Hanover’s Plans Encourage More Work-Force Housing

BY JOHN HODGES

Hanover County wants to ensure that quality housing is available for working families in particular. In the current housing market, the number of new single-family building permits has been reduced to less than half the number they have been in past years, and the average cost of those new homes being constructed are some of the highest in the metropolitan area.

To address this problem, the Board of Supervisors last year adopted new policies that we hope will ensure that an inventory of this housing is maintained here for many years.

The new board policies include a housing element in the Comprehensive Plan and a specific Work-Force Housing Policy. These policies are intended to address the housing needs of working families that are not currently being met. Identified as an issue in the 2007 update of the Comprehensive Plan, work-force housing is considered to be housing affordable for working employees and their families who qualify for homeownership.

The Land Use Plan helps address this need by including general policies that encourage a diversity of housing types (townhouses and attached units) as well as significant new areas of opportunity for mixed-use developments including residential, retail, and office uses.

The Housing Plan provides additional specific policy guidance. Work-force housing, in the Hanover County context, focuses on a working couple with starting salaries for public service employees, such as teachers and public safety staff. Using conventional loan and income qualifications, the county's committee on this issue determined that a couple with starting salaries should be able to afford homes costing approximately $200,000.

The committee looked at the county's existing housing stock of approximately 32,000 homes that might be able to address this need. Eight-five percent of the county's housing stock is relatively new (less than 60 years old). Many of the subdivisions created in the 1960s, '70s, and early '80s were designed to be starter homes.

Using assessment values from 2007, the committee found that homes of $200,000 or less in value constitute approximately 50 percent of the county's housing stock. The committee was encouraged to find that property sales in this inventory of existing affordable work-force housing were broadly distributed throughout the county, not just in older subdivisions.

The committee's review of trends in new residential construction indicated little or no housing with a value of $200,000 or less. In 2000, the average new-home price was $190,000. However, in 2007 the average new-home price had grown to $406,800.

To help address this shortfall in new construction, the board adopted a Work-Force Housing Policy intended as an incentive, not a requirement, for residential developers to address work-force housing in conjunction with their conventional development proposals.

The board's adopted policy anticipates that developers requesting residential rezoning in the higher ranges of densities shown on the Land Use Plan will provide work-force housing in 10 percent to 20 percent of the proposed number of new units.

The 2008 Workforce Housing Resolution, adopted in conjunction with the Housing Plan element, would make it easier for homeowners who make 75 percent of the county's median income to find a house in Hanover. Currently, that amounts to an annual salary of about $57,000 per person or couple. Home buyers with that salary could afford a house costing about $195,084 if they allocated 28 percent of household gross monthly income for a monthly mortgage payment and if they made a down payment of 3 percent. This policy will be re-evaluated and updated each fiscal year.

The Housing Plan and Work-Force Housing Policy were adopted as an appropriate, initial step for the board to take in maintaining housing in the county that is affordable to the work force. The policies are intended to supplement the broader range of affordable-housing programs offered by state and federal agencies.

Additional county policies will help maintain the viability of the housing stock, such as standards for property maintenance and tax relief for qualifying older residents. All policies are intended to help working families to be able to find housing opportunities in Hanover well into the future.

John Hodges is deputy county administrator in Hanover. Contact him at .