A mix of pride and gratitude filled the voices of the government and nonprofit officials who spoke at a ceremonial groundbreaking yesterday (Monday) for Fairfax City’s latest housing project.
Speaker after speaker emphasized the array of contributors whose shared belief that housing should be a basic right, not a privilege, paved the road to construction for Beacon Landing, a 54-unit apartment building for people who are at risk of or experiencing chronic homelessness.
“Today represents hope turned into action,” Wesley Housing President and CEO Kamilah McAfee said. “This project demonstrates what’s possible when communities come together” to address systemic problems.
Located at 9640 Fairfax Blvd, Beacon Landing will replace the defunct Hy-way Motel — which was demolished last December — with Northern Virginia’s largest permanent supportive housing complex.
The building will include 42 studio, 10 one-bedroom and two two-bedroom units, all of them reserved for people who earn 50% of the area’s median income (AMI) or less. Six of the units will be designated for households earning 30% of the AMI or below, and three will be for 40% AMI or below.
For comparison, Fairfax City’s median household income is $132,774, according to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2019-2023.
Residents of the new apartments will have access to a community space, structured parking, an outdoor terrace, case management services and an employment center run by the nonprofit Lamb Center, whose main offices and drop-in homeless shelter are located just up the road at 3160 Campbell Drive.
According to Lamb Center Executive Director Tara Ruszkowski, the idea for Beacon Landing emerged out of a retreat on Nov. 6, 2016 where the nonprofit’s leaders sought to identify the “greatest unmet need” facing the homeless individuals they serve.
While the solution of providing housing sounds obvious, getting a project like Beacon Landing off the ground is far from simple, proponents said.
Ruszkowski acknowledged that there were times when some project leaders feared it would “fall apart,” and Rep. James Walkinshaw noted that the people who will benefit from the homes and services at Beacon Landing are “under attack” by the Trump administration, which is slashing funding for permanent housing and other programs while encouraging criminalization and involuntary commitment for people experiencing homelessness.
Fairfax City Mayor Catherine Read gave kudos to her predecessor, David Meyer, and former council member Jon Stehle for getting the project unanimously approved despite opposition from different quarters, including business owners who claimed the Lamb Center’s clients were causing regular safety issues and city staff who wanted to see a greater commitment to finding off-site parking.
“Getting money for this project from our city, it’s always an uphill battle,” Read said. “There’s a lot of competing priorities. There’s a lot of things people in the community would like to see money spent on. So, was it hard? Yes, it has been hard.”
However, she expects that, once Beacon Landing opens and becomes a familiar, established part of the community, all the concerns and tensions that cropped up during the planning process will dissipate.
“People forget how hard things are once they’re done,” she told FFXnow. “But we have other projects, and we’ll continue to have other projects that are difficult and do not always have unanimous support on the dais or unanimous support in the public, and it’s our job as local government to have the broader vision of, over the long term, what we need to build to make our city viable and to provide a choice for people who want to live here.”
Financing for the $33.1 million development had to be cobbled together from 14 different sources, McAfee said.
That included $700,000 from Fairfax City, federal funding championed by the late Rep. Gerry Connolly, and a variety of loans, grants and Low-Income Housing Tax Credits provided by Capital One Bank, the Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority (FCRHA), Virginia Housing, the Corporation for Supportive Housing, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta.
“It really did take a village,” Read said. “I mean, the people here, everyone had a role to play, and there are people who aren’t here, who didn’t live to see us coming together for this groundbreaking, but we all stand on the efforts made by people over decades to see supportive housing built in the city for the very poorest and the very neediest people who require housing.”
Supported by 48 project-based vouchers awarded by FCRHA, Beacon Landing is currently under construction and expected to welcome its first residents in late 2026. Future leasing will be managed by Fairfax County’s coordinated entry system and the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.
