Tysons is building housing that’s affordable to more workers

Rising rent, limited supply, flat incomes, and other factors have contributed to the affordable housing shortage across the Washington region. Tysons, Virginia—with its towering office buildings and a median household income of $101,587—is probably not first place you think of to find affordable housing, but it is making an effort to provide more options.

Local officials are trying to transform Tysons from a car-bound “edge city” where few people stay past 6 pm into a 24/7 urban center where people live and play, and those people need a variety of housing options. One of Tysons’ comprehensive plan goals is to create more housing options for the various people who want to work and live in the area.

“Though it’s easy to get lost in a debate over the meaning of “affordability,” I think we can agree that widening access to housing–especially housing that is near transit–serves as a spur for economic growth,” Sol Glasner President and CEO of the Tysons Partnership, at a recent affordable housing forum.

“Consider, for example, Tysons as a major employment center where housing is essentially beyond the reach of junior professionals, admin staff, civil servants, and service workers. Think about the resulting burden on the road and transit network carrying commuters and the resulting traffic congestion. Think about the workers than give up and seek employment elsewhere.”

About 30,000 low- to moderate-income renters in Fairfax are spending more than a third of their incomes on housing, according to data from the Fairfax County Department of Housing and Community Development (FCHCD). A person is defined as “cost-burdened” if they spend more than a third of their household income on rent.

To help address the problem, Fairfax County has a goal of creating 5,000 new homes within the next 15 years that are accessible to households making 60% of area median income (AMI) and below, as well as options for residents in slightly higher income brackets, like workforce housing. Tysons is focused on creating workforce housing, which tends to be more affordable than market-rate housing but is still not necessarily in reach for low-income people.

Tysons focuses on workforce housing

In 2007, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors adopted the Countywide WDU Administrative Policy Guidelines as a proffer-based incentive system designed to encourage the voluntary development of new Workforce Dwelling Units (WDUs), according to Tom Fleetwood, FCHCD Director.

This policy maintains that at least 12% of new residential construction would be dedicated to WDUs for households between 80% to 120% Area Median Income (AMI). In 2010, the county board also added guidelines specific to Tysons, which maintain that between 14% and 20% of new residential construction be designated as WDUs and serve households earning between 60% and 120% AMI.

Specifically, the 2010 guidelines say that “2% of the total number of dwelling units as WDUs serving up to 60% of Area Median Income (AMI) for the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area as specified annually by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); 3% serving up to 70% AMI; 5% serving up to 80% AMI, 5% serving up to 100% AMI and 5% serving up to 120% AMI.”

Fleetwood says this policy has led to the creation of hundreds of workforce housing units in Tysons: “Together, these policies have accounted for 1,524 WDUs constructed – 46% of which are located in the Tysons Urban Center,” he said.

Fairfax is currently working to update its WDU program, which will be 13 years old in 2020, with the goal of ensure that they are effectively responding to the current housing need and market conditions, Fleetwood said. Tysons’ workforce housing program is 10 years old and is similarly being reviewed for updates.

“Looking to the future development of Tysons and other areas of the county where mid- to high-rise development offers the best opportunity for enhancing the quantity of affordable housing in the county, the WDU Policy will continue to play a critical role in the creation of housing alternatives for low- to moderate-income households,” according to Fleetwood.

Fairfax is using a lot of methods to produce affordable housing

Fairfax is trying a variety of strategies and is working with various municipalities, including Tysons, to address the county’s housing shortage, according to Fleetwood. For starters, it wants to expand the use of Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority bonds and continue to create a pipeline of preservation projects, which now includes 645 rental homes.

“The Communitywide Housing Strategic Plan is Fairfax County’s strategic roadmap to addressing the need for affordable housing countywide,” Fleetwood said via email. “The process includes both short- and long-term strategies to enhance the county’s portfolio of affordable units by enhancing investments in affordable housing and exploring innovations in our land-use policies, regulatory tools, and financing mechanisms.”

The county is also updating its policies on Affordable Dwelling Units (ADUs) in order to build allow more to be built to help meet the area’s affordable housing needs. Under these guidelines, two-thirds of the ADU rentals in each development are reserved for households with incomes up to 70% of the Area Median Income (AMI), and one-third of the units are set aside for households with incomes up to 50% of the AMI median income, adjusted for family size, according to the Fairfax rental program brochure.

As of September 2019, Fairfax County has a total of 2,841 affordable dwelling units—1,407 rentals and 1,434 for sale. (These types of ADU homes in Fairfax are not to be confused with Prince George’s County’s or DC’s Accessory Dwelling Units, also known as accessory apartments and ADUs, which include add-on housing units like English basements and converted carriage houses.)

One caveat about the effectiveness of ADUs is that these rules only apply to buildings less than four stories tall, according to Michelle Krocker, Executive Director of the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance, an organization that helps to make affordable housing a regional priority. “Once you get into steel construction, you are not bound by the ADU ordinance.”

Part of the goal of Tysons’ workforce housing push is to help add more affordable housing options to its large buildings. Changes to both the ADU and WDU ordinances are still in draft form, according to Fleetwood, and still have to go through public engagement and a final vote from the Board of Supervisors.

Fairfax is also experimenting with private sector partnerships to create new affordable housing with the Public-Private Education Facilities and Infrastructure Act of 2002 (PPEA). With PPEA, the county leases public land to private-sector builders who, in turn, build affordable housing. Examples of PPEAS partnership projects include The Fallstead, a recently-completed 82-unit affordable senior living facility in Mclean, and well as the Residences at Government Center, a project with 270 affordable housing units.

Among its many goals, Tysons’ comprehensive plan aims to increase its population to 100,000 and its employees to 200,000 by 2050. While current efforts help, local advocates say more affordable housing measures are needed so people of a variety of incomes who want to live, work, and play in Tysons can actually do so.

“It’s the first step in ensuring that we have some inclusion of affordable units,” Krocker said in reference to ADUs and workforce housing programs. “The question is, is it enough and are we hitting the income level that we need to be hitting?”