After public outcry over a rushed plan, the Alexandria Planning Commission deferred a city staff proposal to allow developers to build affordable housing into new apartment buildings up to 70 feet in height in areas where height limits are 45 feet or more.
There were more than 30 speakers at the meeting on Thursday, June 23, mostly residents of Del Ray.
The Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority (ARHA) announced that later this year, the headquarters will be renamed in honor of activist and former ARHA Chairman A. Melvin Miller.
Miller, who died in 2015, was a civil rights activist and affordable housing advocate in Alexandria who, among his many positions in city and state leadership, served as chairman of ARHA from 1970 to 1977 and from 2001 to 2012.
Alexandria’s Board of Architectural Review (BAR) gave a thumbs up to the demolition of an Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority property, but not without a stern rebuke to the housing authority’s history of neglect.
ARHA is working through the city process to demolish the Samuel Madden homes at the north end of the Parker-Gray neighborhood. The homes were built as workforce housing during the Second World War and ARHA leadership said the properties have deteriorated beyond preservation.
The City of Alexandria is considering increasing the number of auxiliary dwellings allowed in commercial buildings and nixing the parking requirements for most of them.
One of the biggest behind-the-scenes projects at City Hall has been an effort to make auxiliary dwellings — formerly accessory dwellings, we’ll get into that later — more viable in Alexandria.
A few months after its initial approval, a new 474-unit affordable housing development in Arlandria is headed back for city review with a few amendments spurred on in part by Saint Rita Catholic Church holding onto an alleyway central to the housing developer’s plans.
The Alexandria Housing Development Corporation‘s (AHDC) Mount Vernon and Glebe project — which presumably will get another name before the development is finalized — is headed to review at the Planning Commission on Thursday, June 23 and to the City Council on Tuesday, July 5.
(Updated 6/14) A pair of new affordable housing projects are headed to the City Council for financing.
Both of the new developments will have just under 100 units; all locked in at various levels of affordability.
With a potential wave of evictions incoming next month, a group representing tenants of Southern Towers is trying to indirectly pressure the building’s owner into giving residents a reprieve.
The 2,261-unit Southern Towers complex at 4901 Seminary Road is one of the last bastions of market-rate affordable housing — housing that’s affordable without being set at a certain level by agreement with the local government. The West End building was purchased in 2020 by California-based real estate company CIM Group.
A new redevelopment project that could bring hundreds of new affordable housing units to the Braddock neighborhood is headed to city and public review throughout this month.
The mixed-use redevelopment of Samuel Madden Homes in Braddock is scheduled for a pair of community meetings next week followed by a review at the Board of Architectural Review in two weeks.
A recent Agenda Alexandria meeting with some of the city’s leading affordable housing advocates provided a deep dive into some of the unique challenges and opportunities in the field locally.
In particular, the panel looked at how addressing the affordable housing crisis in Alexandria has changed since the pandemic started.
(Updated 4/21/22) Alexandria’s City Council has finalized a list of priorities with some inclusions that could shape city policy in the coming years.
The city announced the adoption of the priorities yesterday (April 19), though their origin goes back to the Council retreat in January and the vote to approve them took place in March.
The city government could be opening up new swaths of Alexandria to taller buildings and more affordable housing.
Currently, the city trades bonus density in developments for more affordable housing, but only in areas with a height limit of 50 feet or above. Developers are allowed to exceed established height limits to a degree in exchange for affordable housing units or an equivalent contribution to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
