Episode 50: How can Virginia get everyone into homes they can afford?
It’s almost Christmas. But for millions of Virginians, worries about housing costs temper the celebrations. Nearly 3 in 10 Virginia households cost burdened, paying more than 30% of their income for shelter. This week, we look at how cities across Virginia - and America - have zoned their way out of 'missing middle' housing over the last 80 years. And what some cities in Virginia are doing to address the problem today.
Machine-generated transcript. Blame any mistakes on the AI.
Nathan Moore 0:00
This is Bold Dominon, an explainer for state politics and changing Virginia. I'm Nathan Moore. It's almost Christmas. In fact, this is our last episode of Bold Dominon. Before Christmas, I want you to close your eyes for a moment. Go ahead, bear with me here. Now imagine a dining table, you're sitting at the dining table. People you love spending time with are also at that dining table. Everyone's vaccinated, nobody's sick. So you're just happy to catch up with people. There are delicious food smells coming from the kitchen, you think somebody brought a pie. And you know, this is going to be a nice meal. But what if you can't really afford this home, your landlord just raised your rent to $1,600 a month, and that's almost half your monthly salary. You can still enjoy this nice meal with friends, you're going to, but you're still thinking about housing costs. Still thinking about where the money is going to come from always, always in the background, always somewhere in your mind, where's the money going to come from? This Christmas. This is the reality for millions of Virginians, almost three in 10 households in the Commonwealth are cost burdened. That is three in 10. Virginia households pay more than 30% of their income for shelter. During the pandemic, median home prices and rents have gone way up. So to have the number of cost burden Virginia households, some of it comes down to supply and demand.
Erin O'Hare 1:28
And as more people come in, and you know, we don't have a lot of new housing being built, and if it's just single family homes, that makes for a shortage.
Nathan Moore 1:37
That's Erin O'Hare. She's the equity reporter at Charlottesville Tomorrow. We'll hear more from her in the second half of the show about hell, Charlottesville is handling its own affordable housing shortage. But first we turn to Wyatt Gordon, who covers transportation, housing and land use for the Virginia market. As why it explains, it's not just a pure market supply and demand issue. It's also about zoning, and how cities across Virginia and America have zoned our way out of missing middle housing.
Nathan Moore 2:10
Wyatt earlier this year, he wrote a piece at the Virginia Mercury called how to bring the missing middle to Virginia housing development. Let's start by defining our terms. What's What's the missing middle?
Wyatt Gordon 2:21
Yeah, interestingly enough, people like to talk about missing middle as if it's purely focused on the affordability element. People are really excited about missing middle housing because it is more affordable. In reality missing middle is kind of doing this thing that helps planners and local officials get around conversations that they don't want to have about density. So missing middle homes are more dense, they have more than one residential unit and household within them, but they still tend to look like homes. So what will you imagine for a home, you're still gonna see that even though inside you may have 1234 different units, but it's about squeezing more units into the kind of the same size home that fits into any standard neighborhood that we have in the Commonwealth?
Nathan Moore 3:09
Yeah, so we're talking about really like duplexes, maybe triplexes, or quad plexes, but not big multi unit Multi Floor apartment buildings.
Wyatt Gordon 3:18
Exactly the the term is in middle really tries to describe the fact that we have a missing middle in our housing market of what we used to offer to people as potential housing options. We've really wilin out that out over the last 80 years, we're now we're only offering pretty much two options, which is one a large single family detached unit, which tends to be the most expensive unit possible. On the other hand, we have large apartment buildings. Really, this is all just a product of zoning, we've zoned our way out of the freedom that other generations used to have in terms of what hasn't options were available to be built.
Nathan Moore 3:58
I do want to talk about zoning more here in just a minute and kind of zoom in on some of the parts of this conversation. But before we dive into all the pieces, I want to zoom out just a little. We're we're really talking about housing affordability. The issue here is we're not even talking about vouchers or public housing or other policies. It's really just, you know, increasing inventory in order to know how does that make homes more affordable. Yeah,
Wyatt Gordon 4:22
people like to have conversations around housing affordability, and think that we immediately need subsidies. Subsidies are clearly helpful and necessary for a certain class of the market. However, our biggest issue is that we're just not building enough housing. We have built the least amount of housing ever over the previous decade. And I don't think people really grasp how bad the financial crisis was not only for household incomes, but in terms of really putting a lot of Homebuilders out of business when the property bubble collapse. We just don't have the response available from the private sector that we used to have to build how In. So you have fewer home builders with less bandwidth to build the number of homes that we need during a time when not only is our population really growing. But we also are seeing households starting to kind of balkanize. So the size of your average household has gotten a lot smaller than it used to be. And most people, I think, go through a fairly extended period of life where they live by themselves in a way that was not generally typical of previous generations and ever more people are choosing to live alone for longer periods of time. Which means not only do we have more people, but we have more people choosing to live in smaller households, which means we need an ever expanding number of units in order to keep that demand for units low to make sure that demand is being met so that prices don't skyrocket like we've seen over the last two years. It's a mess. It's a mess. Yeah, policy is a mess. And I think part of the reason housing policy has become such a problem is because in America, we don't tend to think of housing policy is something that we want our politicians and government to actively intervene in. Government related housing policy is something for other people seen as people who are 30% of average median income or lower. That's the only place where in American society, whether you're on the right or on the left, you tend to think that there's a role for government is for those other people. What we don't pay attention to in America is the way that we have been doing housing policy since the 1940s. Without anyone really paying attention. And these are all of the myriad regulations really like layers of an onion that have built out our environment to look the way it is. And for a country that constantly states that we don't want to engage in social engineering. We do a lot of social engineering, specifically, when it comes to our housing policy. zoning, as it exists today did not exist back in the 40s. You've heard me saying, for about 80 years, things started to change in the 40s and 50s. That's when we really started to see zoning come to pretty much every locality across America. Because that was when you have this large outpour of racist expression among white people in terms of white flight, and trying to change what their built environment looked like to erase people that they didn't want in their neighborhoods. We still do this a lot today based on what we're allowed to build. And we're really trying to remove the aesthetics of what people perceive to be poverty, which tends to be multifamily. That's what people think of when they think of multifamily. They think Oh, everyone who lives there must be poor, or else you would choose to get a single family home. Now, as we see that the most overt racism in American society has begun to subside. Now, we've really created a system in which everyone is suffering under a structure which we were trying to use to target lovely, punish specific groups of people. We've now made it the norm so far that everyone is collectively suffering. And I think that's why you're starting to see some change happening here. Because it's increasingly young, professional, affluent, white people who are struggling to purchase homes. We kind of expect that group of people within American society to always be able to be advancing. And we've created a system in which now, almost no one can advance unless they have pretty unusual amounts of wealth compared to the general general public at large.
Nathan Moore 9:00
How did the system backfire so hard?
Wyatt Gordon 9:02
System backfired because it was set up to exclude people from the very beginning. I think you're just seeing that now combined with other things that are going wrong in American society. Thinking about stagnating wages, for example. You're really kind of seeing this system of prosperity for some built on the backs of others expand ever further. And I think that's why you see a pretty large generational divide on housing policy. And regularly when you ask people who are older, you know, maybe for fun over the holidays. Ask your family how much you think certain homes are go for a walk of the neighborhood and ask them what their guesses are. They probably won't have any clue. Housing has gotten really expensive compared to what it used to be and not just a nominal terms. It's specifically related to how much people earn So, even before the pandemic when prices went crazy, we had 27.4% of Virginian households who were cost burden. cost burden means you're putting more than 30% of your total income towards just providing shelter for your, for your household. for low income individuals, that was already at 44%. So 44% of people who were low income in Virginia before the pandemic, before the pandemic, when we know that prices went crazy, we're already cost burden. Now, after last year, when prices for homes went up 16.6%, the new figures that are going to come out are going to be even worse. And so it's really just a system that hasn't been working for people in general,
Nathan Moore 10:53
we've identified zoning as a real impediment to housing affordability to inventory of missing middle housing. Why doesn't it change more quickly?
Wyatt Gordon 11:03
I would say the problem is twofold. One is a lot of decision makers don't understand the problem because they're not living the problem. When you look at people who are county or city officials, they're overwhelmingly homeowners already. The other thing is that there's just so many interlocking and really boring regulations that are hugely prohibitive, that it's really hard to put a sign out in your front yard and say like, in minimum lot sizes, and 50 foot setbacks, to make a pro housing, political platform, vibrant and attractive to people. You've seen folks across America, talking about how to have more neighbors like we want neighbors. Minneapolis and St. Paul have done some really progressive housing policies to build more supply. And their campaign slogan has been neighbors for more neighbors saying that, you know, we live here, we love living here. And we think more people is going to make it better to live here because we'll have more residents to support our local businesses, we'll have more people sitting out on their porches that night. So when I walk home really late, there are more eyes out there making sure that nothing is happening in our neighborhood. So there is a way to really frame pro housing, pro growth policies in a way that's attractive. But it's generally not by specifically messaging, any of the really wonky, detailed ordinances, codes and regulations that you have to change to get to that better future.
Nathan Moore 12:47
One of the things I've read about in housing policy, one of the things that does also get in the way, there's a lot of NIMBYs that not in my backyard crowd, what role did the NIMBYs play in preventing or slowing down this kind of change?
Wyatt Gordon 12:59
NIMBYs slow down change with such force? And you wouldn't think that even just slowing down a procedure would be such a problem, you know, why can't we just put these permits on hold for this new building down the street? Like why can't we just take our time and do our due diligence on this project. All of that sounds incredibly reasonable. Anyone who is a business owner knows though that time is money. So the amount of time that your project is put on hold is time that you are having to pay for all of your workers to be there to be doing things, but you're not actually developing more housing units that you can sell to then pay for all of those things that your business needs to keep going. So NIMBYs by fighting projects, just add on layers and layers of costs.
Nathan Moore 13:54
Is there anything the state government can do to support housing affordability, or this kind of missing middle issue?
Wyatt Gordon 14:00
What has become a common trend across America as you increasingly see state level actors getting involved in housing policy at the local level, simply because if you look over the results of housing policy led by localities over the last 80 years, it's bad. That's why we have a housing crisis. That's why in places like Arlington that are so in demand, because there's just huge amounts of jobs, you have really wonderful transportation infrastructure that can get you into DC and access all of those higher new jobs. What you see is really large multifamily apartment building units all along like one block off of the metro corridor, and then it immediately drops to just single family homes with no opportunity for anything else mixed in there. And that's why you see the prices have gone crazy. It's because localities haven't taken it upon themselves to ease zoning and make these very reasonable changes to allow even missing middle housing, for example. So you're increasingly seeing state actors that are going, well, y'all really have not dealt with this. And I think it is time for us to get involved. Whenever you see states trying to intervene and loosen up zoning and reduce some of those restrictions. You get incredible pushback from localities, I think because a lot of local leaders really feel like that is their one place where they get involved in maintaining the status quo or allowing for the growth to happen in certain areas. That's really the base of their power. So when you come for zoning, you're essentially coming first. What some local leaders see is their number one way to raise money to interact with their constituents to really prove that they're doing their job. So it's no wonder that quite a few local leaders are really opposed to any changes in zoning.
Nathan Moore 16:10
Wyatt Gordon covers transportation, housing and land use for the Virginia mercury, stick around in the second half of the episode, we've got Charlottesville tomorrow equity reporter Erin O'Hare. You're listening to Bold Dominon A state politics explainer for changing Virginia. Find us online at BoldDominon.org. Have a friend who's trying to get into state politics? Well tell them about the show, and then subscribe. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever find podcasts are served up. And while you're there, go ahead and leave us a five star review. We like those a lot. Bold Dominon is a member of Virginia audio collective online at VirginiaAudio.org. Check out all the podcasts Mike collected from science to history to music and Community Affairs. We amplify the voices of people in our community and help them tell stories that matter. You can listen and subscribe at Virginia audio.org. Well, in the first half, we talked with Wyatt Gordon who told us about missing middle housing and how it's playing out in cities across the Commonwealth. In the second half of today's show, we zoom in on Charlottesville, and find out more about how this city is approaching its affordable housing shortage. Charlottesville tomorrow equity reporter Erin O'Hare spoke with Bold Dominon Producer Katherine Hansen.
Katherine Hansen 17:27
So if you can give us an overview of the changes to the Charlottesville future land use map.
Erin O'Hare 17:32
In November, the City Council adopted a new comprehensive plan. Part of that plan is the future land use map the flume or the flum depending on who you talk to. And that's like a two page. It's two pages of a 120 Something page plan. But the future land use map has been one of the more controversial aspects of the plan because it sets the stage for a rezoning in the city, which you know, is what people hope will allow there to be more types of housing, more variety and housing and just more housing, more affordable housing in the city. So the city has not updated or had not updated its future land use map since 2013. Yeah, 2013. And that 2013 map classifies most of the city as low density residential. And so in those areas, the only new housing allowed single family homes and the occasional duplex, so no multiplexes. That's like a triplex or a four Plex, six Plex and no apartment buildings. And for a Stoltenberg, a member of the Planning Commission said that that 2013 land use map allows for quite a bit less housing. And that's the future use future land use map that then informed the zoning code. So you know most of what that 2013 land use map and zoning code allows us single family detached housing. And beyond that most of what is built is only built by special use permit. So that has to go right before city council, not the Planning Commission, which is interesting. But the new future land use map will change that so it increases allowable density everywhere in the city. The 2013 land use map had two residential land use categories, low density and high density, but the new flume has three general residential medium intensity residential and higher intensity residential. The general residential category is the lowest density area on the map. And that will allow a maximum of three units of housing like a triplex on all residential parcels. medium intensity allows for four to 12 units per parcel. and a high intensity residential allows for 13 units or more. And a lot of folks are worried that some 13 unit apartment building is just going to go up next to their house. But that's not the case. That's something that is allowed by the map. But that will, the map is going to inform the zoning code and that is much more parcel by parcel. So no, every site in the city cannot handle a an apartment building. Some can but not all, and in some places, it wouldn't be practical to do that. And so that's what's coming next in the zoning code rewrite.
Katherine Hansen 20:51
Will these new categories increase affordable housing in Charlottesville?
Erin O'Hare 20:56
The future land use map and the comprehensive plan are, you know, they're part of a constellation of things that have to happen, or are guides of solutions, right. So we have an affordable housing plan for the city. So some of the things that are outlined in the affordable housing plan should be working in tandem with the Comprehensive Plan and the future land use map and the zoning map to hopefully allow for more affordable housing.
Katherine Hansen 21:26
In your article you wrote about disagreements over the middle or medium intensity residential category. What's the effect of that category on rezoning? Are the disagreements come from?
Erin O'Hare 21:39
I think there's just not some folks don't feel like there's a lot of clarity around the medium intensity designation, because it's the new cat. It's basically the new category, right? So it's, it's what's missing from a lot of Charlottesville buildings. If you notice around the city, we've got a lot of single family homes. And then like some really big apartment buildings, but we don't have a lot that's in between, even though there are many opportunities for things to be in between. and So just from listening to conversations between the planners, city council, the planning commission, various citizen groups who have organized around this and individuals commenting at meetings. Personally, I imagine I think that part of why folks are a little confused about it is because we don't really have that medium intensity category here. So it's hard to envision what that will look like. And, you know, there's always fear of the unknown.
Katherine Hansen 22:39
How will the Middle Land Use category effect equity in the housing market in Charlottesville?
Erin O'Hare 22:43
You know, again, making sure that folks of many different income levels can live here, if they want to, is really important. And that includes folks who are working low wage jobs, which is not always a choice, right? And elderly folks, right, like people who are unlimited incomes, they only get a certain amount from Social Security every month. Oftentimes, that amount is not enough to cover rent. And yet, these are people who have contributed to our community their whole lives. So I am hopeful that it will increase equity, but that's going to take a lot of effort from the community like the map, the future land use map, the zoning map alone will not accomplish that.
Katherine Hansen 23:30
What tools are most used by you can answer this either from the site of Albemarle county or Charlottesville, what tools are most used to increase affordable housing.
Erin O'Hare 23:40
So there are a bunch of tools out there for increasing affordable housing and in a community in a locality. And you know, Charlottesville and Albemarle county use many of the same ones that folks all across the country do. So those are housing subsidies, where the government will pay a certain amount of your rent, based on what your income is, the more help you need, the more hopefully, you would get. But those No, those are housing vouchers. And there are many different types of programs for that. Each one has its own qualifications. And the general consensus is that well, it's true. There's just not enough of those vouchers to go around for everyone who needs them. The waitlists are really long. They're hard to get onto at times, that sort of thing. So I think that's a major one that the the city and the county both us
Katherine Hansen 24:33
So how has the housing demand changed in Charlottesville over the past decade?
Erin O'Hare 24:38
Well, Charlottesville is growing. Its population has grown Same with the county. People want to live here especially as Charlottesville makes these like 10 Best Places to Live lists, which really it's only the best place to live for a certain segment of people. But yeah, as you know, As UVA grows, as the health system grows, as more businesses establish themselves here and have success, and as more people come in, and, you know, we don't have a lot of new housing being built, and if it's just single family homes that makes for a shortage. And you know, so a lot of folks, you know, and then like, as the city grows, and people move in, what's been happening is that as costs rise in the city, people can't afford people who can't afford to live in the city move out into the county. But then when the county becomes unaffordable for folks, then they move further out. And so we're seeing a lot of people who work in Charlottesville, commuting in from Waynesboro, and Stanton, and places further west.
Katherine Hansen 25:50
So what are the roadblocks that are preventing the city housing from growing at the same rate as the population?
Erin O'Hare 25:58
Well, the land use map and the zoning code definitely, is is a major one. Because, as I was saying earlier, for the most part in the city, he can't really, there aren't many opportunities to build anything other than a single family home, or a single unit, you know, because multiple families could live in home. But you know, like your typical house, you think of a house, there's not a lot of opportunities to build anything else. So when you have only a certain amount of land, and you can only build one type of you know, building on it in a residential area that really limits how much housing can be built. Or, you know, it's been tough for folks to be able to convert, like a large house into a few different apartments, that was allowed many years ago. So we have some sort of remaining from, from those times, they look like a giant house out front, right. But inside, they're divided into a few different apartments. But that also hasn't been allowed, you have to get a special permit to do that in like, most parts of the city. I'm not entirely sure about the county, but still a lot of single family homes. The county has more apartment buildings, but it's also much bigger. So
Katherine Hansen 27:15
So does this new Middle Land Use category? How will that affect the sort of gap in supply and demand?
Erin O'Hare 27:21
I think they're hoping that it will expand the supply to help meet the demand. Because it will, it will result in things like a triplex or four Plex
Katherine Hansen 27:32
how have home prices surged in Charlottesville.
Erin O'Hare 27:36
Earlier this year, a report came out called the Smart Seaville housing it data project. And it is fascinating. And that it basically analyzes how the housing market in Charlottesville has evolved over the past 20 years, from 2000 to 2019. And so they've tracked things like sale prices over the past 20 years property values over the past 20 years. And for instance, 10th and page, which has changed a lot in the last 20 years. So average percent change and total assessment value. It's increased by like 200, almost 200% I think for a 10th. And page, we've seen in the past 20 years, home values in, in certain neighborhoods increasing by 150%, which is like, you know, that's a lot. And so most of the, the homes and properties that are that are sold in Charlottesville, go for over the asking price, like almost everything.
Katherine Hansen 28:46
So to what causes would you attribute these, like 150% surges? Is that is that a supply and demand issue? Or does it go deeper than that?
Erin O'Hare 28:55
Um, you know, I can't say for sure. But, and I totally again, I think it is growth in the city, you know, people who, like we have a lot of big money industries here, right, like the wedding industry is pretty big in Charlottesville, we got wine and beer, we are you know, we have a lot of restaurants per capita. And, you know, we are a tourist destination in a lot of ways. And that all of that has really ramped up in the last, you know, 20 years that this this report is looking at. And UVA is growing and expanding. And so, you know, I do think that contributes to a lot of it. So we are just more of the population is is making more money, they're working higher paid jobs, but also generational wealth factors into this too, right? It's not just like, what, what a person makes, you know, that sort of thing. And, and also, I imagine that the fact that minimum wage has not increased, I'm pretty sure This whole time also makes a difference. Because we do have a lot of folks. That's the other thing about this too, right? Like, we have all these industries that people are making a lot of money from but then we are not providing housing for the folks who work there.
Nathan Moore 30:16
Erin O'Hare is the equity reporter with Charlottesville tomorrow, thanks to her and also to Virginia Mercury writer Wyatt Gordon. Thanks also to our producer and editor this week, Katherine Hansen. My name is Nathan Moore, and I'm the host of Old Dominion. Find us online at BoldDominon.org And don't forget to subscribe. It's just a click away.