Question: Is the 17.7% target for a sufficient supply of affordable rental housing appropriate?

• Yes, this target is appropriate.

Comments (optional):

Question: What are your thoughts regarding the approach to the geographic distribution of committed affordable housing?

• I agree with the proposed policies.

Comments (optional):

Question: Should Arlington County residents and workers receive a preference for committed affordable housing?

• Yes, I agree that Arlington residents and workers should receive preference.

Comments (optional):

Question: Is it appropriate for this plan to address middle income ownership housing demands?

• Yes, it is appropriate.

Question: Should we be using public funds for higher-income households?

• No, I do not agree.

Question: Would it be more appropriate to address this demand through land use provisions rather than financing?

• Yes, that is more appropriate.

Comments (optional)

Question: Should opportunities for creating greater flexibility of housing types beyond the urban corridors that support both rental and ownership options be further studied?

• Yes, I agree they should be further studied.

Comments (optional):

I particularly support changing the very restrictive provisions of the accessory dwelling ordinance to allow creation of a significantly greater number of accessory dwelling units in the County.

Additional comments on the Draft Affordable Housing Master Plan & Implementation Framework (optional):

Overall the draft Affordable Housing Master Plan is well done. There is a lot of substantive material in the Plan and it takes a close reading of it to understand all the key findings of the Plan. It would be very helpful to readers to add a concise Executive Summary at the beginning of the paper that outlines the Plan's major findings with regard to the principles, goals, objectives and policies that support the County's Vision . Then I recommend labeling the first four pages of Chapter 1 as an Introduction , with the rest of the text following largely as is.

In the new Executive Summary and Introduction, wherever possible phrases such as " a sufficient supply of affordable housing" should be replaced by " a sufficient supply of good quality affordable housing" or " a sufficient supply of safe, decent and affordable housing". The draft plan is heavily focused on the need for more units of affordable housing , with detailed analysis to document this. While there are some good sections in the Plan calling for affordable housing to be safe and decent, (p. 7, 25-26 and 32), these are scattered thru the text and this idea needs to be better integrated into the Plan, so that the County's overall goal is to increase our stock of GOOD QUALITY AFFORDABLE HOUSING. This fits in well with the County's Vision Statement which refers to Arlington having secure and attractive neighborhoods, implying good quality housing in the County.

Some specific comments on wording in the Plan are as follows:

P.3, footnote 2, delete "These (MARKS) units are not regulated by the County or any other public agency..." as this could be misread. MARKS and CAFS are both subject to code enforcement regulation to ensure properties are properly maintained.
The sentence could simply say "There is no assurance that lower income households will live in lower rent MARKS housing units."

P. 16, Goal 1. Change to " Goal 1: Arlington County shall have an adequate supply of good quality affordable housing to meet community needs"

P. 20. Goal 2. Change to "Goal 2: Arlington County shall ensure that all segments of the community have access to good quality affordable housing"

P. 23, discussion of homelessness, in section 2.3.3, fourth line of second para, it's not clear what is meant by "prevention, and diversion resources"

P. 25, Objective 3.1 : Change to "Ensure that all housing is safe, decent and code compliant"

P. 25 section 3.1.2, Change to "Ensure that Market Rate and Committed Affordable (CAF) Housing is code compliant."

P. 26, line 2, it's not clear what's meant by "higher" in the sentence "... the County will ensure that all CAFs are code compliant and that affordable housing units meet higher standards for quality." (higher than what?)

P. 32, Appendix A, Goal 3, change Objective 3.1 to " Ensure that all housing is safe, decent and code compliant"

P. 32, item 3.1.2 change to " Ensure that all Market Rate and Committed Affordable (CAF) Housing is code compliant"

The Plan should be given a close editing before finalizing as it has a number of editorial errors that should be corrected.

A few comments on the Affordable Housing Implementation Framework:

1. In Appendix C, make changes so this Appendix conforms with the changes provided above for Appendix A in the Master Plan.

2. On p. 22 , in the section on Code Enforcement, it says that code enforcement inspections are conducted both proactively and in response to resident complaints. However the Code Enforcement staff , apparently because of many responsibilities and very limited staff, relies mainly on resident complaints to perform inspections in single family areas. As a result, properties can deteriorate if no complaints are made.
Recommend that the County Board seriously consider making modest increases to the CE staff to enable them to do more proactive inspections of single family areas.

3. In the development of the Plan and Implementation Framework the Affordable Housing Study Working Group heard from the Code Enforcement staff that they were no longer doing comprehensive (full code) on site inspections of the interiors of Arlington's larger apartment complexes. These are very valuable inspections for a number of reasons and it is recommended that the County Manager and Board review this decision and ask the CE staff to provide a plan for resuming these inspections, rather than relying on inspections of common areas like the grounds and lobbies of apartment complexes to determine where there may be code violations. Often lower income residents of such buildings are reluctant to report possible code violations to the County for fear of being evicted. This concern is avoided if the County inspectors
ask to see the interiors of apartments in the course of their work and cite the owners for any violations.