As I have campaigned across Arlington this fall, I have come across the detritus of a housing boom that has burst leaving empty condos, empty lots where graceful moderate income rental apartments housed thousands of people, and bankruptcy. I am reminded that our county leaders–the Democratic county board–could have done much more to have curbed this housing madness, but went along with the mania.

Two complexes that were razed and now have empty fields overgrown with grass where about 90 modest apartments stood are the Buckingham Village complex on Henderson Road and N. George Mason Drive, and about 150 apartments at the Parkland Gardens (bounded by 21st Street & N. Glebe Road). Now we have empty fields where 500 people lived. The Buckingham site contains two rows of mostly empty, unsold million-dollar townhouses. The Parkland Gardens site is surrounded by a high wood fence that hides the foot-high grass where previously 50 years of Arlington renters lived in modest brick apartments.

Another complex, the former Concord Gardens near S. 4-Mile Run Drive and Walter Reed Drive, was converted to condominiums, nearly all of which sit empty. Condo prices are dropping like those of houses; the supply of unsold condos growing both from owners trying to sell and new projects coming on line, according to industry reports like Delta Associates, Trends in Washington Metro Area (May 9, 2008, www.deltaassociates.com).

Is this kind of “economic growth” or “development” that County Board Democrats want? They allow developrs to tear down perfectly good rental apartments standing for 50 years, and replace them with empty fields? This is not growth, but economic contraction. The well-being of Arlington residents is worse off.