ALXnow will be running a series of City Council candidate interviews through the local election filing deadline on April 4.
Alexandria City Council candidate Charlotte Scherer is running to be Alexandria’s first transgender City Councilor and is one of the few candidates firmly against the Potomac Yard arena deal.
Del Ray’s Jesse O’Connell has thrown his hat into the City Council race.
O’Connell launched a campaign website this morning and announced his intention to run in an email.
Two longtime affordable housing advocacy nonprofits have announced that, as of Jan. 1, the groups have officially merged.
The Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance (NVAHA) and the Alliance for Housing Solutions (AHS) announced in a release that they’d be consolidating into one organization.
(Updated 3:15 p.m.) As temperatures drop below freezing, the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority is warning its low-income families that they will be arrested if caught wearing ski masks.
In a Nov. 14 notification to approximately 1,500 low-income households under its watch, ARHA said that the Alexandria Police Department notified them that they will start “enforcing the prohibition against wearing face coverings that hide an individual’s face now that the COVID pandemic is over.”
Single-family-only zoning is no more in Alexandria.
Alexandria’s City Council voted unanimously at around 1 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 29, to approve the Zoning for Housing/Housing for All initiative.
Few speakers at a six-hour City Council meeting last night seemed fully satisfied with the Zoning for Housing/Housing for All initiative, but the public comment was divided between those who saw the proposal as a good first step and those who thought it threatened the city’s character.
While nearly all speakers at a six-hour public hearing last night said they supported affordable housing, opinions on the city’s Zoning for Housing/Housing for All initiative varied widely.
The Alexandria Planning Commission unanimously endorsed a sweeping overhaul of the city’s zoning ordinances on Wednesday night, giving City Council the green light to vote on it later this month.
There were more than 100 attendees and 51 speakers at the Planning Commission’s five hour public hearing, which ran after midnight. The speakers were a mixed bunch, with about half supporting the legislation and the other half opposing it.
Alexandria renting units in Class A apartments — newer, high-rise buildings — have seen their rent increase by an average of 4.7% over the last year, real estate website UrbanTurf reported.
Those Class A units comprise the majority of new construction around the region and are generally developments built after 1991 and featuring amenities. The effective rent per month in one of those units in Alexandria, which includes a mix of studios, one and two-bedroom rentals, is $2,475 per month.
A panel last night on the city’s Zoning for Housing/Housing for All overhaul dived into the back and forth on the issue, including questions about the timeline from proposal to final review.
The proposal includes a number of changes to the city’s housing zoning, the most high-profile being allowing two-to-four-unit dwellings in formerly single-family residential zones. Other substantial changes include making it easier to build housing in industrial zones and eliminating minimum parking requirements for dwellings with up to four units in enhanced transit zones.
Discussion panel program Agenda: Alexandria is hosting a panel tonight to bring advocates and opponents of the city’s housing reform together for a showdown.
The chosen dueling ground will be the Lyceum (201 S. Washington Street) at 7 p.m., though onlookers can also view the panel online.
City leaders broke ground on Housing Alexandria‘s 474-unit affordable apartment complex in Arlandria on Wednesday, capping off the largest project of its kind in Alexandria history.
It will be 2026 by the time residents start moving into the two-building, 36,000 square-foot complex, Housing Alexandria said in a release. The buildings, named Sansé and Naja, will be located near the corner of W. Glebe Road and Mount Vernon Avenue. The property will include a large underground parking garage and 34,000 square feet of commercial space, which will include childcare and health care services, according to Housing Alexandria.
