Much to my surprise, apparently, many on Loudon’s BOCS are standing strong against a massive housing rezoning effort by Developers. You know, those who are frothing at the mouth of the possibility of a bi county parkway opening up rural and transitional areas. You can read the full article here.
Members of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors frowned Wednesday night at a developer’s request to more than triple the number of houses it could build on land west of Dulles Airport, a potentially ominous sign for home builders hoping to reenter the suburban market.
Under existing zoning, Corbelis Development NoVa LLC of Ashburn can build 245 single-family detached homes on 737 acres it owns south of Route 50, part of a more than 4,000-acre community it is building called the Greens at Willowsford on what is now rolling farmland.
The Developer would like to quadruple the number of housing units to over 800! Haven’t we seen this rodeo show before? In the end, we find ourselves here, overcrowded schools, congested roads, inadequate infrastructure like police, fire/rescue, libraries, parks, both opens space and recreational. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results?!
The Piedmont Environmental Council, an advocacy group, issued an alert to supporters before the hearing. Some of the applications are along a proposed road, the Bi-County Parkway, that has sparked opposition amid suggestions that it would lead to the construction of an outer beltway.
“If there’s one thing that Loudoun County and our Board of Supervisors should have learned from our earlier explosive growth, it’s that adding more development to the pipeline will further degrade our community with sky-high debt and lower standards of living,” wrote Ed Gorski, Piedmont land-use field officer.
PEC has it right. Balanced growth is about maintaining a community standard of living. Like PWC, their quality of life infrastructure is struggling to keep up with the past housing explosion.
Most of the board members present, however, said they saw little reason to approve new housing units in an area designated as a transition zone between suburban and rural parts of the county.
In closing, I wonder, will our BOCS also maintain our development areas for development? Will they invest our finite amount of tax dollars where the infrastructure is needed the most? Or, like in the recent past, Avendale as the best example, allow our rural areas to become an unnecessary money pit? Will they acknowledge that the bi country parkway is indeed a developers best fantasy dream realized, with little benefit to PWC citizens. Lest we forget, the Gainesville Sector plan, passed in 2003, allows for as many as two Tysons Corners, with housing included, to be built along the Linton Hall corridor and route 29. Time will tell and citizens will be watching.
I have worked with folks in Human Servicess and Transportation up in Loudon and they have had concerns also with this. They are still trying to play “catch-up” from the last round of development.
Balanced growth is the right approach, but in PWC it is interesting when you start to look at the various plans. I had lunch yesterday with someone and one of our topics was affordable housing. PWC OHCD did that study and reported it last year, and if you recall, it was not received well by several of the BOCS….their main theme is we have enough.
But when you go looking in the plans, when you take the Comp Plan it says nothing about affordable housing….when you ask OHCD, they refer you to the report…and then, lo and behold! Look at the Build Out Study 2012 posted on Planning webpage, and that document discusses affordable housing.
Moral of the Story? right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.
I am confused by the term affordable housing. Does that mean apartment rental or home ownership?
Don’t you think people aren’t really interested in affordable housing because they don’t want to attract a bad element? (in quotes, of course)
I have mixed feelings on this issue.
How many of us can say without lying that we really want ‘affordable housing’ in our neighborhood?
During the immigration ‘crisis,’ affordable housing was people simply renting out dorm space, with 15 people living in a single family house. That housing was very affordable but it caused multiple problems.
Excellent points Ray. Like I mentioned before, Corey showing up at a VOICE meeting and talking about the scurge of abortion was really just his defense so that no one would know how little he understood about the policy elements of creating real affordable housing.
I don’t understand it either but I wouldn’t have said something as stupid as ending ‘the scurge of abortion.”
Elena, Corey really does understand the policy elements of creating real affordable housing but better understands the reduction of profits that affordable housing requirements have on developers forced to comply with them. It is much easier and more profitable to simply require a $250 contribution per unit, the developers profit from a greater return per unit and Corey profits from the contributions that flow into his campaign war chest.
@Mom
I can partially agree with your statement. I believe he does understand the schmoozing/horse trading by developers, thus lining his coffers. I’m just not so sure he understands the policy end of affordable housing.
@Moon-howler
The simple definition is you should not be spending more than 1/3 or your annual income on housing – rent/mortgage. That includes such things as HOA/Condo Fees and Utilities.
“Affordable Housing” has two definitions; one from the Federal Housing & Urban Development, the other is from the Metropolitian Council of Governments (COG).
HUD says that housing is affordable if the cost to rent/own should not exceed 30% of the median income. PWC Median Income at present is $96,160 so “affordable” is housing cost at or below $28,839 a year ($2,403 a month). The HUD definition is the one used for Housing Voucher Programs.
COG suggest using a 45% of the median income as they factor in transportation costs. So if you used COG’s, “affordable” is $43,258 ($3505 a month).
Using the “1/3rd Rule”, it would be $32,053 ($2671 a month).
Ok, so we have the $2403 as a baseline…now, how much are you making a month to be able to afford rent/living is factored into the definition (either HUD or COG). Considering the average monthly wage in PWC is around $4,000 and then you look at mortgages/rents for this area, we do have an issue of affordability.
Unfortunately, as you wrote Moon, it has a bad connotation from the immigration crisis you refer to. I take the other view – given the majority of income is Middle to Low, and there are older persons/disabled persons on fixed incomes, affordability should be looked at as encouraging strong communities. Alas, that is a pipe dream, but I argue it all the time.
Very informative. Thanks, Ray. There are so many apartments around here….so many town houses. Why do we need more?
I thought that affordable housing was just one of those expressions people said when they didn’t want to say ‘poor people living in low income housing’ or ‘turning a single family house into a flop house.’