The Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission recently released a housing study that examines the pressures keeping our housing market tight, and suggests ways that local governments can improve availability. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
Researchers looked at data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Housing and Urban Development, local realtors' groups, and other sources to profile the region's housing landscape.
In a webinar on Wednesday, they broke their findings down into four main subregions:
- Staunton, Augusta County, and Waynesboro,
- Harrisonburg and Rockingham County,
- Bath and Highland counties, and
- the Rockbridge County area.
In these areas, for those working in the most common industries, such as retail, stocking, trucking, nursing, and restaurants –
MEL JONES: Most households with a single earner earning at the median will struggle to find a rental unit. They will not be able to afford home ownership.
Mel Jones is the associate director of the Virginia Center for Housing Research, which co-authored the study. She said nurses, truckers and married couples are the best poised to afford both rent and home ownership in the area. But a cashier?
JONES: If I'm a cashier that is a single earner, I can afford no more than $555 per month, so the only option I would have is to live in Bath County. But … there isn't much rental housing.
One factor contributing to tight rental and sale markets is that construction over the past 20 years hasn't kept up with population growth. A lot of our housing inventory is aging, and it's not getting replaced quickly.
JONES: The 2008 recession, which was related to housing … it really impacted the number of developers, number of builders in our markets, and made them more cautious. … And so the construction … has simply not kept up with demand. And that is really leading to market tightness in the vast majority of places.
The study includes recommendations such as incentivizing increased density in new projects in Harrisonburg and rehabbing vacant homes in Staunton.
