Dear Friends,

While last week’s post was about “all things transportation” – this week’s is all about housing. We discussed a comprehensive update on our various affordable housing initiatives, including new affordable rental units at our new buildings (doubling our existing supply of affordable housing), homeownership program, and next steps for Virginia Village – the community of quadplexes we’ve been purchasing over the past 4 years. I’ll also share the fresh off the presses “where students live” analysis – it surprised everyone that our school enrollment is flat when we were forecasting and budgeting for 6% growth.

Finally – we celebrated the groundbreaking at West Falls Church Metro. While this is technically in Fairfax County, this is the final piece of the broader 40 acre development tying together our 10 acre project at West Falls, the Hitt Construction headquarters under construction now (adjacent to Mustang Alley), with a redevelopment of Metro’s asphalt parking lot. I’ve been fielding questions about the impacts to access and parking at WFC Metro, so read on for that.

City Council is still meeting next week (Monday night regular meeting and committee meetings up until Wednesday) – but I’ll be taking a break on my posts and resume the first week of December after our annual joint meeting with the School Board.

Happy Thanksgiving,
Letty

PS – with holidays quickly approaching, mark your calendars for festivities in The Little City, including the annual “Winter Wonderland” at Founders Row on Tuesday December 2 and so many ways to shop and live local.

What Happened This Week:

(1) All Things Housing

We welcomed the Housing Commission with their annual report and then heard staff updates on our various affordable housing programs. The Housing Commission was instrumental this year in advocating for more specific housing goals (see my post about the adoption of the Affordable Living Policy) – such as doubling our affordable housing stock from where it is now (from 3% to 6% of our total housing stock), preserving our existing affordable units, creating more deeply affordable units, expanding options for unhoused, and continuing to provide a spectrum of diverse housing options. For a small jurisdiction, we’ve had ambitious housing programs and policies, trying to do our part in a shared regional and national housing crisis.

Highlights from the staff presentation:

• With the opening of new mixed use buildings, we’ve had 99 new units of (never expiring) affordable dwelling units – essentially doubling our current stock. These units range from 40-80% of Area Median Income (AMI) with majority for 60% AMI.
• 17% of these units are occupied by city or school employees who get higher priority
• We’ve also been creating “deeply affordable” units with local funds for 30-50% of AMI households – and now have sustained 15 units in the city
• Our affordable homeownership program has created first time homeownership opportunities for 9 households, with a target for 20. We have 3 units available for sale right now – help spread the word!

Also – we now have a new housing dashboard that tracks our affordable housing programs with a lot more information you can dive into.

Virginia Village – what’s next

For the past 4+ years (see my first post on Virginia Village back in February 2021!), the City has been slowly acquiring quadplexes in Virginia Village with the consistent goal of preserving the market rate affordable housing and eventual plan for redevelopment to add more affordable housing. With the recent acquisition of 3 more quads (a total of 9 city-owned out of 20 total quads), we discussed a staff proposal on a roadmap forward. The staff report has more details, outlining how the City could proceed with issuing an RFP in the next calendar year and simultaneously develop a new vision and zoning tools for the future of the Virginia Village neighborhood with community input along the way.

I expect more discussion in January 2026 after staff collects more input on the feasibility of the roadmap.

We also discussed a draft MOA with the EDA, who is the official owner on behalf of the city, to address property management, financial management, acquisition, and future plans. The EDA had put some of their funds ($475K net) into the acquisition of the quads and the rest of the purchases have been mainly funded by Amazon ($3.75M), ARPA ($2.1M), and HUD grants ($850K) and city reserves (about $2M).

(2) Deep Dive – Where Students Live 2025

The long awaited “where students live” analysis was presented at the School Board meeting this week. This was more anticipated than usual this year because we expected and budgeted for 6% enrollment growth, but yet saw flat enrollment instead. If it weren’t for the new developments, we would actually have seen declining school enrollments similar to Arlington, Fairfax, and Montgomery County schools who all have declining enrollment – ie, I don’t think Falls Church is immune to the broader regional and economic headwinds. 

A note – one of the top FAQs and misconceptions I’ve heard for 10 years is that our schools are crowded and mixed use buildings are causing that crowding. You can see below that we’re barely above 2017 school enrollment numbers, but yet have added 20% more population and 30% more housing stock since 2015. Because we worked on school capacity with the expansion of Mt Daniel and the secondary campus, we have ample room to grow.

Here are my takeaways after watching the presentation and looking at the data. You can dive into the data yourself:

• Our demographer talked about the “air coming out of the region’s entire economy” due to loss of federal and private sector jobs, immigration changes, and housing affordability as the reasons why the region is losing population. And why his school enrollment projections were off 150+ students.
• We increased 40 students in new mixed use buildings as expected and added some to older apartment buildings while losing some in single family homes and townhomes, resulting in overall flat enrollment. It’s notable that we lost 30 students from SFH – while rare, about the same were lost during the Covid years.
• Overall single family homes still contribute about 60% of school enrollment, townhomes 13%, older apartments 15%, and new mixed use 11%.

(3) West Falls Church Metro Station

On Wednesday, we joined our neighbors in Fairfax County, WMATA, and others for the groundbreaking at West Falls Church Metro Station, representing 10+ years of vision and work across multiple jurisdictions, public and private entities – and caps off the final phase of a 40+ acre project at the corner of Rt 7 and Haycock. We look forward to welcoming our new neighbors in Fairfax County.

This is a win on many fronts: transit oriented development + using excess asphalt parking + housing + ridership to West Falls Church Metro Station + a connected road network that finally creates access to the Metro station from Rt 7 + new HQ for Hitt Construction + new businesses + new parks, trails, green space. And of course the first phase in Falls Church helped finance our new Meridian High School.

Construction will take 18-24 months and like all other ones, it will be messy and disruptive. I’ve been fielding questions about how access to WFC Metro Station, the bus bays, and parking will work. See below for details. The bottom line is that the asphalt parking lots will be closed for redevlopment, with the garage remaining open during and after construction (except for part of the 1st floor between Nov 2025 – July 2026). Parking utilization analysis was also done to accommodate return to work and expected future demand. More details here.

We thank the community in advance for your patience!

What’s Coming Up:

Monday, November 24 – City Council Meeting*

Monday, December 1 – City Council Work Session (joint with School Board)*

Wednesday, December 3 – Ask the Council Office Hours (City Hall, 9 am)

Monday, December 8 – City Council Meeting*

*Mondays (except 5th Mondays and holidays) at 7:30 pm. You can access the agenda and livestream here, including recordings of past meetings