Category: Virginia
RE: Support for Accessory Dwelling Units in Alexandria
January 23, 2021
Alexandria City Council
301 King Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
RE: Support for Accessory Dwelling Units in Alexandria
Dear Mayor Wilson and Members of City Council:
Please accept these comments on behalf of the Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG), the leading organization in the DC region advocating for walkable, inclusive, transit-oriented communities. CSG appreciates the City of Alexandria’s efforts to develop an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) policy and writes to convey our full support of the proposal. CSG has become a leading expert on ADUs through our work in DC and our just-released DC ADU homeowners manual.
Accessory dwelling units can offer less expensive housing options than renting or buying a single-family home because of their smaller size. They are great for an aging parent you are caring for, offer a home for your recent college graduate, or a young professional just starting their career. ADUs can also offer a stream of income for homeowners, including lower-income homeowners and retirees on fixed incomes.
CSG is enthusiastic about the strong provisions being proposed that will help make the City’s program a success, such as allowing ADUs citywide, and enhance their feasibility and affordability by not requiring off street parking in our transit-rich, walkable city, and not requiring owner-occupancy on site.
An owner-occupancy requirement lacks flexibility for the homeowner and may limit one’s ability to build an ADU. It can make it difficult for homeowners to finance an ADU. This may serve to exacerbate income and racial inequities by limiting the ability of homeowners to construct ADUs to those with sufficient equity in their homes. An owner-occupancy requirement would also be limiting to people who must move on short notice, such as military and diplomatic families, who often choose to rent out their primary residence. We also note that single-family homes today are already frequently rented out by owners who are not living on site. The owner-occupancy requirement would be a barrier to constructing ADUs and undermine the goal of increasing the supply of ADUs in the city.
We encourage the city to include requirements for regular review, reporting, and recommendations by city staff on refinements to the program. This could include creating an affordability program for low-income renters or buyers, assessing size limitations and setbacks and their impact, whether or not the program has exacerbated or improved racial and income inequalities, and recommendations to address any other barriers towards creating new housing through ADUs.
We understand that some Alexandria residents who are opposed to ADUs and previously opposed the Seminary Road safety project have attacked CSG and our supporters as being outsiders. CSG is a longstanding, 24-year-old regional organization advocating for transit, safe streets, transit-oriented development, and affordable housing throughout the DMV and were honored with the Council of Governments’ (COG) Regional Partnership Award in 2017. Our staff live in Northern Virginia, Maryland, and DC and work with local advocates in each jurisdiction. We sent emails about the ADU program to our Alexandria members and subscribers encouraging them to participate in the ADU study process and to contact the City Council, and we remind our supporters that the emails on Alexandria issues are focused on Alexandria residents. At the same time, local elected officials meeting at COG have agreed that housing, like transportation, is a regional issue, requiring shared effort by every jurisdiction.
CSG believes the proposed ADU policy is a bold step forward in establishing a strong program that will help provide more housing options in Alexandria. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Stewart Schwartz
Executive Director
Sonya Breehey
Northern Virginia Advocacy Manager
Take Action: Show your support for missing middle housing
Dear Sonya,
There are just two days left to provide your input on Arlington’s Missing Middle Study. You will find the presentation thought-provoking about the housing challenges facing Arlington, and by responding to the questions you will help us all think about the impact of high housing costs and options for addressing Arlington’s housing needs.
View the presentation and provide feedback
What is missing middle housing? “Missing middle” refers to the range of housing types that fit between single-family detached homes and mid-to-high-rise apartment buildings. Having different types and sizes of homes helps provide more options at different price points. Examples of missing middle housing include duplexes, triplexes, and townhomes. These images are some examples shared in Arlington’s Missing Middle presentation.
The opportunity to provide feedback ends December 31. Visit Arlington’s Missing Middle Study website for more information and to provide your input today!
Take Action: Speak-up for Accessory Dwelling Units in Alexandria
The City of Alexandria is developing a policy to make Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) a viable option for providing more affordable housing in the city. They just released draft ADU policy recommendations and want to hear what you think. Please take a moment to complete a short ADU survey to show your support for making accessory dwellings a success in Alexandria.
ADUs can offer less expensive housing options than renting or buying a single-family home because of their smaller size.They are great for an aging parent you are caring for, offer a home for your recent college graduate, or a young professional just starting their career. ADUs can also offer a stream of income for homeowners, including retirees on fixed incomes.
Overall, the draft recommendations are very good. The owner occupancy requirement is one area that could be improved. While this requirement is common among local jurisdictions, it lacks flexibility for the homeowner and may limit one’s ability to build an ADU. Eliminating this requirement would encourage more ADUs.
Here’s a breakdown on the draft recommendations:
- Allows detached ADUs (ie. garage apartment, backyard cottage) and interior ADUs (ie. English basements) on properties zoned for single, two-family and townhouses city-wide. This is great!
- Establishes an owner-occupancy requirement. Eliminating this requirement would offer a stronger ADU policy.
- No additional off-street parking is required for the ADU. We support this helfpul provision that prioritizes using valuable land to house people. It also helps reduce the amount of impervious surface needed on the property.
- Restricts ADU occupancy to one family. This provision seems reasonable since Alexandria’s zoning code permits not only a family related by blood but also includes nontraditional families and roommates for up to four unrelated people.
- Requires an administrative permit for the construction of an ADU. This is less onerous than making ADUs a special exemption that requires a more costly and time consuming process.
- Establishes a maximum ADU height and square footage that won’t exceed the main house. This is a reasonable approach to ensuring the ADU is smaller in scale to the main house and compatible with the neighborhood.
- Maintains setback requirements and floor area ratio exclusions consistent with current building and zoning codes for other types of accessory buildings, like garages.
- Current city policies allowing short-term rentals will be applied to ADUs also.
Take the ADU survey today to tell them what you support and suggest how they can make it even better!
The City is taking feedback on its draft ADU policy recommendations through this Friday, November 6. Input received will further refine final recommendations for Planning Commission and City Council consideration in December. Visit Alexandria’s ADU webpage for more information.
Thank you for your support,
Sonya Breehey
Northern Virginia Advocacy Manager
Event: A Virtual Walk & Talk Along Little Hunting Creek
If you missed our virtual stream walk with the Audubon Naturalist Society and Fairfax County staff, you can watch the presentation here.
From ANS: On September 10th, 2020, Fairfax County staff Charles Smith & JoAnne Fiebe led us on a virtual walk-and-talk of an area around Mount Vernon Plaza, part of Little Hunting Creek, one of the sites of a proposed “ecological spine“. This concept, introduced in Chapter 3 of the Richmond Highway Urban Design Guidelines, envisions how streams can be made part of the community again. Instead of burying streams and building on top of them, how can redevelopment integrate streams and their riparian buffers into walkable, bikeable areas where people and nature can thrive in urban settings?
Tune in to the webinar to hear about the vision for the Route 1 redevelopment and hear about how redevelopment can be tied to creating healthier streams, and therefore a healthier world for us.
ACTION ALERT: Because this design is unsafe
Higher speeds and wide roads that prioritize cars over people have led to rising pedestrian crashes and fatalities. Four people have been struck and killed along the Richmond Highway corridor already in 2020, the latest just a couple weeks ago.
Thanks to advocacy by CSG and local partners, VDOT is considering reducing the speed limit but we need your help to make sure it happens. Reducing the speed limit 10 mph increases the chances of surviving a crash by 40%. Would you take a moment to send an email to VDOT and Fairfax County showing support for lowering the speed limit to 35mph and redesigning the road to make it safer for people to walk, bike, and take transit?
Yes! I support a safer Richmond Highway.
Pedestrian deaths increased by 10% in Virginia from 2018 to 2019 alone, many of them on wide high-speed arterials like Richmond Highway. Smart Growth America’s report Dangerous by Design finds that older adults and people of color are disproportionately represented among pedestrian deaths, primarily because of the high-speed arterials that divide communities like those along Richmond Highway.
VDOT’s own 2018 Pedestrian Safety Action Plan identified Richmond Highway in Fairfax as one of the state’s priority crash corridors and proposed safety improvements. Between 2011-2016, the crash rate along Richmond Highway was 60% higher than the state average. We can’t wait any longer!
Tell VDOT and Fairfax County to:
- Lower the speed limit to a safer 35 mph ASAP
- Provide immediate safety improvements along the corridor
- Reconsider the widening plans to physically design the road for 35 mph
Physically designing the roadway for 35 mph by narrowing travel lanes would help reduce speeding, allow for smaller buffers within the right of way, and minimize the crossing distances for pedestrians.
And there are other benefits: A 35 mph speed limit potentially eliminates the need for sound walls, further reducing the extent of the widening and getting rid of physical barriers that cut off neighborhoods. Money saved by buying less right-of-way and not building sound walls could go toward the cost of undergrounding unsightly overhead power lines, which also helps make room for bigger shade trees.
Speak up now for safer speeds and better design.
A safer roadway will not only reduce the tragic deaths and serious injuries to residents, it will ensure Fairfax achieves the vibrant, transit-oriented economic development the county and community desire for the corridor.
ACTION: Support Accessory Dwelling Units in Alexandria
The City of Alexandria wants to hear from you as they develop an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) policy. You are encouraged to view the City’s second ADU presentation and provide feedback on how Alexandria can create an ADU policy to help make more affordable housing options a reality in the city.
TESTIMONY re: Support of the Heritage at Old Town
We urge you to approve the Heritage at Old Town. Alexandria has lost over 90% of its affordable housing over the past two decades. We face a housing affordability crisis in Alexandria and neighboring jurisdictions. Multiple studies demonstrate that we need both more supply and more long-term committed affordable units. This project provides both. Supply is critical to avoid displacement, and a range of tools are needed including leveraging land value and density to ensure we create more affordable units.
Coalition Re-releases Fairfax Healthy Communities Platform
Coalition for Smarter Growth, Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions, Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance, Audubon Naturalist Society, Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling, Friends of Accotink Creek, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Potomac Conservancy, Friends of Dyke Marsh, Audubon Society of Northern Virginia, Virginia Clinicians for Climate Action, Fairfax County NAACP
Fairfax Healthy Communities: Sustainable, Inclusive, Livable
A Joint Vision for Fairfax County in 2019
We support a vision for Fairfax County that is sustainable, inclusive, and livable and urge candidates for local and state office in Fairfax County to support this vision and to commit to the implementation steps necessary to make this vision a reality.
We share a vision for Fairfax County where the County commits to:
- Providing housing opportunities for people of all incomes, ages, and stages of life in every district in the county, investing in improving affordable housing and access to opportunity in communities where there are concentrations of poverty, and fostering greater racial and economic integration in single-family, low-poverty neighborhoods.
- Ensuring transit, walking, bicycling and other modes of active transportation are well-funded, safe, convenient and accessible for people of all ages, giving residents more choices and reducing traffic congestion.
- Creating vibrant, mixed-use, mixed-income transit-oriented communities which provide a range of housing choices and employment opportunities, while reducing vehicle trips and vehicle miles traveled.
- Fighting climate change by dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, transportation and other sources.
- Restoring watersheds to ensure clean drinking water and healthier ecosystems.
- Expanding parks and trail networks.
- Ensuring access for all to affordable health care and healthy local food.
- Taking specific steps to realize its One Fairfax commitment to racial and social equity, community involvement, and the 17 goals laid out in the One Fairfax policy.
A sustainable, inclusive, healthy, competitive, and fiscally sustainable future for Fairfax requires a fundamental shift in land use, transportation, housing and energy policies toward walkable, mixed-use, mixed-income, and transit-oriented and green energy communities, and the full engagement of the community in achieving this future.
Signed:
Coalition for Smarter Growth
Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions
Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance
Audubon Naturalist Society
Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling
Friends of Accotink Creek
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
Potomac Conservancy
Friends of Dyke Marsh
Audubon Society of Northern Virginia
Virginia Clinicians for Climate Action
Fairfax County NAACP
* The above signatories are 501(c)(3) organizations. This platform is strictly educational and is being shared with all candidates and the public. By law, our organizations are strictly prohibited from participating in, or intervening in (including the publishing or distribution of statements) any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.
Update! Fairfax Healthy Communities Platform – 2 new groups incl Fairfax County NAACP
Coalition for Smarter Growth, Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions, Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance, Audubon Naturalist Society, Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling, Friends of Accotink Creek, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Potomac Conservancy, Friends of Dyke Marsh, Audubon Society of Northern Virginia, Virginia Clinicians for Climate Action, Fairfax County NAACP
Fairfax Healthy Communities: Sustainable, Inclusive, Livable
A Joint Vision for Fairfax County in 2019
We support a vision for Fairfax County that is sustainable, inclusive, and livable and urge candidates for local and state office in Fairfax County to support this vision and to commit to the implementation steps necessary to make this vision a reality.
We share a vision for Fairfax County where the County commits to:
- Providing housing opportunities for people of all incomes, ages, and stages of life in every district in the county, investing in improving affordable housing and access to opportunity in communities where there are concentrations of poverty, and fostering greater racialand economic integration in single-family, low-poverty neighborhoods.
- Ensuring transit, walking, bicycling and other modes of active transportation are well-funded, safe, convenient and accessible for people of all ages, giving residents more choices and reducing traffic congestion.
- Creating vibrant, mixed-use, mixed-income transit-oriented communities which provide a range of housing choices and employment opportunities, while reducing vehicle trips and vehicle miles traveled.
- Fighting climate change by dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, transportation and other sources.
- Restoring watersheds to ensure clean drinking water and healthier ecosystems.
- Expanding parks and trail networks.
- Ensuring access for all to affordable health care and healthy local food.
- Taking specific steps to realize its One Fairfax commitment to racial and social equity, community involvement, and the 17 goals laid out in the One Fairfax policy.
A sustainable, inclusive, healthy, competitive, and fiscally sustainable future for Fairfax requires a fundamental shift in land use, transportation, housing and energy policies toward walkable, mixed-use, mixed-income, and transit-oriented and green energy communities, and the full engagement of the community in achieving this future.
Signed:
Coalition for Smarter Growth
Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions
Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance
Audubon Naturalist Society
Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling
Friends of Accotink Creek
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
Potomac Conservancy
Friends of Dyke Marsh
Audubon Society of Northern Virginia
Virginia Clinicians for Climate Action
Fairfax County NAACP
* The above signatories are 501(c)(3) organizations. This platform is strictly educational and is being shared with all candidates and the public. By law, our organizations are strictly prohibited from participating in, or intervening in (including the publishing or distribution of statements) any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.