The Alliance for Housing Solutions (AHS) is a nonprofit organization in Arlington that works to increase the supply of affordable housing in our area. AHS was founded in 2003 by civic leaders who were concerned that Arlington was becoming a place where only the affluent could afford to live.
AHS has a tradition of publishing housing-related positions of candidates running for the County Board. The candidates for the 2021 County Board election are Mike T. Cantwell (I), Audrey Clement (I), Takis Karantonis (D-Incumbent), and Adam Theo (I).
The following questions were selected from a questionnaire conducted by the Political Action Committee of the Arlington Branch of the NAACP:
What concrete and measurable steps would you take to further fair housing and to desegregate residential communities?
Affordable housing policy is often limited to rental housing and apartment initiatives. How will you support communities of color in their advancement of wealth generation through homeownership?
How would you improve the county’s response to housing quality complaints and ensure justice for victims of housing discrimination?
Each candidate’s responses to these questions are provided below in their entirety. Because we do not support individual political candidates, AHS does not evaluate or rate these responses. For more information on the candidates, please see Arlington County’s voting and elections website.
Question 1: What concrete and measurable steps would you take to further fair housing and to desegregate residential communities?
Mike T. Cantwell
The Fair Housing Act prohibits this discrimination because of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability. If I am elected, I will work closely with the Arlington NAACP to help victims file complaints with HUD and/or the Virginia Fair Housing Office.
I’m working with local Realtors and NVAR (Northern Virginia Realtors) to learn more about de facto segregation in Arlington neighborhoods. I plan to hold focus group discussions soon.
Audrey Clement
First and foremost, I would stop efforts to upzone single-family home neighborhoods under the rubric of “Missing Middle” housing. Upzoning will densify neighborhoods by replacing single-family homes with multi-family dwellings. While it will produce more housing, that housing will not be affordable to anyone earning less than area median income, which is about $120,000 per year.
For proof look no further than a tear-down development in the traditionally black High View Park neighborhood, where in 2018 two duplexes were built each priced at $1.2 million or double the assessed value of the single-family home they replaced. A similar development is ongoing in the traditionally black Green Valley neighborhood, where a couple of single-family homes were torn down to make way for eight new townhouses, each priced at over $800,00 or $125,000 more per unit than the original homes. https://www.arlnow.com/2021/03/10/peters-take-arlingtons-missing-middle-housing-is-high-end-housing/
Furthermore, a recent paper published by researchers at NYU demonstrated that upzoning neighborhoods in NYC between 2000 and 2007 resulted in an increase in the white population of these neighborhoods of up to 9 percent. In other words, upzoning resulted in minority displacement, not minority advancement. https://www.thewagnerreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Team-1_Final-Version_v2.pdf
Takis Karantonis
It is a fact that in Arlington many Black American, minority and immigrant households disproportionately experience housing insecurity and de-facto segregation. I believe that safe and secure housing that is affordable based on household income is a basic human and civil right.
It is important that Arlington acknowledges the problem and works together to re-shape our housing policy with the explicit goal of eliminating racial and socioeconomic inequalities over time. On Housing, I commit to:
a. Pursue Zoning Reforms that (a) expand housing options for ALL Arlingtonians, (b) support mixed-income communities, and (c) eliminate de-facto exclusionary zoning.
b. Prioritize geographic distribution of Affordable Housing, with supporting infrastructure and schools near transit and in areas threatened by gentrification.
c. Strengthen and proactively enforce Fair Housing protections, including curbing discrimination stemming from source of income and criminal record.
d. Ensure that all minority-owned properties are assessed and taxed fairly.
e. Use Affordable Housing Investment Fund (AHIF) dollars to support the creation of committed affordable units on the entire lower-income spectrum, with an explicit commitment to support housing options for households earning 40% AMI or less.
f. I voted to fund and expand eligibility for rent-support programs (including but not limited to Housing Grants), eviction protections, and legal-aid programs, and will continue doing so.
g. Fund and expand eligibility under the Moderate Income Purchase Assistance Program (MIPAP) while reviewing and adjusting the shared appreciation model to increase support for equitable wealth building.
h. Measure outcomes and report frequently.
Adam Theo
To reduce and hopefully someday eliminate the housing segregation still facing the community, we need more housing and a wider variety of housing in more areas of the county. Building “Missing Middle” and affordable housing along bus and other transit routes is the key to greater housing affordability and opening up opportunities for housing ownership to build up wealth.
For decades, segregation in Arlington was enforced through racist programs from the federal government, lending institutions, and even real estate industry associations. For those that enjoy a well-researched non-fiction book that have not read it already, I highly recommend “The Color of Law” by Richard Rothstein. It is no match for lived experience, but it is a powerful resource for those of us (such as myself) that admittedly have not had to suffer through discrimination.
The problem we’re now facing today is a problem of housing supply, with so many lower-income residents (predominantly people of color) being priced out of a very restricted and limited housing market, resulting in homes that are increasing in price far faster than the cost of living and even inflation. This is what reinforces the divides in housing between neighborhoods now.
Question 2: Affordable housing policy is often limited to rental housing and apartment initiatives. How will you support communities of color in their advancement of wealth generation through homeownership?
Mike T. Cantwell
Homeownership is important for generating wealth for an individual and future generations. I will encourage the County or nonprofits to offer free, high-quality financial literacy courses. I also feel that the County or nonprofits should also offer down payment assistance.
Audrey Clement
The only mechanism by which minorities or anyone in Arlington County earning less than area median income (AMI) can hope to achieve homeownership without undue financial burden is through the establishment of community land trusts.
According to Community-wealth.org:
“Community land trusts are nonprofit, community-based organizations designed to ensure community stewardship of land. Community land trusts are primarily used to ensure long-term housing affordability. To do so, the trust acquires land and maintains ownership of it permanently. With prospective homeowners, it enters into a long-term, renewable lease instead of a traditional sale. When the homeowner sells, the family earns only a portion of the increased property value. The remainder is kept by the trust, preserving the affordability for future low-to-moderate-income families”. https://community-wealth.org/strategies/panel/clts/index.html
Such an arrangement is needed here because due to its scarcity and proximity to Metro, land values in Arlington County are so grossly inflated that anything built on it is priced out of reach of low and moderate-income families.
Another mechanism to increase housing affordability for people of color would be to reinstate the tax credit for renovation of multi-family dwellings that was rescinded by the County Board in its FY 2021 Budget (Budget Book 87-97). https://arlingtonva.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/02/FY-21-Proposed-All-in-one-02242020.pdf
While the tax credit would not enable wealth generation for tenants, it would incentivize landlords to provide more livable housing and thereby improve the quality of life for those who inhabit their rental units.
Takis Karantonis
Arlington is no exception to significant wealth disparities between Black/minority households and white households. National and regional research suggests that this wealth gap is growing despite any economic or educational attainment advances these communities may have made. A legacy of accumulated intergenerational disadvantages continues to burden upward mobility.
While I am aware that housing policy is only one of many policy-areas calling for coordinated action to address the wealth gap issue, I commit to:
a. Continue to look for opportunities to support moderate-income first-time homebuyers, including funding and expanding eligibility under the MIPAP program as mentioned above.
b. Ensure that housing and zoning policies continue to favor moderate and lower-income home-buyers. For example, I voted to keep Columbia Pike affordable for first-time buyers earning 60% of the Area Median Income (AMI) and opposed efforts to raise this threshold to 80-100 % of AMI, which would have invited further gentrification of that corridor. I also voted to allow by-right expansion of legacy small duplexes, which adds and stabilizes the value of homes owned by moderate-income households.
c. Revisit the Arlington Condo Initiative with an emphasis on stabilizing and supporting moderate-income and financially challenged Condominium associations.
d. Focus on the preservation of legacy, more moderately priced housing stock where first homeownership opportunities are more likely to occur.
e. Continue to advocate for more diverse and more flexible housing types in all neighborhoods, thus creating more affordable ownership opportunities for moderate-income buyers in higher-priced neighborhoods.
Adam Theo
I love this question. It is very true that Arlington’s approach to affordable housing has been almost entirely towards affordable *renting* by subsidizing “non-profit” corporations and giving lucrative deals to developers for a small number of temporary affordable units.
Rather than the status quo that does nothing to fix long-term issues of affordable housing, I would establish Community Land Trusts (CLTs) in all areas of the County to allow lower-income people to buy into homeownership, build generational wealth, preserve existing low-income housing stock, and encourage the building of new affordable units that won’t expire after a few decades.
Community Land Trusts are private non-profit corporations that are co-operatively owned to hold onto land on which houses, condo buildings, and other infrastructure improvements are built. Having land that is co-operatively owned by the residents in this way removes the short-term incentives to sell and re-develop property out from under residents, allowing for long-term stability where people live. Residents then “own” the actual houses and structures, reducing their overall cost but still allowing them to invest in their homes and build wealth that can be passed down to children or later sold.
I would kick-start CLTs by opening up funds in Arlington’s Affordable Housing Investment Fund (AHIF) to emphasize low-interest loans to establish CLTs over continuing to only subsidize rental companies.
It is an excellent free-market method to keep housing affordable, promote ownership instead of being stuck in the cycle of renting, and avoids the corruption that sometimes occurs with contracts and deals to a handful of big developers and apartment operator.
Question 3: How would you improve the county’s response to housing quality complaints and ensure justice for victims of housing discrimination?
Mike T. Cantwell
The Serrano Apartments disaster can be traced back to conflicts of interest between County Board members and Affordable Housing Corporation (AHC) and Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing (APAH).
My fifth priority on my campaign website is to “Expand the County Auditor’s Office.” The Arlington County government has one independent auditor for a $1.4B budget. We need more fiscal controls and more accountability.
Audrey Clement
I’ve been a paying tenant in Westover for the past seventeen years. During that time to my knowledge, the Arlington County Housing Division has never inspected either of the apartment buildings in which I lived.
This situation is not accidental. The idea is for the landlord to milk the rent on a no/low maintenance budget until the property can be sold off to a developer. Since the County reaps the tax benefit from flipped rental properties, it has no interest in maintaining them either, which explains their disappearance.
Thus in 2020 the County actually eliminated a tax credit awarded to landlords who renovated their rental properties (See FY 2021 Budget Book 87-97). https://arlingtonva.s3.amazonaws.com/wpcontent/uploads/sites/18/2020/02/FY-21-Proposed-All-in-one-02242020.pdf
The fact that three-quarters of the market rate affordable housing in the County disappeared within twenty years belies Arlington County’s commitment to it. But don’t take my word for it. The NAACP and other fair housing advocates should submit FOIA requests to the Arlington County Housing Division seeking inspection records for the few remaining market-rate affordable apartments in the County.
Takis Karantonis
Arlington County Government has an administrative framework in place to receive, investigate, and address complaints on housing quality and discrimination. However, the painful experience of the Serrano Apartments showed us that more needs to be done. I commit to:
a. Improve staffing and training of housing inspection and housing quality control services within the County’s Housing Division.
b. Establish a routine of regular (and public) reporting on housing conditions and level and quality of resident services in all publicly supported committed affordable units.
c. Tighten and be deliberate and explicit on contractual prerequisites and built-in safeguards in all contracts with recipients of any type of public funding, including the establishment of a regime of regular inspections and reports on compliance with living quality standards.
d. Strengthen the County’s own tenant outreach program and continue to collaborate with tenant organizations and advocates.
e. Support rethinking of our current dispute resolution and mediation framework, so that it becomes responsive and effective in housing quality disputes.
f. Continue to fund legal aid services for moderate and lower-income tenants as mentioned above.
Adam Theo
The single largest tool for victims of poor housing quality, incidents of safety violations, and discrimination is legal prosecution. I would work with and apply pressure on Arlington’s Commonwealth’s Attorney to prioritize holding landlords, property managers, and any negligent government agencies accountable. It also requires working with community groups to help victims document and file complaints and charges against offenders. The only real way to get landlords, property managers, and county leaders to pay attention and fix problems is to “hit them where it hurts” – their pocketbooks and public popularity.
Sadly, a challenge to prosecuting negligent offenders in housing is if those offenders are a government agency itself or being protected by local government. It is notoriously difficult to charge and punish governments instead of private companies. The best solution is to keep the government from empowering or protecting negligent landlords or property managers with limited liability protections in the first place.
Early voting has begun, and residents can cast their ballots through Tuesday, November 2. For more information on the 2021 Virginia election, visit vote.arlingtonva.us/Elections.