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Unaffordable Housing, Redux

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Robin Beres
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by Joe Fitzgerald

Proposed housing construction in the city of Harrisonburg could add about 1,200 students to the Harrisonburg City Public Schools, with housing already under construction in Rockingham County possibly adding 400 more.

A quarter of the 1,600 potential students could be absorbed by the opening of Rocktown High School, leaving the city to build however many new schools it takes to educate 1,200 elementary and middle school students.

This projection is based on my using other people’s multipliers on a compilation by the invaluable Scott Rogers on HarrisonburgHousingToday.com. The housing count is Scott Rogers’; the school estimates are mine.

The multipliers in question come from Harrisonburg City Public Schools (HCPS) and from Econsult Solutions Inc. (ESI). HCPS came up with its numbers based on who lives where in the city, and ESI does it for a living. They vary, somewhat. ESI thinks a townhouse will generate .52 students and the HCPS method forecasts .45 students.

The ESI method applied to proposed housing developments in the city yields 1,186 students. The HCPS method projects 1,267. The spreadsheet is available on request, although, generally, nobody ever asks for it and, specifically, a majority of Harrisonburg City Council members have demonstrated that they don’t give a rat’s ass about these numbers.

They should. But because they won’t ask, I’ll take the initiative to explain the good news as well. Not all of the developments in the list have been approved by the city. Taking only those approved so far, not just proposed, ESI projects 688 and HCPS projects 719. The bad news is that several housing units proposed and approved in the county are already being built. As they draw college students and free up housing in the city limits, they could generate up to 400 K-12 students in the city.

The county/city student housing shift numbers and guesses are also available on request.

It is well past time for the city to declare a moratorium on the approval of new housing developments, but while the two most experienced members, Reed and Jones, have shown some restraint, the three least knowledgeable have not. But the ill-advised, ill-considered, borderline irrational approval of Bluestone Town Center only accounts for roughly half of the potential growth in HCPS.

The other half of the approved housing has come in increments, from 22 townhouses on Suter Street in one case, to 376 apartments on Peach Grove in another. Tradition says that each development is considered on its own merits, often based on council members’ personal knowledge of the developer. When you look at all the housing plans at once, they’re not individual projects, but rather a single trend.

Any way you cut it, HCPS is looking at 1,000 more students.

Joe Fitzgerald is a former mayor of Harrisonburg. This column is republished with permission from his blog, Still Not Sleeping.

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10 responses to “Unaffordable Housing, Redux”

  1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Could the city legally declare a moratorium on new housing developments if the appropriate zoning is already in place?

    By the way, where are these new families coming from?

    1. Hamilton Lombard Avatar
      Hamilton Lombard

      I think your second question is a key one to consider when thinking about how many students that a new housing development might produce. A stork doesn’t drop off a baby each time a home is completed. Harrisonburg would need to attract a large number of families from outside the region, to generate a 1,000 additional public school students.

      Since births peaked over a decade ago, the actual student yield rates for most new developments around Virginia have turned out much lower than initially projected. Rockingham County built around 4,500 new homes since 2010, yet their K-12 enrollment didn’t grow over the decade.

      1. Joseph Fitzgerald Avatar
        Joseph Fitzgerald

        Your casual dismissal of the problem has worked for the city decision-makers for a generation. 25 years of city history and demographic projections from two reputable groups can’t compete with, “Oh, that probably won’t happen.”

      2. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
        Dick Hall-Sizemore

        My question was not referring to the potential number of school kids. Virginia, as a whole, is not growing that fast. As is the case with the Richmond area, I am curious as to where all these prospective families in Harrisonburg are going to come from. For instance, do JMU graduates tend to stay in Harrisonburg? Are there new industries or companies that will draw new employees and their families?

        1. Hamilton Lombard Avatar
          Hamilton Lombard

          If births are no longer rising in the Harrisonburg area, nor Virginia or the U.S., it makes it a lot more difficult for new developments to come close to their projected student yield rates. The city would have to pull in a huge number of families with children for the new developments to boost enrollment by 1,000 students.

          Joe knows Harrisonburg very well, I would love to know his answer to your question.

    2. Joseph Fitzgerald Avatar
      Joseph Fitzgerald

      Harrisonburg has a high immigration rate. We have more languages in our schools than any city in Virginia, just as one data point. While it’s reasonable to speculate that influx may end at some point, it hasn’t in the last forty years, at least. JMU students staying is also a factor, as noted. The mix is always interesting, although rarely volatile except in our over-crowded high school. (Sometimes it seems the growth is driven by the number of associate vice presidents added annually at JMU, but in reality that’s only in single digits.) In addition to those who live here, there are those who may want to. Our in-commute is 24, 000, and our out-commute is 11,000. Some number of those folks will move here if housing is available. Summarizing, the growth may stop, but it hasn’t, and it’s not sustainable.
      As to a possible moratorium, multi-family housing needs a special-use permit. The City Council could stop granting them, but they tend to look at each one in isolation, not as an expensive trend. In addition, with the current council, there will be more wrong-headed actions like the Bluestone Town Center. The council is dominated by non-pragmatic leftist ideologues whose answer to citizen objections would be driving tumbrels to Court Square if they could get away with it.

  2. PassTheBuckBureaucrat Avatar
    PassTheBuckBureaucrat

    Freedom! Property Rights! Save my neighbor’s farm

  3. Teddy007 Avatar
    Teddy007

    NIMBY Today, NIMBY tomorrow, NIMBY forever.

  4. Teddy007 Avatar
    Teddy007

    If one wants to have a moratorium on building new housing, then one also has to have a moratorium on new business construction or on anything that will create new employment.

    Many cities driven by NIMBYs have forgotten that creating jobs without creating housing just means longer commutes, and workers coming from other areas. Not a very green idea.

    1. Joseph Fitzgerald Avatar
      Joseph Fitzgerald

      I’m not clear what the reference to NIMBY is. If I were a suspicious man, I might think you were showing off because you just learned to spell it. But, assuming there’s a policy relevance intended, objections to the latest housing project came from throughout the city, not just next door, and from many folks in the surrounding county. But to the extent that your objection to a moratorium is valid, you’re arguing a general theme versus specific local issues and events. We have a local problem created by local decisions and local actions, not macroeconomic issues.

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