency appendectomy onboard a submarine. He was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal and a Purple Heart.