By Isabella Custard
Rockbridge County, Lexington and Buena Vista are working together to find solutions to the region’s systemic housing crisis through an initiative called Rocks to Roofs.
“Housing is economic infrastructure, and without adequate housing, people can’t come here for jobs, which means opportunities for employment go unfilled,” said Anne Herring, an executive at the Rockbridge Highlands Realtors Association. “People go elsewhere. So, we all lose out when that’s the case.”
About 15 residents, business leaders and public officials met over three days this week at the Rockbridge County High School to discuss public policy, “housing for all” and growing the housing market.
The participants focused much of their concerns on last spring’s study by the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission that identified several challenges to housing availability, affordability and quality in the region:
- Single-bedroom units make up only 8% of the housing stock in the region even though 30% of households are comprised of single people.
- Forty percent of households in the Rockbridge area are low income, and 5,000 households are at risk of homelessness in the central Shenandoah.
- The Rockbridge area has some of the oldest housing in the region: 57% of housing units were built before 1990, and 15% were built before 1939.
As a result, 40% of people who work in the region commute from cheaper housing markets in neighboring counties.
“This is a statewide and national problem, but we’re trying to address it locally,” Lexington City Manager Tom Carroll said.
The homeownership rate in Lexington and Buena Vista is about 55% and below the central Shenandoah region’s average of about 75%.
Participants at the Rocks to Roofs sessions brainstormed about solutions, including the use of “tiny” homes or cottages.
“I hear from so many seniors that they want to downsize but can’t find the right place,” Lexington City Council Member Leslie Straughan said during Monday’s meeting.
Straughan said Lexington recently passed an ordinance to allow cottage-size housing. She said building tiny homes or cottages could free up larger houses suitable for families but occupied by senior citizens.
Straughan and other community members raised concerns that there may not be enough incentives for developers to build small.
“We’ve talked to some developers about tiny homes and about the cottage housing,” Straughan said. “There’s not an incentive for them to do too small.”
Bill Russell, a Rockbridge County resident, said the only way developers will build a lot of small homes is if they are given tax incentives.
Carroll said his primary focus is creating more housing for people who have jobs in the area.
“I was struck quite a bit by the notion that companies that want to open a new office or plant and bring jobs to the area are choosing not to do that because they don’t have a place for their workforce to live,” he said.
Herring said the housing problem has been growing since the economic downturn in 2008.
“The average age of the first-time homeowner is now 40 years old, which is at an all-time high,” she said, “which is not a good thing.”