A four-decade-old apartment complex in Annandale will become Fairfax County’s latest and most expensive purchase in its program to preserve affordable housing, the county announced this week.
Housing officials plan to ink a $107.5 million deal to buy the 672-unit Wedgewood Apartments located off Heritage Drive, which it will hold at lower rent for families with low and moderate incomes. The purchase will be funded largely through the county’s allocation of one penny of its real estate tax to the affordable-housing program.
“What would have happened with this property, had we not acquired it, it would have had higher leasing rates, or it would have been converted to condominiums, and you in essence lose it as affordable housing,” said County Executive Anthony Griffin. “Our goal is to prevent that kind of thing from occurring, so we have a more balanced housing market.”
Since the county began the program in 2004, it has bought or helped nonprofit housing groups to buy 2,200 units, according to housing department spokeswoman Kristina Norvell.
But while the program has protected those dwellings in a once-skyrocketing housing market, only a few
dozen families not already living in one of the units have been taken off waiting lists. As of June, 46
families had moved off the lists, Norvell said.
The program has also endured criticism for the high-income limits for some of the units, which can run as high as 120 percent of the area’s $100,000 median household income, or AMI. The Wedgewood units will be available to families making about 65 percent of the AMI.
