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Reposted by Alex Goyette

The Alexandria Brief

@alexandriabrief.com

Alexandria’s DASH bus system is carrying 40% more passengers than in 2019, Vice Mayor Sarah Bagley reported Wednesday, part of a regional transit surge that has pushed ridership well beyond pre-pandemic levels.

DASH ridership soars 40% above pre-pandemic levels

Vice Mayor reports regional transit boom at City Council meeting, on same day that officials break ground on Union Station improvements

open.substack.com

November 13, 2025 at 9:02 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

👀 @alyia4alx.com and @yappelbaum.bsky.social will discuss Zoning for Justice and Affordability, hosted by @homeofva.bsky.social at the Lyceum in Old Town

Mon. 12/8, 6:30 - 8:00pm

Event is free but space is limited:
homeofva.org/events/lets-...

Let's Talk About Housing: Zoning for Justice and Affordability - HOME of VA

We'll examine how exclusionary zoning laws artificially constrain housing supply, driving up costs and perpetuatingsegregation. Our panel, including Yoni Applebaum, journalist and deputy executive edi...

homeofva.org

November 13, 2025 at 8:59 PM

Reposted by Alex Goyette

Alyia Gaskins

@alyia4alx.com

Breaking ground on the new Samuel Madden Homes is a transformational step toward hundreds of new affordable homes for our community. Grateful for every partner making this possible. Learn more: www.alxnow.com/2025/... 📸: James Cullum

November 13, 2025 at 8:00 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

To mitigate rent growth we should increase competition among landlords by...forcing them to cut buildings in half?

alextimes.com/opinion/lett...

Slice the luxury apartment building cake

To the editor:

We should consider splitting up the apartment building monopolies in Old Town by slicing them vertically. Let me explain.

There’s been a construction boom in Old Town lately of so-called luxury apartment buildings. Five new buildings have or are about to be up and running in the Braddock Road Metro area, and on Madison, Montgomery and South Patrick Streets. Combined with existing structures, I count a total of 13 luxury apartment buildings in or planned in the Braddock Road Metro area alone.

Meanwhile, despite claims that these buildings will alleviate unaffordability, prices have soared. Of course they have; each of these buildings gets to monopolize their own city block.

This gentrifying trend in urban planning has disguised compact development for the ability for fewer landlords to charge higher prices. We see the size and, at first glance, expect relief in rent prices. But this has not occurred.

Why does the city expect this to change by continuing to consolidate the rental market with fewer and fewer suppliers? Old Town’s famous city block is the unit by which to measure market competition because the grid is the geographic equivalent of a food hall with cells for vendors. If one vendor is able to take up more physical space at the expense of four others, the relative market power of this single vendor has quadrupled. It’s no different from urban planning.

These buildings are here to stay, this is true. Demolishing them would be costly and kneejerk.

Working with what we have, the city should consider mandating the sale of these monopolies to a market pool of landlords and developers. The task? Retrofit the interiors of luxury buildings to erect walls and renovate apartment units, so that the finished product looks more akin to several adjacent buildings with several landlords.

They would look like downtown streets of King Street or really any main street across the country. This development is tried and true, but modern luxury accelerates price hikes for the benefit of a concentrated class of landlords.

By taking a cake knife to these buildings, we fulfill market-based principles of healthy competition. Competition breeds innovation, which is again affirmed in such a strategy because the new cadre of landlords and developers would have to get creative to compete with each other.

Renters would benefit from increasing diversification of apartment unit layout, size, style and function. This is opposite of the modern luxury trend that has all but standardized apartment living as cellular and socially defunct, monotonous and institutional.

Alexandria has a responsibility to its residents. We all need housing. Affordability is already embedded in that concept – it shouldn’t be the exception.

The easiest way to accomplish this human mission is by assessing the problem, monopolizing power and taking the shortest path to solve it, by increasing supplier competition.

-James Clark,

November 13, 2025 at 6:49 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

Relevant to this: the regional Visualize 2050 transportation plan acknowledges that even with $30bn invested in roadway expansion (2x as much as transit), traffic is going to worsen in the region

Maureen Coffey (Arlington, VA) @maureencoffeyva.bsky.social · 12h

3) the least expensive market (PWC) was 62% of Arlington’s $ in 2019. Now it’s only 78% of the $

When people say “young families should just move further out/somewhere cheaper”…where? & at what cost? If you’re paying 75% as much and spending 100% more time in traffic on 66/95…why would you do that?

November 13, 2025 at 4:31 PM

Reposted by Alex Goyette

Maureen Coffey (Arlington, VA)

@maureencoffeyva.bsky.social

This slide from BrightMLS says so much

1) at the median, Arlington is now LESS expensive than Fairfax and Loudoun county, but about the same as Alexandria - hazard a guess this is bc arl&alx have lower priced condos mixed in vs almost exclusively SFH in the exurbs

2) everything is more expensive

November 13, 2025 at 2:43 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

great article touching on a few of the pro-housing reforms we'll be supporting this session - though i wasnt aware of that Thomas legislation guarding against litigation 👀

link to email your reps in support:
actionnetwork.org/letters/tell...

November 13, 2025 at 4:18 PM

Reposted by Alex Goyette

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social

NEW: @propublica.org investigated the Chicago apartment raid where kids were zip-tied and citizens detained for hours. They find:

- NONE of the arrested were criminally charged
- NO evidence the building was "filled with TdA terrorists."
- ZERO legitimate reason for DHS to rappel from a Blackhawk.

As a Black Hawk helicopter roared overhead, the slender, 28-year-old immigrant from Venezuela answered softly, his eyes darting to a television crew invited to film the raid. Next to Caicedo, masked Border Patrol agents inspected another man’s tattoos and asked him if he belonged to Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has designated a terrorist group.

Until that moment, Caicedo’s only interaction with law enforcement in his two-and-a-half years in the United States had been a traffic stop two weeks earlier for driving without a license or insurance, according to the records we reviewed. Chicago police had run a background check on him and found no prior arrests, no warrants and no evidence that he was in a gang. Caicedo said he had a pending asylum application, a steady job at a taco joint and a girlfriend whose daughter attended elementary school across the street.

None of that mattered. The U.S. government paraded him and his neighbors in front of the cameras and called their arrests a spectacular victory against terrorism. But later, after the cameras had gone, prosecutors didn’t charge Caicedo with a crime. They didn’t accuse him of being a terrorist. And after a brief hearing in immigration court, the government sent him back to the country he had fled nine years earlier.

“I lost everything,” he said in a phone interview from his mother’s home in the Venezuelan city of Valencia. “For those fools, everyone from Venezuela is a criminal.”

November 13, 2025 at 2:08 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

Title of my memoir

Becky Hammer @beckyhammer.bsky.social · 23h

Don't worry about it, he's just mad about zoning

November 13, 2025 at 4:00 AM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

It’s a shame that our cash-lite society has reduced the bliss of finding a crisp bill on the sidewalk

But I just found a full roll of dog poop bags on the trail and that’s pretty close

November 13, 2025 at 1:58 AM

Reposted by Alex Goyette

beth

@hells-beekeepers.bsky.social

what a pleasant time to be literate

November 13, 2025 at 12:15 AM

Reposted by Alex Goyette

R. Kirk McPike

@kirkmcpike.bsky.social

Today, the lawsuit against the City's Zoning for Housing policies was dismissed by the courts. This is a great victory for those who need more affordable and better housing in Alexandria, and the many Alexandrians who advocated for these policies — which are a start, not an end, to our efforts.

Statement on the Zoning for Housing Decision by Councilman R. Kirk McPike:

“The decision by the court to throw out the lawsuit against Alexandria’s Zoning for Housing ordinances is a victory for the people of our City. Bringing new housing supply — both committed affordable and market rate — to the market is the only way to slow the rise in housing prices. A more livable and affordable Alexandria is possible if we commit ourselves to expanding the housing options available to our residents. The passage of Zoning for Housing in 2023 was a vital first step, but more must be done to ensure that every Alexandrian has a high-quality and affordable place to call home.”

November 13, 2025 at 12:24 AM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

My shows on

(After I get the girls down, anyway)

Ryan Belmore @ryanbelmore.bsky.social · 1d

Got my iced coffee and ready to go.

If you can't make it to City Council’s Legislative Meeting in person, you can watch it here apps.alexandriava.gov/Calendar/Det.... 7 p.m. Start time.

City Council Chambers at Alexandria City Hall

November 12, 2025 at 11:53 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

Housing advocates celebrate indeed 🎉

I’m reheating some soup for dinner

Ryan Belmore @ryanbelmore.bsky.social · 1d

Judge rules in city's favor in zoning lawsuit

Housing advocates celebrate decision on controversial housing initiative

dlvr.it

November 12, 2025 at 10:38 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

“We’re excited to start on the next chapter of housing reform, which should include the launch of Zoning for Housing’s promised second phase” - me

ALXnow @alxnow.bsky.social · 1d

JUST IN: Judge dismisses case against Alexandria's Zoning for Housing overhaul

JUST IN: Judge dismisses case against Alexandria’s Zoning for Housing overhaul | ALXnow

Alexandria won its nearly two-year battle in Circuit Court today (Wednesday) against residents fighting the city's massive Zoning for Housing/Housing for All overhaul. Judge H. Thomas Padrick, Jr. granted...

www.alxnow.com

November 12, 2025 at 10:30 PM

Reposted by Alex Goyette

Ryan Belmore

@ryanbelmore.bsky.social

Case file just updated to "hearing order pending". I'm told by a source that I'll have something official tonight on this.

Ryan Belmore @ryanbelmore.bsky.social · 1d

FYI - I'm aware of the Zoning for Housing case at Alexandria Circuit Court this morning. I've reached out to both parties for comments and additional information. Court documents have not been updated with the decision. Will follow up when I hear something official.

November 12, 2025 at 7:51 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

Item 7 - City Council General Updates Watch Party tonight

Alexandria City Council Docket for the 11/12 meeting including Item 7: City Council General Updates

November 12, 2025 at 7:07 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

My kingdom to be un-banned from a certain local social media group right now

I'll even give my sticker back

November 12, 2025 at 7:04 PM

Reposted by Alex Goyette

Ryan Belmore

@ryanbelmore.bsky.social

FYI - I'm aware of the Zoning for Housing case at Alexandria Circuit Court this morning. I've reached out to both parties for comments and additional information. Court documents have not been updated with the decision. Will follow up when I hear something official.

November 12, 2025 at 6:58 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

PHASE 2 WHEN

Becky Hammer @beckyhammer.bsky.social · 1d

Zoning for Housing lawsuit dismissed!!

November 12, 2025 at 6:10 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

This turned out great thanks everyone!

I didn’t spatchcock it bc I wanted to try it the regular way first as a baseline, will def try that next time

Alex Goyette @alexgoyette.bsky.social · 2d

I'm roasting a whole chicken for the first time today

What mistake will i make unless you tell me right now to avoid it? (The bird is already defrosted)

November 12, 2025 at 2:02 AM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

I'm roasting a whole chicken for the first time today

What mistake will i make unless you tell me right now to avoid it? (The bird is already defrosted)

November 11, 2025 at 6:54 PM

Alex Goyette

@alexgoyette.bsky.social

Time for my semi-regular thread on upcoming housing actions & events in Alx! 🧵

Starting off with something for any Virginian: elections are over, now email your state legislators to support statewide housing reforms in the upcoming General Assembly Session!

actionnetwork.org/letters/tell...

Ask Your Delegate & Senator to Support More Homes:

Virginia is short roughly 188,000 homes due to restrictive local zoning rules that limit home construction and prevents affordable homes from being built. This home shortage leads to bidding wars and ...

actionnetwork.org

November 11, 2025 at 6:25 PM