After the swearing-in ceremony of John Cook, Fairfax County’s newest supervisor, the chairman of the Democratic County Committee posted an article on the DCC’s website entitled: “Cook Pulls Off the Sheep’s Clothing.”
I called Scott Surovell to make sure he really meant it when he accused Cook, a Republican attorney and former president of the Kings Park Civic Association, of “race baiting to make his point” about the need to close down the numerous illegal boarding houses in single-family neighborhoods that contribute to declining property values in Fairfax County.
Unfortunately, he did. “What I said was that he was grandstanding on the boarding house issue when the county has already invested $2 million to fix the problem and the major issue in the county is to fix the budget,” Surovell told me. “That constitutes race-baiting.”
Which is very interesting, especially since the first supervisor with enough guts to speak out about the county’s abysmal failure to enforce its own zoning ordinances was none other than former Lee District Supervisor Dana Kauffman, a Democrat.
Kauffman’s repeated demands that the Fairfax County Board actually do something in response to surging complaints about overcrowding – which rose 80 percent between 2004 and 2006 – finally forced then chairman and current Congressman Gerry Connolly (also a Democrat) to set up a “Zoning Strike Force” to belatedly deal with the problem.
“If we have to arrest some people, let’s arrest some people,” Connolly was quoted in the Washington Post on April 6, 2007. “If we have to fine some people, let’s fine some people. The county must intervene to protect the integrity of its neighborhoods.”
Does that make Kauffman and Connolly race-baiters?
And how about Supervisor Jeff McKay, Kauffman’s former aide and Lee District successor who, to his great credit, said last year that he would “unequivocally” not support any budget that fails to include additional funding for the overworked, understaffed Strike Force? Is he a race-baiter, too?
In Fairfax County, no more than two non-family members who are not related by blood or marriage can occupy a single-family home. Violations are punishable by fines up to $1,500. However, until recently this ordinance was not enforced. It got so bad that a friend once showed me a home on his block that had been retrofitted with three front doors, a brazen, in-your-face violation of the county’s zoning rules. But even after repeated complaints to Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross, nothing happened.
Before Kauffman made illegal boarding houses an issue, nobody from the county bothered to do anything about them even though homeowners from a wide range of backgrounds complained that single-family homes in their well-kept neighborhoods were being converted into flophouses. Without enforcement, of course they proliferated, eventually spreading throughout the Springfield, Braddock, Mason and even Sully Districts.
Surovall denies that the $2 million the County Board spends for “affordable housing” is in any way related to public backlash over these illegal boarding houses. “They’re separate issues,” he insisted. He also took great umbrage when Cook brought up Chicago’s notorious Cabrini Green housing project, telling his fellow residents that “we do not need to bring that kind of blight to Fairfax County.”
Too late. That is exactly what the Democratic majority on the County Board did when they decided to purchase the $100 million Wedgewood Apartments in Annandale and become the largest landlord in the county. This ill-advised purchase still doesn’t have permanent financing, so the county will be using money from the current and next year’s budget to pay for it – money the county doesn’t have.
Cabrini Green and other Great Society relics of the past proved to be spectacular failures, mostly victimizing poor black families who found themselves permanently stuck in these dangerous, soul-killing bureaucratic disasters. So it’s a reach – indeed, a boarding house reach – to label as a “race baiter” anyone who objects to making that same mistake again.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is the Examiner’s local opinion editor. She can be reached by email at: [email protected]
