Homeward Bound

A curious thing happened earlier this week: the City of Alexandria testified against pro-housing legislation in Richmond. The bills in question (HB 816 and SB 454, the latter of which is no longer advancing) would permit by-right development of multi-family housing in commercial zones. The city’s opposition to these measures appears to be grounded in a belief that we’re approving this kind of housing already, but current regulations allow us to extract additional concessions that benefit the public through proffers from developers; a by-right process would curtail those additional benefits. But we’re not bringing the city’s action up to argue about the merits of it. We’re bringing it up because, as we said at the top, it was genuinely a surprise to see the city take an action that could even superficially be interpreted as anti-housing!

It’s really worth lingering on this point and pausing to appreciate its significance. We find ourselves at a moment in time in Alexandria where our local government has been so consistently oriented toward taking proactive steps to address the housing affordability crisis that we collectively do a spit-take when they don’t. And we’ve arrived at this point through a variety of converging forces, some related and some independent, but each important in their own way.

First, we have smart and experienced city staff who understand the challenge and have been willing to use evidence and data and follow national best-practice examples to try new things; that’s not always the case in every locality, and we’ve been fortunate that’s the case here. Second, we’ve seen the emergence of a committed advocacy movement that has sustained organization over time, allowing for a cohort of people (busier residents, typically younger) to engage on an issue that impacts them most acutely. Third, we’ve elected local leaders that have been consistently resolute in their support of pro-housing efforts.

Obviously the second and third forces there are connected—the advocacy changes the political salience, which changes who gets elected—but it’s close to undeniable at this point that housing has been the most important issue in our last several local elections. We saw that in the recent Democratic firehouse primary for Council, where the top two finishers had the highest scores from YIMBYs of NOVA, but it’s been true in the last couple full Council cycles as well with pro-housing candidates out-performing those with more conservative views on the issue. There’s a weird ongoing cope where some people (most recently Frank Fannon in his conversation with The Alexandria Brief) insist that no one supports local housing reforms, and they’ve never met anyone who likes this stuff, and besides everyone cares about affordability but we can only fix it through some kind of Step 2: ??? underpants gnomes situation. 

But listen—ball don’t lie. This is a pro-housing electorate in a pro-housing city. And that matters for reasons that go way beyond local horse-race politics. The city advanced the 2040 Housing Master Plan process last week with the release of draft recommendations and strategies seeking public comment (go weigh in!!). This is the first major housing plan update in over a decade, and a major focus of this effort is on renters and apartments, asking questions like: what is the cost burden on renters, how many rental units are affordable, etc. The focus on renters makes sense, as more than half of Alexandrians are renters (a fact that frequently feels like it gets lost, especially given how much of the Zoning for Housing dialogue was centered on the changes to single-family zones) so it’s natural to put significant attention on the role played by large apartment and condo buildings in our housing market. Are we excited to have to explain for the 1,000th time why even building more “luxury” buildings actually does help with housing affordability? We are not. Are we excited that the multi-family strategies in the plan say a lot about what the city’s goals are and who they’re trying to help? We most certainly are. Do we think that these strategies may not have necessarily been foregrounded in the plan without much of the work the past ten years to make housing into the key local issue? Without a doubt, and we’re all better off for it.

Housing feels important because it’s deeply personal, yet at the same time it’s also deeply collective. No one of us can thrive in a community of constrained housing. No matter your individual housing circumstances you are still affected by whether our police, our firefighters, our teachers, our municipal employees, and our service workers can also live here. These effects cascade down all aspects of well-being and civic fabric. We read something last year that really stuck with us, and it said (paraphrasing) if you own a home in a place where every worker you interact with can’t afford to live there too, you don’t live in a city, you live in a theme park.

Alexandria is a city (you’re sick of us saying this, but hey, the crowd likes it when you play the hits) and we refuse to let it be anything less than that. The work to get this issue right is hard, but the hardest part—making everyone care—is behind us. All that’s left now is to get it right.

Things You May Have Missed Because You Have a Life 

• There are two short films currently casting actors from Alexandria. Unfortunately the roles are for people under the age of 35, so no one reading this is eligible. 
• Kudos to the Zebra for asking the important, hard-hitting questions like “why were there so many seagulls in Oronoco Bay Park on Sunday?” We look forward to future journalistic inquiries in this series, such as “why do planes keep flying over Old Town?” and “when the tide goes out, where does it go?”
• Arlington is advancing a proposal to ban campaign signs in medians, and while on the one hand we appreciate their efforts to be more like us [Editor’s note: bless their hearts], it would also deal a serious blow to our superiority complex if we could no longer make cutting references to their blighted rights-of-way trashed with visual clutter. We wish perennial county board candidate James DeVita luck in his legal challenge to the ban, if his legal filings are anything like his signs that docket is gonna be absolutely lit.
• The city announced that we’ll be participating in the national America 250 City Art Poster Project, and if one of you doesn’t submit an absolutely unhinged George Washington-themed design what the hell has been the point of this newsletter these last three years. We’re talking a parody of the Commonwealth’s flag with George Washington standing atop Jonathan Groff’s prone body (where’s that battalion now, bitch??); we’re talking George Washington as Regina George get in loser we’re making and altering our constitutions of government; we’re talking George Washington and that slut Ben Franklin as the Heated Rivalry characters. Come on gang, we believe in you!!

Local Discourse Power Rankings

1. You Add Some, You Delete Some (Previous rank: 3). Alexandria’s budget season kicked off last week, prompting casual observers to ask: “Wait, we have to do this every year?” The budget process always starts around the same time as Oscar season, and honestly they’re pretty similar in that both are highly political, time-constrained, dramatic processes designed to select winners and losers based on competing priorities. The city manager’s proposed budget for FY27 is $977 million, only slightly higher than the global box office revenue of F1: The Movie. It doesn’t include a tax rate increase, but residential tax bills will still go up because while our homes may have Sentimental Value, they’re also worth an increasing number of dollars on the real estate market. Meanwhile, fixed costs have gone up because unlike the itinerant laborer in Train Dreams, many of our public sector employees are now unionized and their collective bargaining agreements leave less of the budget left over for other purposes. Altogether we started the process with a budget gap of $22 million, which the city proposed to close through personnel cuts—no layoffs, just eliminating vacant positions, so it’s a bummer but not, like, as sad as Hamnet. But the real wild card here is ACPS. In a display of Marty Supreme level ambitions they asked for a 3.5% increase this year, but the city wants them to settle for 1.5%. This is a problem because ACPS entered its own collective bargaining agreement with its union that it can’t pay for unless it gets the extra money it requested, and it didn’t even tell the city about this until the press release went out, which is some real Secret Agent shit. Now we’ve got a Bugonia-style hostage situation on our hands because ACPS says it’ll have to cut student-facing staff positions unless it gets more funds. Honestly it just feels like One Battle After Another when it comes to Council-ACPS relations these days. Altogether this budget is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, but all you Sinners out there have an opportunity to provide feedback at the public hearing on Monday!
2. Democracy (Last week: 2). After the February 21 Democratic firehouse primary (congrats, Sandy!) and a couple of “independent” candidate announcements, the field for the Council special election is now set. But before we move on, we must take a moment to commemorate and mourn the all-too-brief candidacy of the Republican Party’s nominee. Please rise and join us in the singing of: 

“The Ballad of Gerry Chandler (Three Days in the Race)”

In a city painted donkey blue, where red signs rarely stay,
The GOP they gathered ’round one mighty fateful day.
They had no other volunteers, no Tom, no Dick, no Larry,
“We see,” they said. “Well, in that case, our candidate is Gerry.”

The whispers passed through coffee shops and every group chat thread:
“Who the hell is Gerry Chandler?” all our puzzled neighbors said.
The skeeters searched, reporters called, but all cried “fiddlesticks”
When they could find no trace of Gerry in our city’s politics.

The journalists went hunting with their notebooks in their hands,
Through city hall and Facebook walls and far suburban lands.
At last a clue came drifting in from someone’s snowbird grampa:
Gerry Chandler, candidate, was lounging down in Tampa!

Chorus:
Oh Gerry Chandler, what a ride,
So lost, so unidentified, 
Down in Florida far from home
Trying to run a race by phone,
Doesn’t know the requirements,
Gerry Chandler, make it make sense!

They asked him, “Sir, the party says you’re running for the seat.”
He paused and said, “Well… maybe? That’s a little hard to meet.”
“I’m not quite sure I’m running, though I guess I might be so.
No one else has signed up yet, that’s all I really know.”

Then came the forms and paperwork, the disclosures to reveal,
The sort that make a sudden hero pause and lose his zeal.
The clerk said, “Sir, just list your funds, investments, stocks, and such,”
And Gerry said, “You know what? That might be a bit too much.”

So swift as he had entered in the annals of the race,
He slipped out like a shadow that nobody could quite place.
Three days the banner flew his name above the party gate,
Then Gerry Chandler quietly resigned himself to fate.

Chorus:
Oh Gerry Chandler, where’d you go?
Alexandria wants to know.
Three days of glory, brief and bright,
A shooting star in politics’ night.
Oh Gerry Chandler, bold and free,
The shortest campaign in history!

3. Pumped Up (Previous rank: 2). Between canceling our waterfront pump station and shitcanning Kristi Noem, the federal government sure is scrapping all kinds of things this week! Never thought we’d find common ground with America’s top puppy killer, but here we are. Dumped by Trump. Life is a journey! It’s amazing how we both ended up in the same boat after taking such different paths to get here. You never know what’s going to bring you down in the end. Could be because some Old Dominion Boat Club members complained to Susie Wiles. Could be because you’ve been getting boned on the regular by your “special government employee” aboard a publicly-funded luxury sex jet. (You’d think it could be because you’ve been throwing children into concentration camps, but nope, that part was fine!) So now what? Kristi gets a fake job as “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas” and we get… a presentation from the city manager on other flood control options? Tough breaks all around, truly.
4. You Idiots Are Doing This Road Wrong (Previous rank: 3). We were going to write a detailed recap of last Monday’s Traffic and Parking Board hearing on the Braddock Road bike lanes but we’re still tired 11 days later from staying awake past midnight to provide comments on Zoom. This hearing had everything: citations to ChatGPT, Field of Dreams quotes, “God Bless Alyia’s Wasteland” T-shirts, people fighting in the hallway, multiple utterances of the word “commonweal,” and of course, no public meeting in this city is complete without a reference to Alexandria’s best-named street (SCROGGINS!). Honestly, it was a blast. Can’t wait to do it all over again when the project gets appealed to Council!

Alexandria’s Hottest Club is… Not Touching the Potomac River

It’s a little exasperating that in this modern, sophisticated day and age, we still occasionally have to deal with decidedly not-modern problems like “poop in river.” It’s a predicament that feels very Late Middle Ages, and not in a fun Medieval Times “eating a rotisserie chicken with your bare hands” kind of way. Why is this still happening? It’s 2026, our biggest infrastructure problem should be figuring out how to make the National Harbor Sphere’s LED lights shine directly into Mark Warner’s bedroom window. Unfortunately, a fecal flood turd tide sewage tsunami is precisely the situation facing our region since mid-January. And from where we sit in Alexandria, the whole thing feels extra shitty. We’ve spent the past couple years building a giant tunnel to stop our waste from going into the river, and right before we’re ready to turn it on, one of our jurisdictional neighbors goes “whoop” and dumps 243 million gallons of crap upstream from us. Damn it, guys!! We talked about this!!!

This event has naturally caused a fair amount of consternation and concern—from alarmingly worded health advisories, to politically motivated finger-pointing, not to mention local news videos in which random people are asked whether they would be comfortable recreating the wet chair dance from Flashdance with Potomac River water [Editor’s note: for the record, we would do it]. These reactions are reasonable! But we also don’t need to panic.

First, perhaps a little context would be useful. Here’s a piece we wrote last summer that covered general Potomac water quality issues. Obviously we didn’t anticipate a poop-splosion of this magnitude, but it still provides some helpful background info if you missed it the first time around (plus some fun facts about muskrats and cholera):

Take Me to the River

The kids may still be in school for another week, and we haven’t yet reached the solstice, but we’ve already started measuring humidity in soup units so we’re officially calling it. This is our first issue of the summer!! And summer in Alexandria can only mean one

ALXtraJesse O’Connell & Becky Hammer

Okay, so what’s the deal with the current spill? It’s not too complicated, really. Big pipe break, sewage go in water. Not good! It was the largest sewage spill in U.S. history, probably. Love to set records, that’s American greatness baby!!! The most concerning thing in the wastewater from a public health perspective is bacteria like staphylococcus and E. coli that can make you sick—hence all the warnings not to go near the river. Fortunately, bacteria usually die off or get flushed downstream within about 10 days, and no sewage has spilled into the Potomac for over three weeks now. While we definitely need to keep testing, as state agencies and utilities are doing, current bacteria levels in most of the river are already back down to levels considered safe, so at this point we’re prooooooobably in the clear. DC lifted its recreational advisory earlier this week and the Virginia Department of Health followed suit for the ALX section of the river last night.

The other pollutants in the sewage are nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and sediment, which aren’t so dangerous to human health but definitely problematic for ecological health—they can decrease oxygen levels, block light from reaching plants, cause algal blooms, and just generally fuck things up down there. The silver lining is that while this sewage spill was undoubtedly massive compared to other such incidents, the amount of nutrients and sediment it added to the river was only about 0.3% of the amount of pollution that enters the Potomac in an average year, according to DEQ. So the long-term effects should hopefully be pretty minimal!

Bottom line, the river is not ruined forever. The tall ship extravaganza planned for this summer isn’t cancelled. Remediation might be required in specific locations, but we don’t need to pump out the water and clean it (not a thing, despite what you may read on Al Gore’s internet). 

So to wrap up, here’s a summary of what is and isn’t safe for you to do right now (which is also applicable at most other times):

• Walk next to the river: yes
• Drink river water: no
• Drink while looking at river water: yes
• Swim in the river: yes, but only if you have a strong immune system
• Let your dog swim in the river and then kiss you on the mouth: no, and also, gross
• Kayak on the river: just try not to splash yourself in the face
• Take pictures of the river: yes
• Picnic next to the river: at a safe distance, sure
• Book a birthday party cruise: yes
• Use river water to fill water balloons for the birthday party: no
• Dress up as Santa and waterski: depends how good you are at waterskiing
• Snorkel off of Waterfront Park to see how it’s looking down there: no
• Let Jesse eat those Oronoco Bay oysters: depends on how annoyed you are at Jesse
• Philosophically reflect on humanity’s fraught relationship with infrastructure: always

Make sense? Good. Just keep these guidelines in mind while you get out there and enjoy the nice weather this weekend!!

Overheard in ALX

From a letter to the editor in this week’s Alexandria Times:

It is with heavy hearts that we announce the departure of 13 East Windsor Ave., a steadfast presence in the historic Town of Potomac, now Del Ray, since 1919. After 107 years of silent observation and neighborly service, this colonial-style residence has been demolished, making way for the next chapter of Alexandria’s ever-evolving landscape.

We’re still not sure if this is a creative writing exercise or a sincere lament, but either way—if you’re going to write an obituary for a single-family home, you might as well commit to the bit and ask for contributions to the Coalition for a Livable* Alexandria’s (*offer valid only if you start every public comment by describing how long you’ve lived here) vexatious litigation fund in lieu of flowers.

One Awesome Thing in ALX

Since a lot of folks in Alexandria have had bikes on the brain in recent weeks, this seems like the perfect time to highlight the ACPS Bicycling in the Schools program (which was also featured in ALXnow on Wednesday). This program, aka BITS, teaches third graders in every ACPS elementary school the basics of riding a bike and the rules of the road. Most of the kids are beginners, but the program also teaches more confident riders advanced skills and safety tips—while leaving it to parents to provide instruction on the most effective obscene hand gestures to make at aggressive drivers.

We both have kids who are or recently were third graders, and we can’t say enough good things about BITS. The program is especially helpful for kids whose families can’t afford to buy a bike or who don’t live in a neighborhood with quiet side streets where they can practice. It’s also just really fun, and the kids love it. A friend of ours told us that one of her best days last year was when she volunteered with BITS and her extra hair scrunchies helped several Afghan girls tie up their skirts so they could participate; one of them told her that BITS was the first time she’d gotten to ride a bike since the evacuation. We’re not crying, you’re crying!!!

This program was originally started by the Alexandria Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC), who helped ACPS acquire bikes and storage trailers to get the program up and running. It’s now a school-run program but BPAC volunteers still help staff it along with other community members. They always need more volunteers, so please consider helping out (here’s their email address)! 

BPAC is an awesome organization, generally. While its name makes it sound like one of the many city boards and commissions we’re constantly pestering you to apply for, it’s actually a volunteer-run nonprofit organization that advocates for “safe, all ages, all abilities biking and walking infrastructure.” BPAC also runs a bike giveaway program and conducts “walk audits” to identify safety concerns for students who walk or bike to school. This is critical work. As the ACPS staff lead for BITS notes in the ALXnow article, “We live in an area where not all of our students are going to drive one day”—an extremely triggering sentence for Alexandrians with advanced cases of car brain, but it’s true! Bikes are how many people in our city get around, by choice or by necessity. For people of all ages, but especially kids who are too young to drive, bikes mean independence and freedom of movement. BPAC helps give that to them. Now if the city could just get them some protected bike lanes… 

You can follow Becky @beckyhammer.bsky.social and Jesse @oconnell.bsky.social on Bluesky, or you can e-mail us anytime at alxtranewsletter@gmail.com.

ALXtra is a free-to-read newsletter about current events in Alexandria, Virginia. Subscribe to get it delivered directly to your inbox. Paid subscriptions give you access to the comments. Revenue from subscriptions gets used in the following ways: 1) a third goes into a charity fund, and every time that fund hits $500 we’ll make a donation to a local nonprofit in the name of ALXtra’s readers and we’ll feature and write about that organization, like we did here, here, here, here and here; 2) another third of the money will go toward investments in the newsletter; and 3) the final third of the money goes toward self-care for your two intrepid authors.