Growth that pays for the community it lands on.

Who we are

Shared Purpose Initiative exists because Northern Virginia keeps growing, and too many decisions about how it grows are made by saying no before looking. Leadership means finding the way to yes.

Saying no does not stop growth. It moves the cost onto the families who already live here, through higher tax bills, longer commutes, thinner public services and homes their own kids can't afford.

We take people's concerns seriously. A legitimate concern deserves a real evaluation of the specific project in front of us. What we oppose is a no decided in advance, before anyone has looked.

We are regional by design. The same questions about housing, roads, power lines and data centers are being decided in every county around us, and the answer in one county shapes the next. The case for development done well is the same across the region, so we make it everywhere.

Our goals for the community

Everything we publish serves five outcomes. They are the test we apply to a project, a budget or a proposed rule.

1. A realistic income is enough to live here.

   The cost of living in Northern Virginia is three bills: the tax bill, the housing bill and the daily drive. Enough homes, at prices people can afford, so a teacher, a nurse, a deputy or a young family can stay in the community they serve. A tax base broad enough that homeowners aren't asked to carry it alone. Roads that don't turn a short trip into a long one.

2. Getting somewhere isn't a daily act of traffic anxiety.

   Roads and parking that keep pace with the people who use them, built ahead of demand instead of decades behind it.

3. Economic resilience.

   A local tax base large and diverse enough to reliably fund raises for teachers, public workers and first responders in place of one-time bonuses, and to carry a capital plan through a downturn. This is the argument that runs under everything else we do.

4. A competitive land market.

   Healthy competition among businesses for the right sites, so tired and half-empty properties get renewed, in place of scarcity and stagnation.

5. Utility resilience.

   Power, gas, water and telecom connections with more than one way in, so a storm or a crash doesn't take a whole neighborhood offline, and so the homes and businesses we welcome can actually be served.

What smart development looks like

We are not for every project, and we don't ask anyone else to be. We are for a process that reaches a sound answer. Four principles describe it.

• Judge each project on its merits. Read the staff report, weigh the specific site and the specific proposal, negotiate better terms, and say yes when a project earns it. A no decided before anyone looked is a decision not to govern.
• Renew before you expand. The best commercial growth takes half-empty office parks and aging shopping centers and turns them into busier, better places that pay their share again.
• Plan the infrastructure first. Homes and employers need roads, power lines, substations and water. Approving the demand and refusing the supply leaves everyone stuck in traffic or in the dark.
• Set the standard, then hold everyone to it. On data centers and other large projects, clear and enforceable rules on water, cooling, noise, backup power and siting protect neighbors and give operators something definite to meet. Residents get rules they can count on. Every operator is held to them.

What we stand for: Turning No to Yes

We make one case in four parts. Each part has a core message and the points we use to make it, whether in a mailer, online or in a resident's own testimony.

Housing and commercial

Blocking new homes and redevelopment raises costs and pushes families out.

• Blocking homes prices out our kids, our teachers and our first responders. Fairfax County created three times as many jobs as homes over a decade, and the gap pushes residents to other communities.¹
• Commercial growth is mostly the redevelopment of tired, underused sites. It is renewal, and it is what keeps a shopping center or an office park paying its share.
• Saying no to everything doesn't keep the region the way it is. It drives up costs for the families already here.

Roads and transportation

Our roads have failed to keep pace with growth. We can't grow when we're stuck in traffic.

• Build capacity ahead of demand. The D.C. region ranked No. 1 in the country for worst traffic in 2025.²
• Most of us drive. Roads and parking are the backbone of getting to work, school and the store, and cutting parking requirements floods streets, slows traffic and hurts local businesses.
• Plan for all of the future, not just the convenient parts. A road built after the homes is a road that was always going to be late.

Data centers

They lower our taxes and bring good jobs. Every developer should meet the highest standards our community sets.

• They have lowered the tax burden and the cost of living where they were built, and they fund schools and services. Data centers supply about $1.3 billion a year to Loudoun County, roughly 40% of its General Fund, and Loudoun's real estate rate is the lowest in Northern Virginia.⁴
• They are large, long-term investments with good-paying jobs.
• The answer to a project that falls short is a standard it has to meet, enforced. We work with communities to put clear, enforceable rules on water, cooling, noise, backup power and siting into local ordinance, so residents get rules they can count on and every operator is held to them.

Energy and telecom

You can't ask for more homes and businesses and then block the basic services they need.

• Demand and infrastructure are the same decision. Welcoming homes and employers means welcoming the lines, substations and towers that serve them.
• Reliable service means more than one way in. During the July 2026 heat wave, Dominion said it was "minutes away" from putting every Ashburn data center on backup generators.³ The time to plan for infrastructure is before the lights go out.

The case for a diverse local tax base

This is the part where we get into the numbers, because the numbers are the argument.

How a Virginia locality pays for things

Virginia counties and cities cannot levy an income tax. They fund schools, public safety, roads and parks mainly from local sources, and the biggest of those sources by far is the tax on real property. In fiscal 2025, general property taxes made up about 73% of Fairfax County's local-source revenue, 68% of Arlington's, 80% of Loudoun's and 73% of Prince William's.⁵ Sales, meals, lodging and business license taxes fill in the rest, but none of them comes close.

A locality budgets what it needs to spend first. Then it divides that levy across everything on the land books. The share paid by homeowners is whatever is left after businesses pay theirs. That is the whole mechanism, and it has two consequences.

When the commercial base shrinks, homeowners pay the difference

First: if commercial values fall and nothing replaces them, the levy doesn't fall with them. Either the rate goes up, or residential assessments carry it, or services get cut. Usually it is some of each. Arlington's office values fell 19% in a single year. The county's tax base is now 57% residential and 43% commercial, against a pre-pandemic target of 50/50, and the County Board raised the rate 2 cents in April 2026.⁶ In Fairfax, commercial values declined for a third straight year while the average homeowner absorbed an increase, and the county is now asking the General Assembly for new taxing authority to ease its reliance on property taxes.⁷

Second: where businesses carry more of the base, homeowners pay a lower rate. The four big counties make the point without any help from us.

Rates are per $100 of assessed value. Arlington and Fairfax shares exclude apartments; Loudoun and Prince William shares include data centers. Prince William's rate is the base rate, before its 7-cent fire levy. Effective rates come from the Virginia Department of Taxation's 2025 assessment/sales ratio study, which measures tax against market value and so compares like with like.⁸

Put a price on it. On a home at the two counties' average sale price, the county real estate bill in 2026 is about $9,420 in Loudoun and $13,110 in Fairfax. That is about $3,690 a year, every year, for the same house. Loudoun's rate was $1.145 in 2016, higher than Fairfax's is today. It fell because the county kept adding commercial base.⁹

Why "broad" also has to mean "diverse"

Loudoun also shows why the base has to be spread out. Data centers supply about $1.3 billion a year, roughly 40% of the county's General Fund, and the county's own budget guidance says that revenue "will plateau in the next 5 to 10 years." The school division's first multi-year forecast shows shortfalls beginning in fiscal 2030 as that growth slows.⁴ A county that depends on one industry for a large share of its revenue has a budget that moves when that industry moves.

So when we say diverse, we mean it in the plain accounting sense: homes, shops, offices, industry and data centers, each carrying a share. No single one of them can carry the budget alone, and no single one should be asked to. A base like that holds through an office downturn, a federal hiring freeze or a pause in one sector, because the others are still paying.

Farther out, the base is thinner

The problem is sharper in the counties beyond the Beltway suburbs. Commercial property was 8.7% of Fauquier County's locally assessed real estate in 2025 and 14.6% of Spotsylvania's taxable real estate in 2024, each on the county's own definitions. Warren County's own plan sets a goal of 30% to 35%.¹⁰ In those places, nearly every dollar of a new school or a new fire station comes from a household.

What the base buys

The budget line is where this stops being abstract. Fairfax County Public Schools paused teacher hiring in 2026. Arlington's budget proposal paired a tax increase with closing a library. Fairfax's union contract raises may not be honored if the money isn't there, and the county is weighing a sales-tax referendum just to fund school maintenance.¹¹ A broad, diverse base is what lets a locality give its teachers and deputies a raise instead of a bonus, and build the community center instead of deferring it again.

Every figure above, and a great deal more, is in our Data Bank with a link to its source.

How we work

Most of our work is education, because most of the opposition to new projects grows in an information vacuum. Voters hear the scariest version of every proposal and almost never hear what it pays for.

• Voter education. Mail and digital built on each county's own budget numbers, matched to what each resident cares about: the tax bill, the schools, or the stability of the place they work.
• A local fact base anyone can check. Research on taxes, services, roads and the grid that officials, reporters and residents can verify for themselves. We double-check every number, and we would rather use a weaker figure than a wrong one.
• Standards the community sets. On data centers and other large projects, we help communities look at the industry's best practices on water, cooling, noise, backup power and siting, decide which ones they want, and write them into local ordinance. Residents get rules they can count on. Every operator is held to them.
• Calls to action. When a decision is in front of a board, we tell residents what it is, what the budget numbers say, and where and how to be heard.

This is a long-term project to create sustained change. It is not tied to one project or one election.

Where we work

Our region is Planning District 8 plus four neighboring counties. These places share one housing market, one road network and one power grid. A project blocked in one county lands in the next, or leaves the region.

• Arlington County
• Fairfax County
• Loudoun County
• Prince William County
• Fauquier County
• Culpeper County
• Spotsylvania County
• Warren County
• City of Alexandria
• City of Fairfax
• City of Falls Church
• City of Manassas
• City of Manassas Park
• The towns inside those counties, where many land-use decisions are made

How we're organized

Shared Purpose Initiative is a Virginia nonprofit corporation organized to operate as a social welfare organization. Contributions are not tax-deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

Our work is nonpartisan. We judge decisions by one standard: whether the people making them read the staff report, negotiate better terms and find the way to yes when a project earns it. Our supporters do not direct our research or our messaging.

Every public fact we publish carries a source we can stand behind. If we get something wrong, we verify it, we say so, and we show what led to the error.

Leadership

Draft. Add directors and officers before launch.

• [Name]
  Chair
• [Name]
  Treasurer
• [Name]
  Director