Address Overcrowding
Brigid Schulte's article describing the struggle over parking between Fred Millar, an apartment-dwelling activist, and "genteel Arlington" homeowners could have taken place in nearly any neighborhood with older apartment buildings in Northern Virginia ["Parking's Dividing Lines," Metro, April 3]. It is, in fact, taking place now in my old neighborhood in the west end of Alexandria.
The problem, in a nutshell, is this: Apartment complexes that were designed to house singles, couples or very small families are now full of apartments housing several unrelated people or fairly large families with a number of children. The parking, laundry and garbage facilities of these complexes were never intended to accommodate the density of tenants who are there now. We read about the parking problems only because they are affecting people outside of the apartment complex itself.
I lived for many years in an extremely well-managed complex in Alexandria. Many tenants had lived there for decades. In the 1990s, we started seeing the type of change noted above, where dense occupation replaced relatively light occupation. I strongly suspect that some apartments that were rented to three or four people unofficially held six or more. Short of staging surprise raids, it is nearly impossible for apartment managers to police this sort of infraction, no matter how careful they are.
The quality of life began to suffer. It was harder to find nearby parking and to do your laundry. Trash cans overflowed. For the first time, the parking lot contained mounds of fast-food litter. Crime appeared in our previously tranquil community. Needless to say, as more of the low-density occupants left, no doubt at least partly in response to these problems, more high-density occupants moved in. The result was inevitable: By the time I moved out a few years back, it was hard to recognize the complex as the affordable, comfortable, safe middle-class community that it had been for more than 25 years.
I have often wondered where many of the former tenants went. Some, like me, may have left the area altogether. I suspect that most simply moved farther out, where there was less convenient public transportation but where housing was less expensive than in the inner suburbs. Naturally, this outward migration adds to the horrendous Northern Virginia traffic and pollution, not to mention sprawl and loss of open spaces.
I am sympathetic to the homeowners who have had their neighborhoods overrun with nonresident parkers. Some of those in Alexandria are among my best friends. Still, I think that it is a shame that the real problem -- overcrowded housing -- is usually not addressed until its parking starts to affect neighborhoods with houses approaching a half-million dollars in value. By the time the problem reaches these neighborhoods, it has totally destroyed whole communities made up of folks who could never afford anywhere near that price of housing and who would never have had the ear of local officials.
Deena Flinchum
Blacksburg, Va.
