Affordable housing production across Northern Virginia jurisdictions continues to lag job growth and housing supply. What’s worse, the region has lost tens of thousands of market affordable units, and growth projections indicate that we not only need to preserve what we have, but we need to be proactive in adding thousands more.
NVAHA and our industry partners continue to seek innovative solutions to this challenge. We believe jurisdictions should be more creative by considering land use and other regulatory tools that do not require additional capital outlays from already stretched public budgets. To that end, from 2013 – 2014, NVAHA published two reports exploring underutilized strategies that could positively impact the region’s affordable housing challenges.
The first report, “Commercial Linkage Fees in Northern Virginia: A Primer,” explored how proffer policies leverage commercial development to create funds for affordable housing for new workers. Linkage fees provide housing resources for the workforce, asking commercial development to share the cost of providing housing that’s affordable with residential developers.
The second report, “Leveraging Public Land for Affordable Housing in Northern Virginia: A Primer,” examined how jurisdictions can reposition their vacant or under-utilized land for affordable housing, and how to integrate those resources into broader community planning for meeting housing and other identified needs.
These strategies are important components of our region’s toolbox for creating and sustaining healthy and diverse communities.