What ever happened to those city-owned parcels Richmond pledged to affordable housing?

In the fall of 2020, the housing market in Richmond was heating up after a pandemic-driven dip in rents and home prices, and Mayor Levar Stoney was feeling a different kind of heat — political heat. Alexsis Rodgers, a domestic workers’ rights activist, was positioning herself as the race’s true policy-focused progressive, running on an impressively bold and detailed housing platform. In a cunning counter, Stoney announced he would transfer 53 city-owned parcels to affordable housing providers.

The mayor won reelection, but whatever happened to the promised parcels?

Too few homes, too many buyers

Richmond was once touted as an affordable, funky mid-sized city. But in the nearly two years since the 2020 mayoral campaign, its housing market has become a huge hindrance to the future growth of Virginia’s capital.

Over the last five years, the average home’s sales price in Richmond jumped $120,000 while incomes have hardly risen by $10,000. Whereas 30% of Central Virginia’s homes used to sell for under $200,000, today only 9% do and twice as many properties sell for over a half a million.

Here's the flipped* houses for the last 8 years. Red = more profit; 100% gross ROI = the flipper doubled the cost of the house in <2yrs. pic.twitter.com/UR6QVdwWRP

— Kevin Finity (@finity) May 3, 2022

To illustrate the pain behind such prices, Joh Gehlbach, the government affairs director for the Richmond Association of Realtors, points to two statistics: Central Virginia’s median home sales price of $325,000 and the earnings of someone at 80% of the average median income — just $47,000. Any mortgage calculator will tell you that all that person can afford is a home priced at max $150,000.

“If we continue to see prices escalate the way they have in the past two years, then the only folks who will be able to afford a home in Richmond will be people moving here from D.C., New York City, and other wealthier markets who can outbid homegrown Richmonders,” said Gehlbach. “Where are our public school teachers, our firefighters, and our city employees going to live? We can’t build our way out of this crisis overnight, but we can start making fundamental changes to ensure there is space for everyone to live in our city.”

Partial parcel progress

To keep up with the Richmond region’s growth, the Partnership for Housing Affordability estimates that Virginia’s capital needs to construct 100,000 to 132,000 new housing units in order to meet demand in the next two decades.

Although 53 parcels (which later became 60) may not sound like a lot, the affordable housing providers benefiting from the mayor’s campaign pledge hope to squeeze as many units as possible out of those lots.

So far, the city has only transferred 15 single-family parcels to the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust (MWCLT). According to Erica Sims, the CEO of the MWCLT, an engineer is currently conducting site analyses to determine if duplexes may be an option. Jim Nolan, the mayor’s press secretary, expressed hope that as many as 42 housing units could come from those 15 parcels, but such added density will require special use permits that can sometimes prove elusive. No matter the outcome of the engineering and permitting processes, Sims expects construction on the 15 parcels to begin early next year.

The remaining 21 parcels promised to the land trust are stuck in a city review process to ensure the properties don’t have any title or environmental issues. “Some of the parcels may be located within a landfill area, so environmental research is needed to determine if this is the case and if yes, then a brownfield cleanup would also be needed before transferring the properties to the MWCLT,” explained Nolan.

Of the 40 acres the city plans to hand over to the land trust, the vast majority are located in Northside, including a number of parcels the city acquired in 2005 after flooding from Hurricane Gaston displaced 79 families and led to the razing of an entire city block.

The 24 multi-family zoned parcels designated for other affordable housing providers will be disbursed via a request for proposals process that Nolan anticipates will be released sometime later this year.

Permitting delays that have slowed other construction around town have also impacted the parcels included in the mayor’s campaign pledge. “As with a lot of organizations last year, a number of key city employees either retired or resigned to take employment elsewhere leaving some departments with staffing shortages: Housing & Community Development is one of those departments,” explained Nolan. “The Covid-19 pandemic has also impacted staffing and the ability to further advance these initiatives.”

Gehlbach, for one, is cheered by the administration’s efforts to turn these 60 surplus city-owned parcels into housing even if those properties represent just a small fraction of what is needed.

“The solution is never going to be just one thing,” they said. “To try and unwind the Gordian Knot of housing we need to have a real conversation about our zoning laws, most of which date back to the 1950s and 1960s. We need to be zoning for 2022 and beyond. If we want local kids to be able to grow up and afford a home in Richmond, then we need to make some aggressive changes to our zoning to create space for them.”