Blog posts are the personal views of Letty Hardi and not official statements or records on behalf of the Falls Church City Council

Dear Friends,

As it is spring break, I’m going to keep this week’s post limited to one topic. After a year of listening, iteration, and deliberation, we unanimously legalized Accessory Dwellings as by-right use in single family neighborhoods. While we’re a few years late to the party (Arlington, Alexandria, and even Fairfax approved variations of ADUs years before we did), this is still an important, incremental step for housing. We’ve had the benefit of learning from our neighbors and best practices across the US. If you’ve been following the past year, you’ll know that there have been a lot of compromises and changes since the first draft – read on about why this matters beyond the actual vote and what comes next.

It will be a busy weekend around the city – tomorrow (Saturday) is our Arbor Day celebration and the annual Egg Hunt at Cherry Hill in addition to the Farmer’s Market. If you or your guests do plan to drive into the downtown area, here is our public parking guide.

Next week, we’re back to the budget. While our budget forecast has been rosier than our neighbors, clearly we’re not immune to the impacts of the federal changes in workforce and budget cuts. New data showed a slowdown in our meals and sales tax revenues, which is usually one of the leading indicators of consumer sentiment. This is worrisome enough that at our first reading budget vote, we voted to keep the tax rate flat as the ceiling rate – although speaking for myself, over the next few weeks I’d still like to lower the tax rate knowing that the tax bill impact (due to higher assessments) is still higher than we’d like. And if you didn’t have a chance to read my post last week about how you pay for trash and how we might consider a fairer system, please catch up as I’d love to hear your thoughts! We had a great discussion at my office hours last week, and I have walking office hours next Friday in addition to another budget town hall next Thursday.

Best,
Letty

What Happened This Week:

Here are my comments from our Accessory Dwelling final vote as well as a summary of the final set of changes we approved in the ordinance.

Letty’s Thoughts:

Allowing detached Accessory Dwellings is a small, incremental move (2-5 are expected across the city per year), one piece in the larger puzzle of housing issue that have been proven to add more housing options while not impacting neighborhoods. And one that’s been full of compromises that have been made along the way as evident by the amendments tonight.

Tonight with this vote, there are a lot of wins and 3 in particular that I want us to take to heart:

1/ The first win is process – while it’s been in our work plan and long range plans for many years, last spring we set out a schedule on getting this done in a year with deliberate process with much community engagement, time for Council and staff iterations. That is a success and the speed of addressing a long standing topic that people around us have all adopted is one we should apply to all problems. We are not in elected office to deliberate endlessly and study things to death. We’re elected to solve issues and improve the quality of life for our residents, current and future.

2/ The staff work! This is well researched and we should be learning from others quickly. This is not some new exotic thing. Thanks to Jack, Sally, and team for the thorough, professional research and showing up how we can learn best practices from other communities where this has worked and where they’ve iterated over time, our Planning Commission for their work and thoughtful weighing, and the extensive community engagement process. You’ve drafted us thoughtful proposals for us to consider and kept us moving forward.

3/ The actual rules. Is this is as progressive as I’d like it to be? No. But we are making ADs by right, with no permanent owner occupancy and not requiring additional parking – we’re taking steps in the right direction. Those in fact are the 3 poison pills AARP and GMU Mercatus Center says have limited ADs elsewhere.

Hopefully we are creating a more viable option of what people can do with their land instead of tearing down the house, providing for choices now for multi-generational living or additional source of income to help pay for increasing costs of living. Right now the main way you can live in a neighborhood anywhere off Broad St is to snatch up a small rambler before it gets torn down or purchase a new $2.5M home. Even a Winter Hill townhome costs $900K. This has limited who can live in our neighborhoods and drives up housing costs.

I’d like to talk about what could come next in a Accessory Dwelling 2.0 and a mindset we should have:

Given that we’re all committed to monitoring the results of this for several years – if we’re not seeing enough come through the permitting process, meaning we’re too prohibitive on setbacks or other rules, I hope that also means we’re committed to loosening up the setback rules. And if we’re serious about homeownership opportunities – we should allow for split ownership of the accessory where an owner can condo out their property, keep the underlying ownership of the land, but sell the backyard unit to a different owner. That allows for mortgage financing of the accessory and unlocks this as an option for more people to build one. Right now it’s only people who have the cash on hand, willing to take equity out of their home, or pay a high construction loan. We can also consider whether someone can have an interior AD and a detached AD, preapproved plans to lower the cost of production, or tax credits to build them and rent as affordable. These are all more progressive things we can do and we have left them on the table.

Finally – our mindset. We should be regularly asking ourselves – if we’re actually serious about being a welcoming city and creating more options to live here besides the default – how are we actually going to get there? Are we holding ourselves accountable to our values beyond yard signs, solving issues we say are important, and seeing whether we’re actually producing the outcomes we want? And can we apply this same commitment to all of our other issues before us – trash, pedestrian safety, budget, climate, and so much more. We should be re-framing the discussion anytime we talk about housing and change from mitigating bad stuff to a more well-rounded discussion about the good it will bring.

And in general, we have to be careful that the rules and processes we put on ourselves – that supposedly keep bad stuff happening – *may actually* prevent us from doing as much good as we want.

What’s Coming Up:

Monday, April 21 – City Council Work Session*

Monday, April 28 – City Council Meeting*

Monday, May 5 – City Council Work Session*

Wednesday, May 7 – Ask the Council Office Hours (9 am, City Hall)

Monday, May 12 – City Council Meeting* (final budget adoption)

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

Letty’s Office Hours:

Friday, April 25 – 9 am AND 12 pm (Walking Office Hours – meet at Broad St entrance of Howard Herman Trail)

Wednesday, May 21 – 5 pm (Walking Office Hours – meet at Cherry Hill Park)