There Goes the Neighborhood?

In Arlington, a bid to allow more renters whips up a frenzy.

AMONG WASHINGTON'S close-in suburbs, Arlington County has a justifiable reputation as a harmonious stronghold of tolerance and moderation. As it remade itself in recent decades from a bedroom suburb into a more densely settled, partly urban, more diverse cluster of communities, it did so with a consensus born of plentiful citizen input and little of the political turbulence that similar transformations caused elsewhere. That's why it's news that a proposal now before the County Board that would allow homeowners to rent out parts of their homes as separate living units -- additions, basement apartments with kitchenettes and the like -- has upset some homeowners, including a portion who believe the measure could attract illegal immigrants.

The competing agendas driving the debate over the measure include a desire to expand property rights; provide more affordable housing in a jurisdiction where it is in short supply; avert further crowding and parking problems; and protect the integrity of established and stable neighborhoods.

Those who oppose the zoning change have a legitimate interest in protecting their property values and stopping any degradation of neighborhood standards. But, in this case, the objections to the county staff's proposals are overblown.

For one thing, the measure before the County Board would allow rentals of what are known as "accessories" to main homes only when resident homeowners are the landlords. Therefore, the fears that neighborhoods would be degraded are based on the dubious assumption that homeowners would harm the very communities where they are living. Moreover, the county staff estimates that just 28 such rentals would occur annually, and it seems a safe bet that at least some of them would involve elderly homeowners who want to rent space in their homes to resident caregivers. To deny them that freedom seems churlish. In addition, students and others in need of increasingly scarce affordable housing could benefit from this proposal, which would limit rental spaces to a maximum of 750 square feet.

We don't doubt that crowding is already an issue in some Arlington communities or that street parking can be tough to find. But the plan before the County Board would require that a landlord create a new parking spot for the tenant if a rental unit is to be offered on a street where parking is scarce. Taken together, the safeguards appear adequate for the complaints that have been voiced by opponents of the proposal. Given that, opposition to the measure seems antithetical to the consensual, moderate political culture that Arlingtonians like to call "the Arlington way."