There are many reasons to love living in Arlington.
Transportation is comparatively smooth, taxes are lower than most other Northern Virginia localities and the winters here are relatively mild.
But there are also problems and here is a list of the top five issues currently facing the county, according to the Arlington Connection.
If the past is any indicator, these issues are going to be on the table for the foreseeable future.
1. Affordable Housing
Like a series of dominoes falling one after the other, a lack of affordable housing can cause a chain reaction of problems to arise.
Without affordable places for workers to live, sectors of the economy
begin to suffer. Prohibitively high housing costs also contribute to traffic problems by forcing workers to live far away from their jobs.
An affordable housing shortage can even affect demographics. When the price of living in a certain area becomes high enough, it alters the cultural and ethnic make-up of the area by making it all but impossible for immigrants to settle down.
This is the crisis that is currently affecting Arlington.
The average rent for a three-bedroom apartment in Arlington increased by 15 percent from 2002 to 2006. Meanwhile, the average price of a single-family home in Arlington reached $640,000 in 2006.
Sara Bailey is the executive director of the Alliance for Housing Solutions, an advocacy group made up of civic leaders seeking a solution to the housing shortage.
She said that the shortage affects not just businesses but the public sector as well because teachers, police officers, fire fighters and government employees are also unable to afford to live in Arlington.
"They’re not able to buy starter homes," Bailey said. "There’s no such thing anymore. Most homes… have increased in value so much that the average person starting a career can’t buy [them]."
"We’re no longer a suburb of D.C.," she continued. "We need to build more densely so we can house more people within our 26-square-mile county, especially within the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor."
The County Board has been trying to do just that with several high-profile affordable housing projects. Earlier this year, the Board approved a ten-story apartment building on a Clarendon church’s property that would feature 70 affordable apartments. And it completed a deal with a development firm to maintain the affordability of Buckingham Village, a historic apartment complex near Ballston.
However, in the Buckingham project, the county had to spend tens of millions of dollars to ensure that the complex wouldn’t be converted into luxury condos. And the Clarendon project faced vociferous opposition from nearby residents who objected to the density of the proposed building.
Ultimately, the plight of affordable housing in Arlington may be at the mercy of uncontrollable economic factors. While real estate prices are slowly going down in the area, the housing crisis could easily worsen if they rise again in the near future.
2. Transportation
With traffic on the local highways moving glacially slow, the issue of transportation is one that deeply affects many Arlingtonians on a day to day basis.
However, road congestion in the county isn’t as bad as it could be.
Sixty percent of Arlington residents both live and work within the county, greatly cutting down on commuting times. Also, thanks to the county’s "smart growth" planning policy, which encourages high-density development near transportation hubs, many Arlingtonians opt to use public transportation such as Metrorail or Metrobus instead of driving.
But, as anyone who as attempted to traverse I-66, I-395 or Route 50 during rush hour knows, Arlington has some serious traffic woes.
County Board Member Chris Zimmerman (D) is trying to do something about the congestion. He sits as the chair of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, a state-created group of government representatives from across the area that deals with regional transportation issues.
Zimmerman emphasized the interests that are shared by jurisdictions across Northern Virginia when it comes to transportation.
"Public transportation is more and more becoming a focus in other parts of the region," he said. "One of the things [the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority] found was that there was tremendous support for public transportation, even all the way out in Prince William County and Loudoun County."
The authority recently decided to raise local taxes and fees to fund road improvements. This represents the first major state funding for transportation in 20 years.
"[The authority’s plan] has an opportunity to greatly benefit Arlington in the future," Zimmerman said. "We have had a lot of great plans but couldn’t do them because of funds. With this moving forward, we have a chance to really move on those."
He cited improvements to the Ballston and Rosslyn Metro Stations along with transit projects in Crystal City and Potomac Yard as examples of things in the county that will be moving forward as a result of this new funding.
But Zimmerman said that he felt the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority has a real chance at finally solving the region’s traffic problems because "Transportation is the most regional of all the issues. You have to be cooperating."
3. North vs. South
Arlington is known for its diversity and inclusiveness. But within the county, there are some not-so-subtle divisions based on class, race and political power.
Arlington’s southern half has long been more economically disadvantaged than its northern counterpart. Data from the 2000 Census shows that the county is very segregated in terms of race and class.
More than 70 percent of North Arlingtonians are white compared with 53 percent of South Arlingtonians. Twenty-two percent of the north’s population is foreign born while, in the south, the foreign-born population is 33 percent.
And a little more than 30 percent of households in the north earn less than $50,000 a year compared with 41 percent of households in the south.
"I refer to the area north of Lee Highway the Great White North," said longtime community activist John Antonelli.
Antonelli is frustrated with the divide in Arlington and said that this segregation results in the south getting left behind on big county decisions.
"Certainly it’s politically disenfranchised," he said. "The south gets the shaft."
As an example of this, Antonelli cited Arlington Public Schools’ decision to renovate Yorktown High School in the north before renovating Wakefield High School in the south, even though Wakefield’s infrastructure is "failing," as he put it.
One possible cause of this political disenfranchisement is the way Arlington elects its leaders.
Unlike in neighboring Fairfax County, all members of the Arlington County Board and the Arlington County School Board are elected at-large. This means that there is no designated voice for South Arlington in the county government.
"Obviously, if we could change the way we elect our representatives that would be big," Antonelli said. But until then, he said, the south’s only option for making its presence felt in the county is to "Get organized and flex their muscles."
4. One-Party Rule
Of the 22 elected officials from Arlington on the federal, state and local levels, 21 of them are Democrats. (School Board Chair David Foster has the lonely distinction of being the sole non-Democrat — and he’s retiring at the end of the year.)
Last year, Democrats wion all 50 Arlington precincts in every race on the ballot. This year, more than half of the 14 state and local Democratic candidates who will be on the ballot in Arlington are without opponents.
But Toni Travis, a political science professor at George Mason University, said that Democratic hegemony has not necessarily been a bad thing for Arlington. She said that the current political situation in Arlington is much like it was in the rest of the state 40 years ago.
"We used to have one party rule in Virginia," she said. "It wasn’t run badly. There was very little corruption [and] it was amazingly well run."
Travis did say that competition does make for better candidates. And she also noted that, when one party has dominance, it doesn’t mean an end to political squabbling.
"You’ve got people criticizing from within [party] versus from the opposition," she said.
But Travis said that Arlington’s political apparatus was much cleaner and more transparent than other areas with one-party dominance.
"I would contrast [Arlington] to something like Chicago," she said. "I lived there and I was appalled. The levers on the old machines did not go Republican."
Currently, there are no signs that other parties are gaining any traction in the county. But Travis said that, as long as the proverbial trains continue to run on time, Democratic dominance isn’t something to fret about.
"It’s a crazy system and I can’t find another place where this is the case," she said.
5. BRAC
When Congress’ Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission made its recommendations in 2005, no other jurisdiction in the entire country stood to lose as many jobs as a result of BRAC as Arlington stood to lose.
Thanks to intense lobbying by local politicians, the amount of jobs that will be lost by Arlington was lessened — from 23,000 to 17,000. But many are still concerned about how the county will respond to such a massive shift in its workforce, which is set to be completed by 2011.
The Arlington area affected most by BRAC has been Crystal City. Much of the 4.2 million square feet of office space that is set to be vacated due to BRAC is located in the South Arlington neighborhood.
County officials and business leaders, however, are conveying a glass-half-full outlook for the future of the area, which has long been thought of as a dreary office canyon.
"We think it’s a really good thing," said Angie Fox, the leader of a group that seeks to promote business development in Crystal City, said of the impending changes. "[Crystal City] was so much of a government enclave… [Now] you’re starting to develop a sense of urbanity here."
Terry Holzheimer is the head of Arlington Economic Development, the county’s business development wing. He said that BRAC "Will ultimately be a very good thing for Crystal City," because it will change the area from an office-oriented enclave into a livable urban village.
But he also noted that this redevelopment process will probably take close to 30 years to come to fruition.
While Arlington grapples with pitfalls and opportunities posed by the realignment of a large chunk of its economy, some are choosing to look towards the long term after all of BRAC’s dust has settled.
"Change is always good," Fox said, "[But] it can feel scary initially."