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Citizens for a Better City is asking the Falls Church City Council to revise a pending affordable-housing request for proposals so that it focuses more heavily on households with lower incomes.

Hal Lippman, the organization’s president and a former Falls Church vice mayor, presented the position on behalf of the CBC board. The group wants the RFP’s affordability range changed from 30% to 80% of area median income, or AMI, to a range of 30% to 60% AMI.

CBC also requested more specific edits. It proposed replacing two references to 50% AMI with 30% AMI and changing language concerning most units at 80% AMI to instead refer to many units at 60% AMI.

Lippman argued that Falls Church’s previous affordable-housing efforts have concentrated too heavily on the upper end of the income range. He said the city added 204 affordable units to its inventory during the past 20 years, not counting 132 long-existing units at the Fields and Virginia Village.

According to Lippman, 189 of the 204 added units were set at income levels between 60% and 80% AMI. The source account described that share as 88%, but the stated figures produce a result of about 92.6%. The inventory counts and affordability levels were not independently corroborated in the supplied reporting.

“Clearly, based on the dominant 60% – 80% AMI pattern over the past 20 years these and other such lower income wage earners have not been the focus of City affordable housing efforts,” Lippman said.

Lippman cited an AMI of $163,900 for a four-person household. At 60% AMI, he said, the corresponding income limits would be $98,340 for four people, $78,672 for two people and $68,838 for one person.

He also said 3% of Falls Church rental properties were available at 40% AMI, a level he placed at $65,560 for a four-person household and $52,448 for two people. About one-third of applicants on the current waiting list were at or below 30% AMI, according to Lippman. He valued that threshold at $49,170 for four people and $39,336 for two.

To illustrate who may fall below the city’s prevailing affordability levels, Lippman cited annual earnings of $33,000 to $46,000 for hotel workers; $34,000 to $40,000 for retail workers and house cleaners; and about $35,000 for janitors. He said kitchen staff, fast-food workers, baristas, servers and waitstaff earned approximately $13 to $17 an hour, or about $30,000 annually for full-time work before tips.

Those wage estimates, the waiting-list breakdown and the AMI calculations were attributed to Lippman and were not independently verified by another supplied source.

Lippman connected the income-level debate to CBC’s broader concerns about economic and racial diversity. He said African American residents represented between 4% and 5% of the city’s population during the past 20 years and currently account for 4%.

“I believe the City has never focused adequately on the essential issue of bringing about a more racially and economically diverse community,” he said.

The supplied account does not include responses from city officials, housing applicants, developers or other stakeholders. It also does not report whether the City Council accepted, rejected or deferred CBC’s requested changes, leaving the disposition of the RFP recommendations unresolved.