ADUs: The Next Little Thing in Affordable Housing (Webinar)

In Microblog #116, we showcased the Austin Alley Flat Initiative’s recent progress in expanding accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in Texas’s hippest city. To help rub off some of that magic here in Virginia, we’re hosting a webinar to dig into ADU design and policy, with a focus on capacity building and implementation. Several communities in Virginia currently have ADU programs in place, but interest and production has been modest so far.

Confirmed participants include Michelle Winters, Executive Director at the Alliance for Housing Solutions and HousingForward Virginia board member; Max Pastore, an urban designer at Rhodeside & Harwell; Dr. Christina Stacy at the Urban Institute; and Nicole Joslin at Austin’s Community Powered Workshop, an organization that helped launch the Alley Flat Initiative.

This webinar will be hosted on Zoom. Please click here to register.

Panelist Bios

Michelle Winters

Executive Director, Alliance for Housing Solutions

Michelle Winters is Executive Director of the Alliance for Housing Solutions, a nonprofit organization that is working to increase the supply of affordable housing in Arlington and Northern Virginia through public education, policy development, advocacy and innovation. Prior to joining AHS, Michelle worked for two decades at the national level on housing finance, policy, and capacity building initiatives, most recently as Senior Visiting Fellow for Housing at the Urban Land Institute.

She previously worked at NeighborWorks America, LISC, and Fannie Mae and started off her career in housing at the Urban Institute. Michelle has served as a member and chair of Arlington’s Housing Commission and currently serves on the boards of HousingForward Virginia and the Lee Highway Alliance and as co-chair of ULI Washington’s Housing Initiative Council. She received her BA in Urban Affairs from Virginia Tech and her Master in City Planning from MIT.

Max Pastore

Senior Associate Urban Planner & Urban Designer, RHI

Max Pastore is a Senior Associate Urban Designer and Urban Planner at RHI, a landscape architecture, urban design, and urban planning firm based in Old Town Alexandria. At RHI, Max strives to reimagine urban and suburban areas by designing dynamic, resilient, and human-centered places.

At RHI, Max works on urban design master plans, building design guidelines, as well as streetscape standards throughout the Mid-Atlantic. Some of his recent local projects include urban design concepts and guidelines for Fairfax County’s Richmond Highway bus rapid transit station areas, updated streetscape standards for downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, and conceptual streetscape alternatives for DC’s Pennsylvania Avenue, west of the White House.

As a side project, in 2019, Max began developing a detached accessory dwelling unit (ADU) in his DC backyard for his retired father. The process of designing the unit, obtaining building permits, and managing contractors and finances fundamentally reframed his approach to urban planning and design.

Max is committed to evolving DC and the nation’s land use to facilitate more accessible and flexible housing outcomes for everyone.

Christina Stacy, PhD

Senior Research Associate, Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, Urban Institute

Dr. Christina Stacy is a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where she specializes in urban economics and inclusion. Her work focuses on the intersection of economics and urban spaces and how housing, local economies, health, and crime interact. She is currently working with the City of Alexandria to design and implement an ADU policy and associated regulations in Alexandria. She is also studying whether and how local zoning reforms can increase the supply of housing throughout the country.

Nicole Joslin

Executive Director, Community Powered Workshop

Nicole has a diverse professional and academic background in architecture, development, disaster recovery, and community engaged-design. After working for Architecture for Humanity’s Hurricane Katrina recovery program in Biloxi, MS, Nicole moved to Austin and co-founded Women.Design.Build to provide more opportunities for women to engage in community driven design and construction activities. She concurrently practiced at architecture firm BOKA Powell and received her architectural license in 2012. Nicole’s experience contributed to her research on the role of community organizations in disaster preparedness and recovery in the Community and Regional Planning graduate program at the University of Texas. Nicole returned to the Gulf Coast in 2014 for a research fellowship at architecture and planning firm Eskew+Dumez+Ripple in New Orleans, LA investigating community engagement frameworks in professional design practice. These experiences inform Nicole’s current role as the Executive Director of Community Powered Workshop, formerly ACDDC, and visiting researcher at the University of Texas School of Architecture.