Columbia Pike Trolley: One way ride out for minorities and lower income folks
Streetcar Effort Is Gentrification Disguised as Progress
(Created: Monday, July 18, 2011 9:05 AM EDT)
Editor: The Arlington County government’s plan to build a streetcar up Columbia Pike should be called by one of its real names, “the minority-removal trolley” or “the urban-renewal trolley for the rich.”
Dover, Kohl - the county government’s hired planner - reported that the trolley will sharply increase rents along Columbia Pike apartments. Dover, Kohl described existing bus service as “outstanding,” and wrote that redevelopment of the Pike is commercially feasible only if current low-rise apartments are replaced with much more expensive, high-rise units at triple the current density.
So the effect of the trolley will be to raise the value of land, encourage high rise building of expensive apartments, and eliminate those current residents who do not earn substantially more than $60,000 a year. Pike residents earning less will be forced to leave, and rich residents brought in.
Private landowners will reap billions of dollars, and the public will be stuck with the trolley cost, perhaps $160 million.
Democratic County Board members like Mary Hynes and Walter Tejada tell us that they want to keep current moderate-income renters along the Pike, but the economic impact of the trolley makes that impossible. The county’s own economic consultant, Partners for Economic Solutions, concludes that the cost to the county of subsidizing preservation of 5,000 of the existing affordable apartments along the Pike would be roughly $300 million ($60,000 per unit).
Over the past decade, the county government was unable to meet its annual countywide goal of adding 400 committed affordable apartments, in 2010 adding only 141 units and spending $5 million from its Affordable Housing Investment Fund for this purpose. It is highly unlikely that the county government will be able to come up with $300 million to keep 5,000 affordable apartments along the Pike, particularly given the severe public school overcrowding facing the entire county, and need for more school classrooms.
Arlington Democrats’ urban-renewal plan for the Pike should be described as to what it really is: a one-way ticket out for minorities and low-income residents, and a gift of public money to developers.
John Reeder
Chairman, Arlington Green Party
Arlington
