Arlington
- Posted by ryan on July 20th, 2008 filed in Cities, In the News
Has approved a measure allowing homes to rent out rooms, noting that it will help bring down housing costs (or, more realistically, slow growth in housing costs). Good on them. There are, naturally, complaints about overcrowding, which I don’t really understand. People living in other houses will not be sharing a home with the tenants, so their living space will not actually be more crowded. They may fear an influx of new automobiles from the residents. The other side of that coin, however, is that higher densities support more and more distributed retail, which means that (zoning permitting) fewer trips will require a car and fewer cars will be required.
It would be nice if the District would take more steps in this direction. Instead you often get residents complaining about owners who divide massive row houses into individual apartments or condos, saying that’s compromising the feel of the neighborhood. The result, of course, is one massive house that costs well over a million bucks instead of several, moderately affordable units. Repeat for hundreds of rowhouses, and such rules seriously influence the density and affordability of a city.
July 20th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I was thinking about this last night when reviewing SF’s density data. (SF is about 2x as dense as DC). And yet. It doesn’t feel like it, lots of low buildings and sunshine (except for downtown, but that’s mostly office space.)
But most of those Victorian row houses that you think of when you think of SF are divided into at least 2 or 3 flats. Each with 3 or 4 roommates. It’s a city of roommates. Where it’s not unusual to have a mayoral candidate that lives with roommates. A good friend visited 2 weeks ago and she said her two roommates were like 52 and 45 (my friend is in her early 20s). The 50-something had been the lead tenant in that flat for 30 years.
Even recently, the SF Chronicle did a story on how people are renting out rooms. And people have been pushing (since at least the 1980s) to allow even more spaces to be rented: like attics.
Still, DC has so many abandoned apartment buildings its kind of unbelievable. Up here were I live in upper Petworth near Rock Creek Cemetary there are at least 2 four-plexes and one bigger building that are not only in good shape, but have been renovated within the last few half dozen years (at least new windows and doors). And yet, completely empty. We are a stone’s throw from the bus to Fort Totten and Petworth stations or a 15 minute walk to Fort Totten. There are for rent signs all over the place up here.
Now admittedly, the job growth in the region is not happening in DC unless you are a lawyer. And the anti-alcohol brigade of the 4th Ward makes it hard to find liquor/beer sales on Sunday, not to mention no neighborhood bars, so this part of town is not a draw for 20-somethings. And it’s not the quickest commute to the tech jobs of the Dulles Corridor. Still it surprises me how much for rent there is. And at 50-60% off the average rent for the District. My rent is around $700 for a one bedroom.
July 20th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
It’s frustrating to see citizens conflate concepts that are entirely different, whether they do so mistakenly or purposefully. Density is not overcrowding. Nor does density equate to building height.
July 20th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Presumably the fear is the stereotypical situation where 14 families of Central American laborers fresh from being run out of Manassas cram into one house, turn the front lawn into a parking lot, plant corn in the back yard, and blast reggaeton until 4 AM.
Now, I don’t think that is even *possible* under the new law, but that is the fear nonetheless. Arlington has been exporting its immigrant population for a while now and some people would not be happy to see it return.
July 21st, 2008 at 1:14 am
On density in SF vs. DC: one of the things that surprised me when I spent some time in DC is how not dense parts of the city look, particularly some of the areas you can see from the elevated red line heading out towards Glenmont or the orange line around Minnesota Ave and Deanwood. I was also surprised, when I went to look at a room I was thinking of renting near the Van Ness Metro, at how far apart the houses were just a few blocks away (west) from the station.
My impression is that SF has fewer tallish residential buildings, but has a higher number of homes right next to each other (sometimes touching, sometimes not). It’s possible that other factors are at work, too: SF doesn’t really have anything like the mall/federal city (in addition to a business district), and might have less parkland overall.