Arlington, VA Eliminates Single-Family-Only Zoning

In a fundament shift away from what has been defined as the ideal of suburban neighborhoods since the post-WWII era of the 1950s, Arlington County—a county that is also the city, across the Potomac River from DC—has become one of the first locations on the East Coast to eliminate single-family-only zoning.

The Arlington County Board voted unanimously in a 5-0 vote to adopt the controversial zoning change, which had been debate heatedly for several months in Arlington, a tech hub with a median income of about $71K and a median home price of about $739K as of February.

Lots in the 26-square-mile county that previously were limited to one home will now allow densities of two to six units. The precise number of units on each lot will be determined by the size of the lot, with lots larger than 6K SF permitted to have five or six units.

Multifamily buildings on what were formerly single-family lots still must conform to the limits on height, lot coverage, floor plans and setbacks that were applied to single-family homes.

The new zoning rules will be phased in—slowly—over the next five years, beginning on July 1. Arlington will allow 58 permits per year for multi-unit conversion on what were single-family lots until 2028, when the cap will be lifted.

Arlington joins Minneapolis, California, Oregon and Maine in eliminating single-family-only zoning. The zoning change is the result of a report, known as the Missing Middle Housing Study, conducted by Arlington to determine the need for multifamily development.

“Missing Middle” housing refers to small multi-unit residential buildings like townhouses, duplexes and garden apartments. It covers housing types that “fit into the middle” between detached single-family houses and high-rise apartment buildings in terms of scale, form and number of units.

The change is a large shift from Arlington’s existing “smart growth” strategy of limiting density to areas adjacent to mass-transit lines. When it was proposed, it came as a bit of a shock to many of the 240K residents of Arlington, a city where 73% of residential land is set aside for single-family housing in leafy suburban neighborhoods.

The debate on the zoning change divided the city and became heated, with proponents of the measure suggesting that homeowners were trying to extend a tradition of discrimination by opposing multifamily developments in their residential neighborhoods, according to a report in the Washington Post.

Well over 200 speakers showed up at a two-day board hearing last week culminating in the unanimous approval for the zoning change, the newspaper reported.

Christian Dorsey, Arlington County Board chair, said after the vote that the policy change was needed to eliminate what he termed “discriminatory noise” and a “vestige of old times” from zoning ordinances.

Dorsey also said the zoning change was needed “to acknowledge and prepare for” steady population increases in Arlington, a city that has attracted numerous tech players, including Amazon’s HQ2 complex.

“By allowing natural increases in the housing supply, we will lower the barriers of entry into all neighborhoods and, in doing so, address the housing crisis and our history of exclusionary zoning head-on,” Dorsey said, in a statement.

Opponents to the measure said it will do little to lower housing prices in Arlington, but instead will jack up land prices and overwhelm neighborhoods and local infrastructure.

“We just made a decision based on emotional arguments, not on fact and analysis. Having not listened to the residents and rammed through a rushed plan, our next stops are the courthouse and the ballot box,” said David Gerk, a local homeowners group known as Arlingtonians for Upzoning Transparency, the newspaper reported.

According to the Missing Middle study, the plan rests on a market-based theory: if smaller single-family houses were being torn down to make way for larger, more expensive ones, developers could introduce less-expensive housing options by putting multiple apartments on one lot and splitting the cost of that high-priced land.