Three jobs for every home. That ratio is the region's housing problem in one number.
Fairfax County added jobs three times faster than homes over the last decade, its board chair told a regional summit this week. The shortfall is why prices keep rising, and why renewing tired commercial land matters so much.
At a regional summit this week, Fairfax County's board chair put a number on something residents have felt for years: over the last decade, the county created about three jobs for every new home.1 Every one of those jobs is a household that needs somewhere to live. When the homes aren't built, the household bids up the price of one that already exists, or moves to the next county out and commutes back.
Both outcomes cost the people already here. The first raises the price of every home and apartment in the county. The second fills the roads. A January 2025 report found housing costs forcing young families out of Northern Virginia altogether.2 A region that can't house its own teachers, nurses and deputies will eventually struggle to staff its schools, hospitals and patrol cars.
Where the homes should go
The answer is not to pave the countryside. The region has an enormous supply of land that is already developed and underperforming: half-empty office parks, aging strip centers, surface parking lots next to transit. Office values in Arlington fell 19% in a single year, and Fairfax's commercial values have declined three years running.3 Those sites are where new homes belong, and the approvals this year show it can be done. Arlington approved a 743-unit expansion at an existing apartment complex and more than 800 homes on a garage site in Rosslyn. Fairfax advanced a redevelopment of Reston Town Center North.4
Projects like these do three things at once. They add the homes the jobs require. They replace a declining commercial assessment with a growing one, so the tax base recovers instead of shrinking. And they put residents near the jobs, which takes trips off the roads rather than adding them.
The objection, and the answer
The usual objection is that a redevelopment will change the character of the area. It will. The office park changed the character of the area when it was built, and the shopping center before that. Every neighborhood was once a decision someone made about what to build. The question in front of a planning commission is not whether the area will change, because a half-empty office park is already changing. The question is what the next version will be, and whether the community has a say in it.
A ratio of three jobs to one home is not sustainable. Closing it, on land we have already built on, is the most direct thing a locality can do about the cost of living here.