News Highlights

• The Board of Supervisors adopted specific  recommendations for condos in high-rise buildings in Tysons, opening up a path to affordable homeownership.

Seven years ago, the depressed condominium market looked unlikely to ever revive—or so thought the neighborhood leaders, housing advocates, developers and county officials when they crafted the plan to remake Tysons.

As a result, Fairfax County’s plan set its 20 percent affordable housing goal with apartments in mind, never distinguishing between rental and for sale housing which is done elsewhere in the county. This changed on Tuesday. The Board of Supervisors adopted specific  recommendations for condos in high-rise buildings in Tysons, opening up a path to affordable homeownership.

The new policy sets percentages for the total number of condos in a redevelopment project that should be designated as workforce units:

• 14 percent of affordable for-sale units if the units are provided on-site in the same development with the rest of the condos
• 16 percent of affordable for-sale units if they are provided off-site elsewhere in Tysons

Officials took action because the condo market appears to have rebounded since the Tysons plan was first put in place, and the county wants to encourage homeownership in Tysons. The need for a change became clear when the board approved the first new high rise condo in Tysons last summer.

Renaissance Centro, the developer of The Arbor, faced a challenge in meeting the 20 percent target, and received approval for a lesser percentage of affordable units and flexibility to provide units on- and off-site.

Financing and economics are more challenging for high-rise condos than they are for rental projects, said Fred Selden, director of Fairfax County Department of Planning and Zoning. New high-rise condo projects are much smaller than rental projects and find it difficult to take full advantage of the bonus density that is available for providing affordable units

The new policy opens the door for affordable homeownership. From the beginning, the Tysons plan has called for housing to be provided for a mix of incomes, in different unit types and rental as well as homeownership opportunities.

County officials came up with the new policy working with an advisory group that included affordable housing advocates, developers and former Planning Commissioners who helped create the Tysons plan.

To date, every new redevelopment project in Tysons has committed to fulfill the 20 percent goal. This will provide up to 4,200 affordable housing units in the future. Developers are also expected to contribute to an affordable housing trust fund for every square foot of non-residential development in Tysons. This policy has deposited more than $2.8 million into this fund as of this past June.

There is a large demand for affordable rental housing in Fairfax County. Approximately 31,630 rental units are needed for renters earning 80 percent of the area median income or below, according to the Virginia Tech Center for Housing Research.

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