Category: Housing
-
Bacon Bits: Guns, Tolls, Evictions
You’ll have to pry my gun from… More than 90 governing bodies in Virginia have voted to declare themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, reports WDBJ. Ninety! Unbelievable. Thousands of citizens have appeared at board meetings across the state to demonstrate their support for the resolutions. Virginia Citizens Defense League President Philip Van Cleave said the sanctuary…
-
Another Brain-Dead Housing Initiative
by James A. Bacon Broadly speaking, there are two ways to create a supply of affordable housing in Virginia. One is to loosen zoning restrictions so developers and home builders can build more houses and apartments, thus relieving scarcity and putting a downward pressure on prices across the board. The other is for the government…
-
The Inherent Flaw in “Opportunity Zones”
by James A. Bacon The City of Norfolk is gearing up to take full advantage of tax breaks contained in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. City Council has designated the St. Paul area, home to three 50s-era housing projects, as an “opportunity zone.” Plans call for demolishing the three projects and replacing them…
-
Bacon Bits: Hemp, Housing and Solar
NIMBYs against hemp. Farmers across Southside Virginia have turned to growing hemp (the THC-free version used in industrial applications) as a replacement crop for tobacco. But at least one Dinwiddie County neighborhood has risen in revolt. A hemp farm near the Lake Jordan neighborhood emits an offensive odor. The smell is so bad that it’s…
-
A War-on-Poverty Success Story
by James A. Bacon Homelessness in the Richmond metro area has dropped by more than half since 2007, from about 1,158 homeless people to less than 500 this year. It is one of the great anti-poverty success stories — one of the few anti-poverty success stories — of our time. This dramatic improvement results from…
-
RRHA Freezes Enforcement of Rent Collection
by James A. Bacon The Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority (RRHA) has announced an agency-wide freeze on the enforcing rent payments through the end of the year. No public housing family will be removed from their home for debt owed to RRHA during that period. “During this time,” the authority said, “RRHA will undertake an…
-
Republicans Must Find a New Way Forward
by James A. Bacon Virginia is a blue state now. Not only do Democrats occupy all statewide elected positions — two U.S. senators, governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general — with yesterday’s election, they control both houses of the General Assembly. Republicans got their booties kicked. And the butt-stomping is not likely to subside. The…
-
Housing Values and School Quality
by James A. Bacon In an essay posted earlier this week on the StatChat blog, Spencer Shanholtz with the Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia explored the relationship between housing values and school quality. He documents the reality that children living in census tracts with low-value housing are more likely to attend low-performing…
-
Rapid Rehousing: a Homelessness Program that Works
by James A. Bacon Not only can Virginians count on getting electric current when they flip on the light switch, the Old Dominion can boast of something else that Californians cannot: The number of homeless people in the state is declining. A lot. And we’re spending a tiny fraction of the money that Californians do…
-
Map of the Day: Median Housing Values
The StatChat blog has published a fascinating map showing the median value of owner-occupied housing across Virginia by census tract. The map appears as part of an essay on the relationship between housing affordability and school quality, which I may blog about later. But in the meantime, I thought the map was worth publishing on…
-
Housing Prices and Homebuilder Oligopoly
by James A. Bacon What is driving up housing prices in Virginia, especially Northern Virginia? In the simplest terms, the increase can be explained by a sustained imbalance in supply and demand. Between population growth and rising incomes, the demand for new dwellings is outpacing the supply of new dwellings built. Then the question becomes,…
-
Is Inclusionary Zoning the Answer to the Housing Crisis?
by James A. Bacon I have often advanced a common-sense proposition: If you want to create more affordable housing, increase the supply of housing. If the housing stock increases faster than demand, the price declines. A new study on “inclusive housing” policies in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area, which includes Northern Virginia, gives some support to…
-
Why Are So Many Rural Virginians Stuck in Place?
by James A. Bacon A recurring question on this blog and elsewhere is why don’t more Americans (and rural Virginians) move to areas of greater economic opportunity? Why do they remain stuck in communities with high unemployment and low wages? Americans have always moved to economic opportunity in the past. What’s different now? Those questions…
-
Dueling Crises: Unaffordable Housing vs. Flammable Housing
by James A. Bacon Citing housing affordability as the key issue, the Virginia Board of Housing and Community Development has voted down an update to the state building code that would have mandated the installation of sprinklers in all new single-family homes and townhouses. Virginia home builders have said that the sprinkler requirement would add…
-
Want More Affordable Housing? Build More Luxury Apartments.
by James A. Bacon Planners in the Washington metropolitan area are worried, as they well should be, that continued population growth coupled with housing shortages could turn the region into another unaffordable hellhole like San Francisco or Los Angeles where legions of homeless people are taking over the public spaces and making life miserable for…