The Buckingham Herald Tribblog

One little item, today’s Washington Post covered the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority’s decisions regarding funding for smaller road projects in the area. One project that may have again not received funding (I don’t know for sure if it was even on the radar) is an upgrade to the exit ramp from westbound Arlington Boulevard onto Glebe Road. I’ll look into this a little more when I get a minute. This is a plan long in the making that would expand that exit and create a merge lane about where the car dealership and purple building are.

Headlines today (scroll down to read the stories):

• Affordable Apartments: The Paperwork Hassle
• Sports Commission to See Mini-Golf Plans
• Police Notes for Buckingham

Headlines from earlier in the week (scroll down farther to see them):

• Pedestrians Meeting About Glebe/Carlin Springs Intersections
• This Weekend at Lubber Run Amphitheatre
• A Little More About Music (kid’s music, that is…)
• Letter: AHC Not a Partner with Paradigm
• McDonald’s Drops Their Request to Supersize Their Signage

Enjoy and let me know what you think. Don’t forget to get your friends interested in the blog. Send the link to them. I know some of you have been doing this since I’ve added a handful of people to the mailing list (welcome to you new comers), but I am always looking for more people. If you like what you’re reading, please ask them to email me, and I’ll put them on the list.

Today’s story looks at the issue of overcrowding and income verification in affordable housing at the Gates.
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Gates of Ballston residents who live in the affordable units—the 350 apartments that rent below market value to people of modest means—have many hoops to jump through in order to live, residents and at least one activist have said. They have to submit to semi-annual inspections of their apartments; they have to use locking gates on the property in order to get into backyards where bicycle racks and garbage dumpsters are. They have had to learn how to use newer appliances and central heat and air conditioning units. This might seem easy enough to most readers, but some of the residents cannot read in their own language let alone English, or they come from very small, Central American villages with very different customs, said Lois Athey, a long-time activist with BU-GATA, the tenant’s association. The language barrier and lack of assistance, Ms. Athey has said, has led to an overall feeling of harassment.

Added to that is an annual assessment of each apartment’s income.

“It’s an aggravation they have to go through one time a year,” said JoAnn Cubbage, the chief of the county’s Housing Services Sector. “Some people are just intimidated by it.”

Once a year, people in the “committed affordable” units—apartments that will remain affordable for decades—must recertify their incomes to make sure that the total income for the unit remains below 60 percent of Area Median Income, as determined by HUD. In 2007, that’s $39,690 per year for a single person, and $56,700 for a family of four.

A family should be able to bring all the required materials for verification in one meeting, Ms. Cubbage said, but the materials must cover everyone earning an income in the unit—spouses and children alike.

These are “very, very stringent requirements,” said Richard “Rick” Leeds, the CEO of AHC Management, which runs the complex. “We have to recertify them every year….their incomes must fall into the guidelines so that the maximum income will not exceed the federal guidelines, and that is critical to the process. We will be evaluated by both our lenders and our tax credit partners every year. They will come in and audit our files. So we’ve got lots of individuals looking over our shoulders.”

Failure to comply would mean that AHC Inc., the owner of the property, would not receive the tax credits it and its financing partners, such as Wachovia Bank, require, Mr. Leeds said. The $100 million renovation of The Gates has largely been financed with these tax credits. Non-compliance could put AHC out of business, Mr. Leeds said.

This process has not been without its problems, however. Ms. Cubbage said the rules regarding certification are complex, and the federal regulations fill “four-inch binders.”

Last year, as The Gates was refilling with people, one family was told by AHC that they qualified both for a low-income apartment and for relocation assistance from the Tenant Assistance Fund, Ms. Cubbage said. However, the family’s income had not been checked with the employer; as it turned out, the family qualified neither for the affordable apartment nor the TAF money. It was money the family was required to return, she said. “The people were upset.”

“It’s a complicated process,” Ms. Cubbage said “It was an honest mistake.” She said she believed the person who made the mistake is still working at AHC. She refused to give the person’s name.

As well, AHC has had to make sure the number of people in the apartment, especially those 18 or over, must be verified; people old enough to earn a living count differently than those underage.

Ms. Athey has said that as many as 11 families that might have been qualified for the assistance were not told that they qualified. Also, she has said the process of verifying income, especially for the first families to move back in last year, was onerous.

But even now, the process which might be simple for some people can be a burden on working class families in Buckingham.

“With the tax credits, they have to certify income,” Ms. Athey said during an interview in February. “And they wanted everyone in the apartment on the lease, I’m OK with that.”

Income has to be “third-party verified” which means getting official statements from employers.

According to Concesa Malave, the assistant manager of The Gates, the residents bring in the names and addresses of employers. Ms. Malave then sends a form to the employer asking for income information.

“Most of the time, the employer cooperates,” she said, adding that “maybe 2 out of 10” employers do not get back to her. And then she must call and double check on what’s going on. “Everything must be complete,” she said. All the blanks in the form must be filled. She said she makes phone calls to employers, and sometimes asks employees to remind their employers to fill forms.

This verification process can be tough for some residents, Ms. Athey said, given that a gardening company paying employees off-the-books might not want to admit to how much they pay. Also, the employee cannot transmit the information, and Ms. Athey admitted that some of the tenants will lie to try and stay under the income cap.
She said she has heard of times when the resident has reported income that was seasonal, but it was taken as a year-round salary, something Ms. Malave said she tries to iron out. And getting tax records for people who might not be filing taxes is difficult if not impossible.

“When you start asking for all this paperwork, they [residents] leave,” Ms. Athey said.

It is easy to rise above the cap if you have more than one or two employees in the house, Ms. Athey said.

Offering affordable housing at the 60 percent of AMI level “helps people who have two young kids and one parent not working.”

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May 21: Burglary, 400 block of N. Park Drive. Between 9 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. someone entered an apartment through an unsecured window and took clothing.

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 11:49 AM 1 comments

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Friday, June 29:
8:15 p.m. The Art of Belly Dancing: Demo & Lesson
8:30 p.m. Film: Casablanca (1942)

To keep up with the Amphitheatre’s summer schedule, look to the right hand column, and click the Arts al Fresco link under “County Gov’t Sites.”

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A Little More About Music

Ever since the Steve Songs Concert a couple weekends ago (see the June 7 post), friends and I have been talking about great kids music (hey, it’s what we do).

Anyway, I thought I’d add a few names and titles for those people interested. Feel free to email me with more, or simply add ideas to “comments” below…

Eddie Spaghetti—He’s an aging rocker, from the looks of his photos, and his “Greatest Hits” album is really good. My fave: “Rainy, Rainy Day Blues.” With lines like “Don’t let the clouds down in my shoes/Don’t want no rainy, rainy day blues…” it’s like something out of a 70s sitcom (I’m thinking “Love, American Style,” or maybe “The Monkeys”). Click the link and you can download the songs—he also has a link to order CDs.

Jessica Harper—She’s got a good band behind her, especially her pianist. Her voice is nice, her songs are fun. (Her web site is interesting because it’s very focused on her kids books—I didn’t even know she had any.) I like “Inside/Out” though, for albums. “Little Brown Dog Named Joe” is my fave, a bluesy tune about a dog that has eaten all her shoes (“…then you ate my cowboy boots/and now you ride the range/hey, you little brown dog-named-joe…”).

They Might Be Giants—I remember from a Washington Post story when their album “NO!” came out that they would get on stage and yell, “We’re Number 1 on the children’s music charts!” during their adult concerts. (I couldn’t find a link to the Washington Post story, sorry.) Frankly, their kid’s music isn’t a whole lot different than their adult stuff. My favorite tune on “No!” is “The Edison Museum”: “The OLDest, LARgest AND most FAmous MAUsoleum in New JERsey.”

Finally, Brent Holmes—He sings about cows, bears, whales, walruses, and moose. Many of these animals help him out on the songs (Marty the Moose and Bernie the Bear take time out of their concert schedules to accompany Mr. Holmes.) A lot of them are simple addition or multiplication songs. He does a great job with the voices, especially on the song “Peanut Butter” where sticky-mouthed bears are eating their beloved food.

But the one I have pretty much committed to memory is “The Backpack Tree.” If you don’t know what that is, it’s the tree backpackers use to keep their food from bears. You find a tree, throw a rope over a whimpy branch that couldn’t hold a bear, and hoist your pack off the ground to a height taller than a bear and a distance as far from the trunk as you can get. This is all for naught, the song suggests (sing it with a goofy, bear-like sound, and you get the idea): “The backpack tree, the backpack tree, I love it when I run into a backpack tree/When I’m bouncin’ down the trail/my favorite thing to see/is backpacks hanging in a backpack tree/backpacks are my favorite food/they put me in a wonderful mood/it’s never very hard to get them down/I climb up the tree and I knock them to the ground.” After he eats the food, he buries the backpacks in order to grow more backpack trees. Classic.

Labels: amphitheatre, concert, kids music, lubber run amphitheatre, meeting, pedestrian

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 12:46 PM 0 comments

John Reeder raises some interesting points about affordable housing in his email to the Arlington New Directions, which was reprinted in the Buckingham Herald Tribblog yesterday. [Scroll down to the June 20 post: "Sham Deal: Bham Unaffordable"--Steve] I would like to make one correction: AHC, a developer and owner of affordable housing in Arlington for more than 30 years, is not a partner with Paradigm in the Buckingham project. We own the Gates of Ballston, a 464-unit rental property, which is next door to the Buckingham development. The Gates is currently undergoing a major renovation which will be completed later this fall. When the renovation is finished, 348 of the apartments will be affordable to families earning 60% or less of the area median income ($56,700 for a family of four).

AHC is doing what it can to increase the supply of affordable housing (see our website for new projects at www.ahcinc.org) and we are open to new ideas that will preserve affordable housing in Arlington.

Walter D. Webdale
President and CEO
AHC Inc.

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McDonald’s Drops Request to Supersize Their Signage

The McDonald’s at the corner of N. Glebe Road and Arlington Boulevard has dropped a request to supersize the total square-footage of its signs, the county said. The restaurant, under current county regulations can have about 270 square feet of signs, and they were asking for more than 300 square feet as part of an image and marketing change, county records show. The decision should have been made at the June county board meeting, but had been withdrawn. They will make changes within current standards, county staff said.

Labels: affordable housing, ahc, Buckingham, mcdonalds, paradigm, signs

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 2:05 PM 0 comments

I am going to enter my dissent on the demolition and gentrification of Buckingham: I think it was a disgrace, a cop out, and a sorry statement—I don’t see how keeping perhaps 100 of the original 460 apartments as “affordable” is a good deal for anybody.

As to the question of purchasing condos, I fail to understand how a one bedroom, renovated apartment costing $300,000 minimum is a good deal for anybody. Condo prices are dropping like a stone; interest rates now exceed 6.7%. Getting someone making a $40,000 income into making monthly principal, interest, condo fee and tax payments of $2,300 for a one-bedroom condo is not "affordable housing" in my opinion.

The best outcome for Buckingham would have been the County Board to have designated it as an historic property, then condemned and taken the entire three villages and then sell them to a nonprofit housing group to continue to operate as basic rental housing for the many people who make less than $30,000 a year—including the elderly, and disabled. It also would have historically preserved a unique apartment complex, now largely destroyed.

One of the 20 fresh ideas for affordable housing in Arlington was the creation of a new Arlington housing authority which would both own says the 460 units now destroyed at Buckingham and have the financial resources to directly finance the purchase of such apartments. This authority would directly own and preserve these apartments as RENTAL housing!

Arlington existing non-profit housing groups, particularly AHC is a partner with Paradigm Development Company the Buckingham owner and developer, have become housing developers rather than housing preservers. I do not trust AHC to preserve and maintain Arlington's historic garden apartments.
The Arlington Green Party has decided to endorse the creation of an Arlington Housing Authority through a voter referendum on the November ballot. We hope that those of you interested in affordable housing in Arlington will support the creation of the housing authority.

If Arlington had a housing authority at the time of Paradigm proposed to demolish historic Buckingham Villages 1 through 3, the housing authority could have both financed and owned the units which would have been kept for the roughly 1,600 tenants evicted.

We of course would have needed a County Board with both a backbone and a genuine commitment to affordable housing that the current one has never demonstrated.

--John Reeder

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Loitering and Public Drinking to Be Topic of Meeting Next Week

Long-time Buckingham resident James Vandeputte has spoken to--it seems like--just about anyone who would listen regarding the courtyard behind his apartment at Arlington Oaks and the loitering he sees around the CVS at the corner of N. Pershing Drive and N. Glebe Road.

The courtyard at night turns into a bit of a “beer party.” There’s public drinking, urination, defecation and littering, he said. He said he sees similar activity around the CVS and Glebe Market.

He has spoken to management at Arlington Oaks. He’s spoken to local and regional managers at the CVS, and the sales office of Buckingham Commons (the new townhouse development going in to Buckingham Village 2 at the corner of N. Henderson Road and N. George Mason Drive). He’s spoken with Arlington County Police Officer Lutz.

“This neighborhood is changing into a slum, ghetto, Skid Row,” he said in a recent interview. Mr. Vandeputte has lived on the 4300 block of N. Pershing Dr for about 12 years. He has lived in the neighborhood since 1974, he said.

This courtyard becomes a "beer party" Mr. Vandeputte said.

[One note: I cannot be there--I'll be out of town--but I will have coverage the following week, after I get back. --Steve]

June 18: Burglary, 300 block of N. George Mason Dr. Between 1:30 and 10a.m., someone entered an apartment through an unlocked door and took a wallet and clothing.

Labels: affordable housing, Buckingham, BV1, BV3

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 12:14 PM 1 comments

Took the kids to see the Nats game last night (thanks again, Pat, for the tix), but had to leave after the top of the sixth! AAaaaargh! On the way to the car, we heard the crazy cheering as the Nats sliced their deficit in half. The Washington Post story on the game talked about how the little things made all the difference in the world in that game. If you were watching/listening during the first five innings, you’d have thought the Nats were the last in NL East for a reason. Easy misses, bad throws. All of it looked mediocre.

By the way, the Connection has already published my column for the week (Too Much Choice Leaves Head Spinning and Stomach Churning). Enjoy!
So far this week, by the way, no police notes. Keep your fingers crossed.
I’m working on a few stories, so this week and next should be a little better, but then I’m off to a conference next weekend. (To the Black Hills!)

Labels: Connection, Nationals, schools

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 2:22 PM 0 comments

Yes, they are.

The postage vending machine remains, but the copier is gone.

“We don’t know exactly when [the renovation] will start,” she said. The drawings of the space will not be made public until they are submitted to the county for approval, she said.

The letter carriers and the trucks they drive, along with people who help distribute the mail, have moved permanently to the main post office on Washington Boulevard, opening space in the back rooms of the Buckingham Station that will be converted into lobby space. (For more on this, see the Feb. 22 post—click the link then scroll down to that date and to the Feb. 28 post which has a letter to the editor concerning this story. I’m going to fix the scrolling problem soon).

There will be a new copy machine to replace the one that Ms. Greco removed.

“I was issuing too many refunds,” she said, adding, “We’re getting all new stuff.”

Except, apparently, an “Automated Postal Center,” which would allow customers to place a package on the scales, buy the postage and mail it without speaking to another living human. The station does not have enough domestic postage traffic to support the machine. The largely Hispanic population of Buckingham buys money orders or international postage, Ms. Greco said.

The county board committed itself to preserving about 300 units of affordable housing in the Buckingham Neighborhood, at their Saturday board meeting. For now, read the press release, and I’ll have more on this on Monday, late.

Sorry, I could neither go to the board meeting, nor could I watch the video live on-line. My only hope is that the county will put the segments of the video on-line quickly. That’s been a very handy gadget for people like me.

Just thought I would draw attention to Buckinghamsters (and others who might swing by the site today) about a religious service being held at Lubber Run's Amphitheatre tonight. I caught the story in the Sun Gazette and thought I would pass it along to you.

Although the service is performed by the Jewish Congregation Etz Hayim, it’s opened to everyone, and the Sun Gazette quotes the rabbi as saying it should be encouraging for all people of the spirit. Lubber Run Amphitheatre, tonight June 8, 6:15 p.m. Free.

Click here for Lubber Run's full schedule.

Labels: Religion Jewish Lubber-Run

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 1:05 PM 0 comments

So it was with that background that I and my family were the guests of Pete and Jean Eisen at the a concert Sunday that was as much swamp as romp with the rain at times pouring down on us. Pete, a chef and pre-school teacher, did not disappoint. His smoked brisket and sausages, along with a choice of craft brews and wines, ‘bout made me swoon. He concocted a horseradish dip, sweet and tempting.

We were already soaked on the lawn when Dave, on the next tarp over, traded some of his jambalaya for some of Pete’s brisket. Probably not the best jambalaya, but very nice.

The music was good, but not enough of it. I could go for about six or eight hours, instead of the four. Still, Geno Delaphose and French Rockin’ Boogie opened the show and set the tone. Excellent music. Two of the players were nice enough to pose for a photo, though I cannot find their names anywhere. They told me, but the combination of beer and loud music confounded the problem. (I can barely hear myself on my voice mail where I left their names so that I could report them here. I can’t find them on the web site. If you know who they are, please tell me.).

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Get Connectioned…

Read my latest column (“Steve Thurston: T-Ball Coach”) in the Arlington Connection.
Remember: if you live in the 22203 zip code, call the Arlington Connection and get a FREE subscription to the paper: 703-917-6465. Right now we don’t have enough Buckinghamsters subscribing so the bulk mail takes forever—Sign Up Now!

If you just don’t want another piece of mail, grab a copy at Murky Coffee in Clarendon, Bob & Edith’s Diner on Columbia Pike (the original joint near S. Courthouse Road), or the Barcroft Sports Center on Four-Mile-Run Drive (near S. George Mason Drive).

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 3:38 PM 0 comments