Alexandria's Affordable Housing Stock Shrank 90% Since 2000

"Alexandria [Virginia] has 16,000 fewer homes that are affordable on the free market than it did 17 years ago," reports David Whitehead, sharing findings of a recent report from the city of Alexandria's Office of Housing. "That’s a loss of over 90% of what was available in 2000," adds Whitehead.

The article details the specifics of Alexandria's housing policies. In fact, writes Whitehead, the "dramatic reduction in naturally affordable homes is perhaps more startling when we consider Alexandria’s history of strong policies to preserve affordable housing." Specifically, the city approved Resolution 830 in 1979, which requires that public housing units are replaced, one for one, whenever they are redeveloped.

But the law only protects publicly subsidized units, which only ever represented a small percentage of the city's affordable housing stock.