Fairfax County officials and homebuilders wrangled with a handful of peculiar regulatory problems in 2006, some of which were tied to the long development frenzy that dotted the landscape with scores of new homes.
For Virginia’s largest county, development, growth and sprawl were some of the most, if not the most, pressing topics. The county’s stock of undeveloped land is swiftly dwindling, and home prices swelled so enormously that many middle-income families can no longer afford to live there.
Development in 2006 also brought high-profile disputes between policy-makers and builders, some of them mundane, some of them bizarre.
In summer 2006, county staff issued a clarification of its policy on measuring how tall homes could be, which left many homeowners uncertain whether they fell within the new regulations. After a period of public anxiety over how and when the county could bring the hammer down, the Board of Supervisors decided in late July to grandfather occupied homes into the tighter guidelines, which now hold structures to 35 feet tall.
Fairfax County auditors in the summer discovered hundreds of building projects where developers had failed to complete promised public improvements by a set date, also known as being “in default.” The audit found 633 of 3,000 ongoing construction projects that fell in that category.
It was later revealed that for years, the county had only one staff member in place to ensure developers held up their end of the bargain. The county recently has added more employees in that area.
And then came the discovery of the “gerrymandered lots,” an odd phenomenon in which builders drew up labyrinthine lot shapes in an apparent attempt to pack more buildable land into a subdivision. By the time the crackdown came late this year, it was unclear exactly how many properties had been created in such a way. Officials worried, however, the creative lots allowed drain-fields to be placed too far from homes, so far that a homeowner would not know if his septic system failed.
