By a 5-1 vote late Monday night, the Falls Church City Council acted to retain a consultant to begin what will be the Little City’s next arduous voyage into the fretfully-choppy waters of potentially significant affordable housing.
Going on four hours into its meeting that dealt mostly with its annual budget deliberations, the Council finally resolved to contract the Chicago-based firm of Jones, Lang and LaSalle (JLL) for a first baby step in an ambitious process advocates of the City’s affordable living policy hope could result in hundreds of new affordable dwellings that City employees, seniors and others could afford.
At issue, and what City residents can expect to hear a lot about in the coming months if not years is the Virginia Village development of 20 four-plex buildings on S. Maple Ave. The City and its Economic Development Authority own nine of them, and have a vision of redeveloping the entire four-acre site to provide for a much greater number of units.
But clear from the extensive discussion of the board is the fact that there is going to be plenty of push-back aimed at restricting the realization of the project’s potential for achieving a marked increase in the City’s diminishing affordable housing stock.
The contending sides will be the push for a meaningful number of affordable units on the one hand, and so-called open space and “compatibility with neighborhoods” issues on the other.
“Compatibility with neighborhoods,” the term coined by Council member Erin Flynn Monday night, is also equated with “Not in My Back Yard” (or, NIMBY) sentiments of potential neighbors.
The affordable housing versus NIMBY pressures are not new to Falls Church. It goes back to zoning battles of the 19th century, when in the post-Civil War period, there was a major push in Falls Church to section off a large black population centered around Tinner Hill that led to an actual boundary modification leaving much of that neighborhood outside the Falls Church town limits.
But most recently, the initiative spearheaded by Carol Jackson of the Falls Church Housing Corporation through the better part of the first decade of this current century butted heads with NIMBY influencers at a number of prospective areas in the City, only to finally have a scaled-back plan for a Wilden Senior Housing plan, not far from the Virginia Village, go down in veritable flames 15 years ago.
Jackson resigned and moved to Charleson, South Carolina, where she got herself elected to the City Council, the Housing Corporation disbanded here and the issue went radio silent for an extended period.
Already, the same language is being echoed in early sparring on this latest plan.
City Manager Wyatt Shields stressed that this week’s decision was to retain the services of a group qualified to deal with the fact that the Virginia Village project essentially involves a commercial transaction. Matters of scale, of building height or buffer issues would await what a second, bigger “request for proposal” will be addressing down the road.
So, when it came down to it, despite lengthy caveats issued by Council member Flynn, she joined the others in voting for the “little” request for proposal involved in the hiring of the JLL firm. The lone “no” vote came from veteran Council member David Snyder, who said he derived from the discussion that the project would involve “120 to 150 units, and I am not on board with that.”
However, if the plan does not significantly increase the number of affordable units on the site, then its economic and policy justifications may not add up, anyway. With 80 affordable units in there now, should the plan not at least double that number, it might be financially or otherwise feasible, anyway.
“This is an unusual situation because it involves a public purpose being sought through a commercial transaction,” Shields said. The firm retained Monday will have “help the committee be rigorous and thorough” advising on economic and not aesthetic issues.
He assured the Council that the big decisions will be made on response to local community input, and the next date for serious attention being paid to this matter will be at a May 18 work session.
Mayor Letty Hardi said the process will involve balancing community input with public policy goals.
In the 5-1 vote, Council member Justine Underhill was absent after sitting through most of the earlier meeting.
