(RECAP: The Alexandria City Council told the city’s public housing agency Tuesday to go ahead and replace the run-down Ramsey Homes apartment complex with a new 52-unit mixed-income building, without attempting to preserve any remnants of the segregated federal housing. The unanimous vote reversed previous direction that the council members gave in February, and threw yet another twist into the long-running saga of the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority’s effort to raze four low-rise apartment houses. The Ramsey Homes redevelopment project is expected to cost about $17.5 million, said ARHA chief executive Roy Priest, nearly entirely paid for with federal money.)

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(RECAP: For years, Loudoun County has shut its own Affordable Dwelling Unit program out from the state and federal grants that most localities use to extend their workforce housing programs. The Board of Supervisors is beginning the process of opening the door to those grants. The problem lay in the regulations of the county ADU program. Developers who rezone land for large subdivisions (more than 50 units) are required by county zoning rules to contribute a certain number of units, distributed throughout the development, to the county ADU program to be rented or sold below market value. The requirements on those units conflict with standards set by VHDA and HUD. That means that, although developers may be required to build ADUs, those same rules prevent them from qualifying for VHDA and HUD grant funding.)

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(RECAP: Gov. Terry McAuliffe is pitching in $2.5 million to help Richmond in transforming the impoverished Creighton Court area of the East End into a model, mixed-income community. The governor went to the East End on Wednesday to announce Richmond as a winner of a Vibrant Community Initiative grant. The grant will support development of a $45 million subdivision on the 20-acre site where the former Armstrong High School now stands. The Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority is taking the lead on the project, with major financial support from City Hall, which has made this project a signature effort to de-concentrate poverty and stimulate growth in a depressed part of Richmond. Work is expected to start in October with the demolition of the ancient Armstrong building, followed by site work and then construction on the first of the plotted 256 new residences, 220 apartments and 36 single-family homes.)

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