Family Housing Options Limited in Arlington
By Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Shirley Figueredo, a housekeeper from Uruguay, has lived in the Buckingham Village apartments for 15 years, within walking distance of Barrett Elementary School, where her daughter Ashley Gomez, 9, is a third-grader.
But last month Figueredo and her neighbors in Section 2 of the complex received letters informing them that the 84 units will be demolished to make way for 68 townhouses and that they will have to vacate the apartments by early summer. Like many of her neighbors, she doesn't know if she can find an affordable apartment in the Barrett attendance zone, which means Ashley might have to leave the school she loves.
The average rent at Buckingham Village is $1,070. Prices for the townhouses will start in the high $600,000s.
"This whole thing is going to tremendously affect all the children, because they're going to have to adapt to a new environment, new teachers, new friends," she said this week as she picked up her daughter from school. "There's no way that we can find any [housing] around here anymore."
One hundred and eighty-one Arlington public school students live in the 456-unit Buckingham Village, which the owner, Paradigm Development Co., plans to replace with 269 townhouses and 530 apartments. Some residents of Section 2 might move to units in Sections 1 and 3, but they will have to move again when those sections are upgraded to more expensive housing in the near future.
Stanley Sloter, president of Paradigm, said that a relocation specialist has met with 45 of the 75 families being displaced from Section 2 and that the eviction letter includes a telephone number for residents to call to talk about relocation options, including units available in other complexes the company owns.
"The vast majority of people will be able to relocate to Sections 1 and 3," he said, but he added that they would be asked to move again once remodeling work begins on those sections.
Sloter said that, so far, fewer than 10 school-age children have been identified in Section 2.
But several Barrett parents said they had not called for relocation assistance yet because they were so shocked by the eviction notice.
"I didn't think this could happen in the United States," said Rosario Aguilar, a hotel worker whose 9-year-old son, Kevin Pardo, is a third-grader at Barrett.
As Arlington continues to lose affordable apartments to condos and luxury housing and as families are forced to leave the county, school system demographics are being transformed, said Alison Denton, facilities planner for the Arlington public schools.
She cited the Shirlington Overlook complex, which housed 279 public school students, as an example: "Those are being renovated into luxury condos, so we don't expect a lot of these people back."
She said statistics show that, on average, only about seven of 100 condominium residents in the county are children, vs. 24 of 100 apartment dwellers.
As low-income families are pushed out of an increasingly costly real estate market, Arlington schools are expected to have fewer students -- enrollment has been declining since 2001, when real estate prices began to soar. Enrollment has declined from 19,097 students in 2001 to 18,193 today. The school system is also expected to become less diverse.
"They used to be able to find other places in Arlington," Denton said, referring to the displaced families. "But now . . . they move out of the county."
Barrett Principal Theresa Bratt is concerned, too. Just five years ago, Barrett had almost 500 students. Now it has 340, a change she attributes in part to skyrocketing housing costs.
About 59 percent of Barrett students are Hispanic, 21 percent are non-Hispanic white, 11 percent are Asian and 8 percent are black.
Bratt said that Barrett also has experienced a decrease in the number of students who qualify for free- and reduced-price lunches or who speak English as a second language.
"Right now we have a very vibrant, diverse community," she said, noting the wide range of her students' ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. "The life skills people learn early on are important -- working with and making friends with people of all different backgrounds and socioeconomic levels," she said.
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