Fairfax County supervisors amended a policy July 16 to reduce maximum-income levels for those seeking to buy workforce-dwelling units (WDUs), and expanded the number of areas in the county where such units can be provided.
Supervisors approved a staff recommendation to reset the income range to between 70 and 100 percent of area median income, known as AMI. Previous income limits set by the policy were 80 to 120 percent of AMI, which some housing advocates said was too high.
(The Washington metropolitan area’s AMI for a family of four is about $155,000 per year, less for smaller numbers of people in a household.)
The approved plan amendments are designed to “increase access to opportunities and contribute to the prosperity of all residents,” county staff wrote in a briefing memo.
Supervisors last year appointed a task force to examine challenges facing the existing policy and provide recommendations. Data suggest WDUs offered at the higher end of the 80-to-120-percent range previously in place typically take longer to sell and their prices approach market-rate units, with many buyers choosing the latter so as not to have to go through additional program hoops.
According to county figures, WDUs available to people earning 70 percent of AMI took an average of 74 days to sell, those at 80 percent of AMI 104 days and ones at 100 percent 235 days. Units marketed to people making 120 percent of AMI averaged 419 days to sell, officials said.
Higher-priced WDUs also have a smaller applicant pool, they added.
The county government requires that 12 percent of for-sale residential units in new projects be offered as affordable-housing units (ADUs) or WDUs, and the amended policy breaks that down as 4 percent of units each in the 70-, 80- and 100-percent AMI brackets. (The county government requires up to 20 percent ADUs or WDUs in some areas, such as Tysons, in exchange for building-density bonuses.)
Mary Paden, the affordable-housing chair of the Fairfax County branch of the NAACP, said she hoped county leaders would consider weighting those requirements much more toward the lower end of that income scale. Paden favored the policy changes overall, however, saying they would help families build intergenerational wealth.
The county’s previous for-sale WDU policy applied to developments in designated mixed-use centers, including the Tysons Urban Center, suburban centers, transit-station areas and community-business centers, such as McLean’s. The amended policy extends the geographic applicability to all areas within the county that are zoned or planned for medium- to high-density residential use, meaning eight dwelling units per acre or more.
There are about 20 such areas, most of them clustered along or near Richmond Highway and the others near Springfield, Merrifield and Vienna, officials said.
The new policy also requires developers to provide proportionality between the bedroom mix of WDUs and those of their market-rate units, with flexibility for family-sized WDUs featuring three or more bedrooms.
In addition, the revised policy includes minimum bedroom and living-room sizes for WDUs that are consistent with the Virginia Construction Code and the Virginia Property Maintenance Code.
The latter code requires every living room to be at least 120 square feet and every bedroom at least 70 square feet, with every bedroom occupied by more than one person to have at least 50 more square feet of floor area for each additional occupant.
Supervisors approved the changes on a 9-0-1 vote, with Supervisor Patrick Herrity (R-Springfield) abstaining. The amended policy “doesn’t help make Fairfax County more affordable as a whole,” Herrity said.
Supervisor Daniel Storck (D-Mount Vernon) disagreed and said he strongly supported the changes.
“It’s what we need to be doing, and we need to be doing more of it,” he said.
