In affluent areas like northern Virginia, affordable housing can become a huge problem. Hoping for increased tax revenue and a boost to the local economy, affordable housing units like are completely demolished in favor of expensive single-family homes.
While local developers may see the closing of affordable housing projects as promising real estate opportunities, these demolitions are tremendous losses for the entire community.
Advocates of such plans claim that ridding towns of affordable housing projects allows for a better-quality education, as higher property taxes give public schools more funding.
But in reality, this change would only have a minimal effect on school budgets: in an area like Fairfax County where streets are lined with homes ranging in price from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, adding three or four more large homes will have a miniscule, if even apparent, effect on school funding.
A minimal increase in school funding is not worth losing fellow classmates, teammates and friends who are forced out of an area by high housing prices.
Another point to consider is that although the residents of these affordable housing projects may not be spending the most money or paying the highest taxes, they are still a vital part of the local economy: they occupy a wide array of jobs in the community and are valuable consumers who are necessary to support local businesses.
With some of the best public school systems in the U.S., counties in northern Virginia and the entire D.C. metropolitan area must be especially careful to realize that they are in a valuable position that enables them to support lower-income families.
Providing lower-income children with quality education is vital to raising future generations out of the reaches of poverty.
2014-05-29