Category Archives: Housing

Portsmouth, Norfolk and Newport News – New Applications for Section 8 Vouchers, Public Housing Mostly Closed

Posted on July 29, 2022 by | 45 comments

Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District – Congressman Bobby Scott (D)

by James C. Sherlock

I authored a piece here recently about the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority (NRHA) and the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program.

I made the point that it is very difficult to find housing that can profitably be rehabbed to Section 8 standards.

I note that the only open waiting list in the NRHA is for an apartment at Riverside Station Apartments, a 220-apartment mixed-use development using tax credits for public housing set-asides. Twenty-three apartments are set aside for NRHA, but the development is not yet ready for occupancy. I am unable to determine when it will be.

In the spirit of evenhandedness, I offer the following about vouchers and public housing at the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Agency (PRHA) and the Newport News Redevelopment and Housing Agency.

In Portsmouth and Newport News, both the voucher programs and the public housing program waiting lists are closed to new applicants, and reportedly have been for years. The only exception noted is in the availability of single room accommodations in public housing in Portsmouth.

It is sad. We hear all about the housing programs when they are authorized and funded.

Nothing when they create expectations — dependencies really — that they fail to meet. Let’s take a look. Continue reading →

45 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), Governance, Housing, Regulations and Government Oversight

Capitalism is the Solution To, Not the Cause Of, the Affordable Housing Crisis

Posted on July 26, 2022 by | 35 comments

by James C. Sherlock

My colleague Dick Hall-Sizemore posted a column here on housing for the poor. He titled it “Little Guys Lose Again.” His opening:

A recent article on this blog about the high cost of housing generated a considerable amount of discussion. Much of the discussion centered around the role of government in contributing to the affordable housing shortage.

I offer another reason: good old-fashioned capitalism.

Interesting perspective, but I disagree.

I offer a question directly on point: why have federal antipoverty housing programs failed in their missions? Why is there not enough low cost housing for the poor?

We will pursue the answer. Hint — the problem isn’t capitalism. Not even a little bit. Continue reading →

35 Comments

Posted in Housing, Poverty & income gap

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Little Guys Lose, Again

Posted on July 26, 2022 by | 26 comments

Smitty’s Mobile Home Park, Norfolk.   Photo credit: Virginian Pilot

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

A recent article on this blog about the high cost of housing generated a considerable amount of discussion.   Much of the discussion centered around the role of government in contributing to the affordable housing shortage.

I offer another reason: good old-fashioned capitalism.

A recent article in The Virginian Pilot well illustrates this point. A mobile park in Norfolk in which approximately 100 mobile homes are located has been sold to an Alexandria-based real estate company.

The real estate company paid $9.75 million for the 12-acre park. It did not shell out this money to own and operate a mobile home park. It plans to construct a 418-unit apartment and townhome complex with a pool, a clubhouse and a recreation area. The current tenants have until March 2023 to vacate. Some have lived there for more than fifty years. Continue reading →

26 Comments

Posted in Housing, Property rights

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The Rent Is Too Damn High

Posted on July 24, 2022 by | 41 comments

by Jon Baliles

I think RVA needs to recruit retired New York City politician Jimmy McMillan to come to Richmond and run for office. He was the straight-talker who ran for Governor of New York under the Rent Is Too Damn High Party banner in 2010 and said more genuine truths in 35 seconds at a debate introduction than many politicians say in their career.

In the wake of COVID and all of its turbulence, it was reported this week that rent in the Richmond region is going through the roof and increasing even faster than 40-year-high inflation. WRIC reports:

Data from rental listing site Apartment List showed that from March 2020 to May 2022, city-level rent estimates increased significantly throughout Virginia. In Glen Allen, rent grew approximately 19.5%; 25.3% in Richmond; and 26.8% in Chester.

Rent.com reports that the increase in Richmond over last year was more than 35% (to an average of $1,512 for a one-bedroom), the 8th-highest rent for a single-bedroom in the country (the U.S. average is $1,701 per month, up 25.3%). A 2021 study by Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission (JLARC), revealed approximately 44% of renting households were cost-burdened in 2019, meaning more than 30% of their income was being used for rent. Continue reading →

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Posted in Housing

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The Great Realignment, Best-State-for-Business Reprise, Housing Drags, and Youngkin Popularity

Posted on July 22, 2022 by | 14 comments

by Chris Saxman

If you read one article this week make it this one from Axios – The Democratic electorate’s seismic shift. Just about every presentation I have given over the last 6 or 7 years begins with a statement or slide that says we are living in a historic political realignment and it’s global. From the article:

Democrats now have a bigger advantage among white college graduates than they do with nonwhite voters, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.

Why it matters: We’re seeing a political realignment in real time.

Democrats are becoming the party of upscale voters concerned more about issues like gun control and abortion rights.

Republicans are quietly building a multiracial coalition of working-class voters, with inflation as an accelerant.

Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in Economic development, Housing, Politics

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Public Featherbedding at the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority?

Posted on July 19, 2022 by | 27 comments

The Young Terrace public housing community is along St. Paul’s Boulevard, just north of downtown. (Bill Tiernan) Credit Virginian Pilot

by James C. Sherlock

Daniel Berti published an excellent investigative report this morning in The Virginian-Pilot.

“Norfolk’s housing authority is in ‘dire’ financial condition, bloated after years of failing to downsize” details what may prove to be waste and abuse at that agency to preserve jobs as the administrative requirements and funding of the mission have diminished.

In other words, the report details what some may construe as government agency featherbedding. If it is true, it has been a big mistake, because federal dollars are involved.

I congratulate both the author and the paper on this exclusive. Please read it.

The article, as revealing as it is, does not mention the annual independent audits the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority (NRHA) is required by federal regulation to undergo.

It has been my experience over the years that local agencies spending federal funds often get into financial trouble that is traceable to audits.

Most often to good audits that are ignored. Continue reading →

27 Comments

Posted in Efficiency in Government, Government Finance, Housing, Regulations and Government Oversight

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Unaffordable? A Proposed Town Center Doesn’t Have to Answer the Questions It Raises.

Posted on June 4, 2022 by | 6 comments

Land across from Harrisonburg High School is the site of a proposed 1,000 unit housing development. Photo credit: Daily News-Record

by Joe Fitzgerald

On the website for a proposed 1,000-unit housing development in Harrisonburg is a description of the players in the project. Included is a history of sorts of the Harrisonburg Redevelopment and Housing Authority:

“[A] local election was held on November 8, 1955 and a majority of those voting in the election approved the need for a Redevelopment and Housing Authority to be activated in the City.”

The next sentence says HRHA helps people with their rent today. You’d almost think nothing had happened in the ensuing 67 years.

Sure, there was the time HRHA destroyed the city’s Black business section to build a Safeway and a Rose’s. And the time the authority partnered with the city and county to raze a couple of city blocks downtown to build a jail. There was the theatre that had to be bailed out by the city and the community center renovation that had to be bailed out by the city. (Full disclosure, I voted for the first bailout when I was on City Council and knew the second would have to happen when I voted for the renovation.)

It’s not that HRHA has a checkered history. It just happens to be the agency the city has often used for projects that are off the city’s books, until they’re not. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Housing, Land use & Development

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Virginia’s Median Home Price Jumps $100K in Four Years

Posted on May 29, 2022 by | 25 comments

Despite the slowing market frenzy, home prices continue rising across all price points

According to the April 2022 Virginia Home Sales Report released by Virginia REALTORS®, the statewide median home sales price was $390,000 in April. This is $100,000 higher than April of 2018, just four years ago. Compared to last year at this time, Virginia’s median sales price is up just over 9%, a gain of $32,500.

In Virginia, the steady upward trajectory of home prices has not been hindered by the slowdown in sales activity or the recent spike in mortgage rates. In April, homes sold for 3.4% higher than list price, on average. In all price segments, the average sold-to-list price ratio was at least 100%.

In total, there were 11,991 home sales in Virginia in April 2022, down 11.6% from a year ago. Sales have been down year-over-year for five consecutive months. This slowdown reflects the very busy 2021 market but is also indicative of buyers pulling back due to high home prices, elevated inflation, and rising mortgage rates. Continue reading →

25 Comments

Posted in Housing

The Affordable Housing Crisis Intensifies

Posted on April 21, 2022 by | 17 comments

The Washington Post has published an interactive graphic showing how much rents have increased across the United States over the past year. Average rents in Virginia increased most rapidly in Hampton Roads, the Richmond metro, and the Fredericksburg area — up 20.4% in Spotsylvania County and 20.2% in Bedford County outside Lynchburg. Among localities that provided data, rents declined in only one county: Wise County.

Housing affordability has been a long-festering issue in Virginia. With the cost of housing skyrocketing over the past year, it is rapidly becoming a social crisis. Poor households are being displaced, forced to double up with family and friends. The poor are (rightfully) blamed for many problems of their own making, but unaffordable housing is not one of them. That is the outcome of temporary, COVID-related market forces and decades of anti-development housing policy in Virginia.

The Youngkin administration needs to get ahead of the curve on this issue with market-based policies to promote new housing construction. Otherwise, you can be sure that Democrats will come up with policies of their own that, if initiatives in other states are any indication, require government subsidies, interventions in the housing market, and short-sighted panaceas like rent control that will make matters worse.

— JAB

17 Comments

Posted in Housing, Poverty & income gap

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Can We Afford Affordable?

Posted on April 19, 2022 by | 7 comments

Photo credit: The Harrisonburg Citizen

Magical thinking doesn’t build schools or roads.

by Joe Fitzgerald

Harrisonburg’s taxes are going up and will continue to go up because of housing decisions.

Stated another way, because talking about taxes makes me sound like a Republican, the city will have to keep building more schools and hiring more teachers and bus drivers and principals because of a perceived housing crisis (or, if you prefer, the way the solution to the housing crisis is being perceived).

The past housing decision was the zoning change that encouraged owners of large properties to add 3,000 beds of student housing a decade or so back. Students moved out of older complexes and families with children moved in. Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in Housing

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The Rural Housing Challenge

Posted on March 14, 2022 by | 18 comments

Click for more legible image.

by James A. Bacon

I’ve tended to think of the housing-affordability issue in Virginia as a phenomenon relegated to the major metropolitan areas. Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads are where the population growth has occurred, and that’s where zoning and environmental restrictions have been the most stringent, making it difficult for homebuilders to keep pace with demand. Figure in the higher cost of land, particularly near the urban cores, as well as regulations discriminating against trailer parks and manufactured housing, and it just seemed obvious that affordability would be a bigger issue than in slowly depopulating rural areas where, if anything, housing would be in excess supply.

But according to a recent article in the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank’s District Digest, affordability in the 5th District, which includes Virginia, is almost as severe a problem in rural areas as in metropolitan areas.

“In the Fifth District, rural households are only slightly less likely to
be housing cost burdened than urban households,” states an article by Sierra Latham. “Twenty-five percent of rural households at all income levels are housing cost burdened, versus 28 percent of urban households.” (The definition of “cost burdened” is when rent or home-ownership payments exceed 30% of income.) Continue reading →

18 Comments

Posted in Housing, Uncategorized

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Please, Please, Make This Study Go Away!

Posted on February 1, 2022 by | 51 comments

by James A. Bacon

A General Assembly-ordered study has published its findings for making housing more affordable and accessible for lower-income Virginians and minorities. One can only pray that the report is relegated to one of those proverbial shelves that collects dust, and is never to be seen again. Its recommendations, if followed, would steer resources into government programs while doing nothing to address the underlying cause of the ever-escalating cost of housing: the shortfall in new construction.

It’s not as if the authors of the Statewide Housing Study are ignorant of the laws of supply and demand. The research section of the study notes that roughly 30,000 new homes are built in Virginia each year, about half the annual production of the mid-2000’s. Virginia’s population has increased 10.2% since 2008, while housing supply has grown only 8.7%. Moreover, the housing type is out of whack. More than two-thirds of all new homes are detached, single-family dwellings, as opposed to less-expensive townhouses and apartments. By 2021, the imbalance of supply and demand pushed up the average cost of a single-family home by 30% over five years.

The report’s narrative also alludes briefly to the supply-demand equation. “The lack of inventory remains the biggest impediment to homeownership opportunities for Virginians,” it says in one place. And in another, it acknowledges, “Market conditions and local land use consistently put constraints on the availability and timing of new [rental] supply.” Continue reading →

51 Comments

Posted in Housing, Race and Race Relations

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Rolling Back Regulations Easier Said Than Done

Posted on January 17, 2022 by | 21 comments

by James A. Bacon

Virginia has lagged the nation in economic growth and job creation for a decade or more, and Governor Glenn Youngkin has made it a priority, as every governor does, to boost economic development. One of his strategies for rebooting the economy is to prune needless regulation.

“The growing regulatory burden on businesses and individuals requires time, money and energy for compliance. This represents an opportunity loss that inhibits job creation and economic growth,” Youngkin says in Executive Directive Number One, “Laying a Strong Foundation for Job Creation and Economic Growth Through Targeted Regulatory Reductions.”

Accordingly, Youngkin has directed all state agencies under his authority to reduce the number of regulations not mandated by federal or state statute by 25%. He also directs the Secretary of Finance to explore the feasibility of implementing a 2-for-1 “regulatory budget.” (The meaning of the 2-for-1 budget is not defined in the directive, but I interpret it as a call for deleting two regulations for every new regulation promulgated.)

This is all fine and good — I share the aspiration of rolling back the regulatory state — but we have to be realistic. The number of regulations not mandated by federal or state law is miniscule. With the exception of the regulatory diktats issued by former Governor Ralph Northam in response to the COVID emergency (which Youngkin is nullifying by separate executive orders), Virginia governors and state officials can’t impose new regulations by fiat. Continue reading →

21 Comments

Posted in Health Care, Housing, Regulations and Government Oversight

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Imprisoned by the Past

Posted on January 13, 2022 by | 41 comments

Libby Prison on Cary Street, Richmond, circa 1865. Photo credit: Flickr

by James A. Bacon

As a parting gift to Virginia, outgoing Attorney General Mark Herring has overturned 58 opinions issued by attorneys general between 1904 and 1967 that supported racially discriminatory laws from poll taxes to the prohibition of interracial marriage.

“While these discriminatory and racist laws are no longer on the books in Virginia, the opinions still are, which is why I am proud to overrule them,” Herring said in a press release today. “We are not the Virginia we used to be, and in order to truly be the Virginia that we want to be in the future we need to remove any last vestiges of these racist laws.”

Herring’s action will have no practical effect — the laws supported by these opinions have all been overturned. But many African-American politicians and activists found solace in the gesture.

“Just like Virginia wiped racist, outdated laws off its books in recent years, so too should it wipe away racist, outdated legal opinions that supported and helped to implement those laws,” said Cynthia Hudson, a former chief deputy attorney general and chair of the Commission to Examine Racial Equity in Virginia’s law.

I have mixed emotions. I can see the symbolic value of getting these heinous rulings off the books. (See a compilation here.) We should slam the door on Virginia’s racist past. However, I find the fixation on the past a distraction from current-day injustices that have origins unrelated to historic racism. Continually dredging up ancient wrongs feeds African Americans’ sense of alienation, victimhood and grievance, and it perpetuates the false narrative of systemic modern-day racism. Continue reading →

41 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Housing, Race and Race Relations, Uncategorized

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Chronic Complainers Notch Big Win Against Landlords

Posted on January 7, 2022 by | 20 comments

by James A. Bacon

Whether you agree or disagree with Attorney General Mark Herring’s position on the case, a dispute between an unnamed individual with mental health issues and her Manassas landlords, Gia and Ernest Hairston, makes a fascinating case study. In a press release, Herring touts the outcome — the landlords paying the tenant $60,000 in compensation — as a victory for the disabled. Based upon upon the facts provided in the press release, it looks more like a victory for chronic complainers.

Here are the facts as contained in a Herring press release issued today. The tenant rented a condominium unit from the Hairstons in the summer of 2018. She told Mr. Hairston that she lived with a mental health condition that was currently under control. After moving in, she complained about the air conditioning system on very hot days and made requests for other repairs.

Mr. Hairston became frustrated by the maintenance requests, telling her that “any adult” would know better and that she was being “difficult” and “a problem.” He said the maintenance concerns were “all in her head.” To document the necessity for the repair requests, the tenant asked that any time the Hairstons came to the unit that her therapist or caseworker be present. After agreeing initially, Mr. Hairston then terminated her lease, giving her 90 days to move. Continue reading →

20 Comments

Posted in Housing, Mental illness and substance abuse

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