A Second Migration
Arlington's Once-Bustling Latino Community Shrinks as Rents Push Residents Out

By Annie Gowen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 8, 2007

When she was growing up in Arlington, Silvia Gutierrez remembers, there were fiestas nearly every weekend in Four Mile Run Park, where radios would blast salsa, people would merengue right on the grass and the air would be fragrant with the aromas of pupusas and other fare.

But those days seem to have disappeared along with her old girlfriends, who moved to Woodbridge and Manassas. "It's not like it was back in the day," said Gutierrez, 22, sitting outside her apartment mulling a move of her own while her little girl, Mireya, played on the grass. "It's a little bit lonely."

For decades, Arlington County was one of the first stops for newly arrived immigrants in the Washington area, forging the county's reputation as a diverse, welcoming community. In the 1980s and 1990s, with its cheap housing and proximity to downtown Washington, Arlington became a magnet for Latinos, especially Salvadorans fleeing their country's violent civil war.

But now, to escape rising rents and evictions caused by redevelopment, hundreds of Latinos are giving up on the county, and some newer immigrants are bypassing it altogether for exurban locales and communities as far away as Culpeper.

Census figures back that up. Although Hispanic populations in communities around the Capital Beltway have increased dramatically in the past five years, Arlington's Latino community is down 11 percent.

"Housing is at very high prices, and it makes it challenging for families to have space," said County Board Vice Chairman Walter Tejada (D), one of the few Latino elected officials in Virginia. "So a new Arlington is evolving in Woodbridge and Manassas and other parts of the Washington region, mainly in Northern Virginia."

A new identity is forming in Arlington as well, this one with less of the Latino presence that residents and officials have embraced.

Some Latino companies have seen business drop as much as 40 percent in the past few years. A community center closed its after-school program because of lack of interest. Waiting lists for adult English classes are a quarter of what they once were.

And Feb. 1, the Arlington County School Board appointed a committee to examine redrawing school boundaries -- in part because enrollments have dropped in the south end of the county, home to many Latino families, and risen elsewhere.

Although many residents such as Gutierrez say they feel the loss keenly, Arlington officials -- who have long prided themselves on the community's multicultural flair -- have sought to discourage the notion that the county is growing whiter and smaller.

County Manager Ron Carlee said he believes the Latino population in the county is underreported and cites other surveys that show the rate of Latino movement is holding steady or declining at a less precipitous pace.

In addition, the county has moved aggressively in the past two years to challenge the U.S. Census on Arlington's overall population numbers, which showed the number of people has dropped. The county won that battle twice; Arlington officially has a population around 199,000.

"I don't think anybody could give you a really high confidence number on the Latino population," Carlee said. "My best guess is that it is relatively stable right now, but it would not surprise me to see some declines in the future."

But activists and others who have worked to help hundreds of families displaced from the disappearing garden apartment complexes -- which in the past were the first homes for immigrants as they arrived in the country -- say the shift is too palpable to be ignored.

The county has preserved more than 6,000 affordable apartments for its residents and is negotiating a costly plan with a developer to save 300 more in the Buckingham neighborhood off Glebe Road. Yet it has lost half of its affordable apartments to rising rents and redevelopment since 2000, records show.

"They don't want to have to say they're becoming a luxury, high-end community, which is the reality," said Lois Athey, a housing activist who is part of the Save Buckingham coalition.

At Kate Waller Barrett Elementary School, for example, enrollment plunged from nearly 500 students in 2001 to a low of about 340, although enrollment is rebounding a bit because of transfers from other schools, Principal Theresa D. Bratt said.

Nearby, the after-school program at the Whitefield Commons Community Resource Center was canceled this fall after only four students showed up. Its cozy rooms, hung with hand-painted flags from Central American countries, are locked most days after school, its row of computers dark.

"It's been sad because long-term families have had to move because of redevelopment," Bratt said. "It's been kind of emotional for all of us."

The school system has sparked some concern from parents by launching a boundary task force to examine what do to about the fact that some schools in South Arlington have lost enrollment while others in the north end of the county are overcrowded.

Business owners are feeling a pinch, too.

At Castro's Bakery on Wilson Boulevard, co-owner Guadalupe Castro said that each weekend, she used to sell 250 of her fruitcakes, a Salvadoran treat of white cake layered with fresh fruit. Now she sells 20.

Nearby, at Atlacatl restaurant on Columbia Pike, business is down 40 percent from this time last year, said Augustina Mejia, the owner's daughter. The restaurant is sometimes deserted during the week, she said, but business swells on the weekends, she said, when former Arlingtonians who live farther out return for home cooking.

The most obvious benefit for those leaving the inner suburbs is that many can afford to become homeowners, Tejada said. In Arlington, the average price of a single-family home was more than $500,000 last year.

But these residents sometimes struggle to adapt in their new communities, where fewer of their neighbors speak Spanish and there aren't as many transportation options. The influx of these residents has strained services in such places as Prince William and Loudoun counties -- where Hispanic populations have risen 130 and 113 percent, respectively, in the past five years -- and in the city of Manassas. Controversy erupted there after the city passed -- then repealed -- an overcrowding law making it illegal for extended families to live together -- a law some believed targeted Latinos.

Officials are struggling to find ways meet the need. In Prince William, for example, some members of the Board of Supervisors have railed against the cost of illegal immigration. And the county recently began broadcasting free Spanish lessons on TV.

Gloria Hernandez, 38, a custodial worker, left Arlington last year when her apartment building was slated for renovations and she couldn't afford the new rent. Now she's a homeowner -- buying a blue-and-red-brick $301,000 townhouse in Prince William not far from Potomac Mills mall. She lives there with her boyfriend, a construction worker, and two of her children.

She is proud of her home but has struggled to pay her $2,800 monthly mortgage, taking in two other roommates. She and her boyfriend share a car, a necessity in Prince William. She has to get up at 4:30 a.m. to take him to work -- an hour and a half trip.

"Nothing is easy here," Hernandez said, sitting down in her living room, cluttered with toys. A pot of red beans bubbled on the stove. Paco, the family parakeet, rustled in his cage. "I worry so much . . . and if I don't pay all my bills I'll be living under the bridge!" she said.

She misses her old life in Arlington, when she could walk easily to church and shops in the neighborhood along Mount Vernon Avenue nicknamed Chirilagua by locals, after a village in El Salvador where many of its residents once hailed.

She and her boyfriend talk often moving back to Arlington. But she knows that is a far-off dream.

"I want to go back there, but I can't afford the rent," she said. "I need to stay here for now. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow."