New Amazon Headquarters Aggravates Housing Shortage in Northern Virginia

Amazon’s newest headquarters is already putting stress on Northern Virginia’s lacking affordable housing, Curbed reports.

As soon as the new headquarters location was announced—amid the high-rises of Crystal City just west of Reagan National Airport and the nation’s capitol—housing advocates and low- and moderate-income residents of the area felt uneasy. Since then, home prices have spiked 17 percent, advocates have warned about increasing displacement, rising prices, and speculation, and residents conceded in a survey that while Amazon’s arrival will be beneficial, it will also raise the cost of living in an already expensive region.

“Amazon isn’t creating a housing problem in northern Virginia,” says Terry Clower, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who studies regional development, “but it is highlighting an existing problem we’ve had for some time that’s been building.”

The county adopted a housing master plan in 2015 that set a goal of having 17.7 percent of Arlington’s rental housing be affordable for someone making $65,000 a year (in 2015 dollars) by 2040. Since the county was short about 9,000 units when the plan was made pre-Amazon, that means adding roughly 600 rental units a year. Increasing homeownership is even more challenging; when the average price in Arlington is $650,000, according to Cristeal, programs to support new homeowners become prohibitively expensive, and regardless, it’s hard to quantify the county’s goals.

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