August 3, 2026.
I’m Audrey Clement, Independent candidate for Arlington County Board on November 3. I’m a 22 year resident of Arlington County, past member of the Transportation Commission and current delegate to the Arlington Neighborhoods Advisory Committee and Arlington Civic Federation.
I’m running in opposition to Missing Middle up-zoning, a/k/a/ EHO, because it won’t provide more affordable housing.
The County itself acknowledges that “completed, but unsold, EHO units have 2026 assessed values ranging from $966,800 to $1.4 million” (Expanded Housing Option: Annual Data Report, p. 18). These EHOs will replace teardowns with an estimated average assessed value of $882,900,according to the County’s own data (Profile 26, p. 5).
In a nod to the fact that EHOs are unaffordable to most county residents, the County Manager recently proposed to pay for more affordable housing through bonds whose “debt service would have to be funded – most likely through a tax rate increase” (CIP, Manager’s Message, Housing Policy Proposal – Capital Investments In Housing, 3. Exploring Funding Options).
In other words, since EHO isn’t working, the County’s solution is to use bonds serviced by our real estate taxes to subsidize affordable housing for others. This is on top of the $100 million in housing investments already funded in the annual operating budget.
Yet with about 120,000 households and 127,000 housing units the County’s own data show that there is a glut of existing housing on the market (Profile 26, p. 1, 5, 7). Plus the County has approved over 10,000 additional new housing units in 2025 and 2026 to date, not including EHO projects. Yet only 8 percent of those units will be on site affordable.
Not only will new units coming online not address the affordable housing crisis, they may induce a boom-bust cycle, morphing an office vacancy crisis into a housing vacancy crisis.
Bottom line. The County’s housing policy is going off the rails, and someone needs to apply the brakes.
If elected I pledge to:
- Stop Missing Middle up-zoning by preserving single family neighborhoods.
- Seek immediate tax relief for residents and businesses.
- Reduce the office vacancy rate by getting tax burdened New York City businesses to relocate here.
- Restore the local economy by getting the federal government to rehire its workforce.
If you share my agenda, then: