Six and a half hours after New Year’s Day in 1957, Fred Wilkins, a 57-year-old janitor at Ft. Belvoir, was killed after a southbound Route 1 automobile struck him in Gum Springs. Three years later, Gum Springs resident Giles Roster, …

Safety First Read More »

Sometime this year, the federal Centers for Disease Control will likely end the rental eviction moratorium that has enabled millions of tenants to remain in their homes while the nation struggles with the economic fallout caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. …

Rental Relief Read More »

Four years ago, at the urging of my good friend Richard Prince, I joined more than a dozen other speakers at an Alexandria public hearing to support the removal of Confederate memorials in the city. I pointed out that even …

Will They Listen…This Time Read More »

A recent spate of winter storms reminded me how desperately the county—and indeed the region and nation—need to get on board with installing electric and communications utility lines, below ground. Weather and falling tree branches cause 40 percent of power …

Keep the lights on Read More »

I‘ve been absent from these pages these past few months because much of my time has been consumed by activities involving, not housing and property management, but my former profession: journalism. In July I attended the closing of the Los …

A Free Press Read More »

Election observers have long lamented the fact that only roughly half of registered voters cast ballots in presidential elections, and even fewer vote in other races. A 2008 study by Stanford University researchers Joshua Harder and Jon A. Krosnick found …

Election Motivation Read More »

We will be moving our offices over the next few weeks and hope to resume posting later this summer.

We will have a new post in May.

Nowhere is the nation’s affordable housing crisis more evident than in the rise of a phenomenon known as “ghost tenants,” or people attempting to live in government subsidized affordable housing, secretly, off lease. At Spring Garden Apartments, the number of …

Ghost Tenants Read More »

Please see our February 2016 blog post for an update A few months after Fairfax County gave Verizon approval in October 2005 to offer cable TV and Internet service in the county, a company representative visited my office and excitedly …

The red line that won’t fade Read More »