Virginia suburbanites are fighting a plan supported by Democrats and developers to impose highly populated townhouses and apartment buildings on quiet single-family neighborhoods.
The anti-suburbia plan is backed by Democrats because they want to put more poor people — who are both taxpayers and supporters — into their jurisdiction.
People opposed to the plan showed up at a recent meeting with signs that read, “Save our neighborhood. No upzoning!”
Those who support it held signs that read, “In our neighborhood, density means diversity.”
The Washington Post reported on the “raucous meeting” and the “future of this affluent, deep-blue Northern Virginia suburb.”
The Post reported:
The draft framework, which county lawmakers will begin taking up Tuesday, would do away with single-family zoning across Arlington, a county of 240,000 that sits on the doorstep of the nation’s capital. It is a product of a years-long study that considered the role these medium-density homes can play in expanding the housing supply in an increasingly expensive metropolitan area.
Longtime Arlington homeowners who moved here decades ago fear that greater density would take away the tree canopy that attracted them to the area while crowding roads and schools and potentially leading to higher taxes. Other community advocates, many of them renters, argue that the plan would lower skyrocketing housing prices and accommodate the growing number of residents in the D.C. metro area.
Arlington has a proud history of careful suburban planning, and it has for decades operated under one guiding principle: Development and growth belong around a few high-density corridors, tapering off into the single-family homes and green lawns that occupy the vast majority of the county. But as major companies and more residents have moved to Arlington and housing prices have shot up, county planners have sought to reconsider whether existing land-use policies are the best fit for this former bedroom community.
“The vast majority of homeowners have absolutely no idea that there is such a proposal, and they have absolutely no idea what it might mean for them,” Peter Rousselot, who is a leader of Arlingtonians for Our Sustainable Future and a condo owner in Virginia Square, said in the Post report.
People in favor of “density and diversity” belong to the “Yes in My Back Yard,” or YIMBY, group in Northern Virginia.
“We’re in a housing crisis,” Jane Green, president of the group said in the report. “We need more homes.”
Sales of new single-family homes in the U.S. plunged in April, the fourth consecutive monthly decline, falling to the lowest level since April of 2020. https://t.co/zOaG9TF2XA
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) May 24, 2022
The Post noted Joe Biden is siding with the density movement, including pushing for a $10 billion plan that would offer financial incentives to states and localities to relax single-family zoning laws.
The Post also noted that in December the average price of a single family home in Arlington was more than $1.2 million.
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