Category: Affordable housing

Kicking the ADU can down the road

(Reading time: 8 minutes)

To better understand why Staunton can’t get a handle on its lack of sufficient affordable housing, consider the June 18 meeting of its Planning Commission. Dominating the 90-minute session was a meandering and inconclusive conversation about a subject the commission has largely ignored, over which it has little control, but about which it is willing to entertain dystopian fantasies. In doing so, it made an inadvertent argument for renaming itself, perhaps as the Reaction Commission. Or the Let’s-First-See-What-Everyone-Else-Is-Doing Commission.

Among Staunton’s most pressing problems is its largely acknowledged if imprecisely documented shortage of housing that local residents making local wages can actually afford. There just isn’t enough of it to go around in the first place, so what’s available is priced out of reach. The obvious solution is to build more housing that is smaller and less expensive, leading to the equally obvious question: why isn’t that happening? And the obvious candidate to answer that question is the provocatively named Planning Commission (there’s also the newly formed Housing Commission, but that bunch is still trying to figure out what it’s doing), which one might think is currently consumed with trying to cut the Gordian knot of failed housing policy. One would be mistaken.

True, there are numerous reasons why Staunton has an insufficient housing supply, reasons that are at work all across the country and most of which are quite out of reach of a mere five Stauntonians meeting once a month, mostly to review rezoning requests. The cost of construction materials has sky-rocketed since the pandemic, the ranks of skilled construction workers have been depleted by Trump’s xenophobic deportation policies, interest rates are high and apparently poised to go higher. Those aren’t things a local planning commission can affect. But there’s also the matter of housing design and density, and that fits squarely within the planning commission’s wheelhouse. It’s also something the commission avoids looking at too closely.

Strange though it might seem, there’s not enough land available for building small homes in Staunton. With an average population density of just over two people per acre, it might appear that Staunton has lots of room for additional housing. But parks and agricultural districts and heavy industry whittle down the amount of land suitable for development. So too with land devoted to roads and parking lots, as well as land that’s too steep or too rocky or subject to flooding. There is land available for sizeable developments, as evidenced by the recently announced 267-home  McIntosh Village, but that’s big money chasing market-rate housing that will be too big and too expensive for empty nesters or service worker paychecks.

But then there’s our fondness for zoning that deliberately spaces homes far apart, allowing few homes per acre and dictating setbacks and minimum lot sizes and maximum lot coverage—our self-imposed limitations on what’s possible, in other words. Not geography or geology, but the very sort of thing that a planning commission concerned about an adequate housing supply for its existing population should be examining.

Just how inadequately it is doing so was on display June 18, when the commission was presented with a proposed amendment of the city zoning code that would clear the way for accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to be built pretty much anywhere Staunton allows housing.  The proposed revision was not something the Planning Commission had solicited. Nor was it sought by the Housing Commission, which has been slow-walking the ADU idea to some future chin-stroking evaluation. It was instead mandated by the Virginia General Assembly, which to its credit got fed up with all the wheel-spinning in the provinces and adopted this past session a bill that overrides local zoning authority.

Most succinctly, the state is mandating that as of July 1, 2027, ADUs are to be permitted by right—that is, without requiring “May I?” special-use review—in all zoning districts throughout the Commonwealth that allow single family use. ADUs are defined as “an attached or detached dwelling” that provides “complete independent living facilities for one or more individuals.” There are restrictions on size and placement, as well as parking and building code requirements, but basically the new law opens the door for homeowners to double their capacity. It could be with a backyard cottage, a basement apartment, a garage with a second-floor apartment. The additional space could be rented out, or it could house an aging parent or adult child. Best of all, the increase in the city’s housing stock will come without requiring any of the new roads, storm water management, water and sewer lines and other infrastructure that come with a new subdivision.

Planning commission reaction? Mixed but generally aghast. Commission member Dale Hansen, fantasizing about slap-dash cabins with hot plates and composting toilets popping up in backyards, said he wants to see some kind of allowance for ADUs “but not getting too crazy, and I don’t know how to regulate crazy,” eliciting sympathetic chuckles from other commissioners. The way the law is written, Hansen complained, “It’s sort of the Wild West—anyone who wants one can get one.” Well, yeah. That’s the idea.

Commission chair Jessica Robinson summarized the commission’s approach to the idea of getting ahead of an issue by asserting, “I don’t want to be a trailblazer.” No fear there—the state has already taken on that mantle—but because Staunton doesn’t have to amend its zoning code before next July, Robinson clearly is hoping to kick the can down the road. “I don’t think it’s impossible that people will start pushing back on this and that at the next General Assembly session it gets put off further?” she suggested, albeit on a questioning note. “And I think we should wait and see and make sure it survives all that.”

There was talk among the commissioners about seeing what zoning amendments other cities are writing—“Let them fail first, before we fail,” Hansen offered helpfully—and a suggestion that perhaps the Housing Commission could provide helpful insights. There was musing about feeling like “deer in the headlights.” None of it grappled with the fact that Virginia now has an explicit law to which Staunton must conform, without a lot of room for creative embellishments or escape clauses, which means there are only so many ways the city’s zoning code can be amended to be in compliance. The rest is wishful thinking.

Unfortunately, it’s not at all clear that the planning commission comprehends just how much the regulatory landscape is shifting beneath its feet. For the state to wade into a zoning issue—one of the few areas of responsibility reserved for localities—is huge. (See also the new state law that gives churches the by-right power to build affordable housing on their property.) At the same time, the commission’s tone-deaf approach to ADUs suggests its members haven’t been paying attention either to the ADU concept or to the housing needs of their neighbors.  ADUs as a relief valve for housing pressures have been around for years—long enough to be a significant part of the conversation at last year’s Virginia Governor’s Housing Conference, as I wrote last fall, and long enough to be discussed by the city’s Housing Strategy Group and in Comprehensive Plan ruminations. The problem locally is that it’s been just that—talk—and little more, as if a bunch of old folks were sitting around discussing the desirability of going to heaven.

The green and (to a lesser extent) the black area in the graph above are prime sources of potential tenants for ADUs and now comprise substantially more than 50% of all households.

Nor will ADUs be the end of it. In addition to having a high percentage of relatively low-wage workers, Staunton has a higher percentage of elderly residents than the national average. It’s sobering, therefore, to learn that the fastest growing group of people entering homelessness are those 55 and older—people increasingly on fixed incomes, often in poor health, who can no longer afford to live in the city in which they were raised or worked or raised their own families. ADUs are not only more appropriately sized for these populations, which don’t need multiple bedrooms or a backyard, but can be built more cheaply and therefore rented for less than single-family homes. But they’re only one possible approach.

Other housing variations that are excluded from permitted uses within current zoning regulations, such as cottage courts, may be next. Expect pressure to grow for allowing single-family home conversions into duplexes or triplexes by right, or for eliminating lot size minimums in established neighborhoods, or for eliminating all parking mandates for housing, thereby freeing up more land for infill development. None of these are novel concepts in the wider world, although they are locally. All should enter into the planning (and housing) commission’s awareness if it wants to avoid future “deer in the headlights” moments, and if it intends to take seriously the “planning” part of its mandate.    

Instead, the commission won’t be meeting again until August, when it’s not clear whether the proposed ADU revisions to the city code it receives will be substantively different from what it’s already seen. The city’s community development planners have been given next to no guidance on what changes to make, beyond a vaguely worded request to “keep refining it.” At some point the commission will have to hold a public hearing on the proposed changes; next April was suggested as a good choice.

No sense in rushing things. Or starting them, for that matter.

Warring against willful ignorance

(Reading time: 11 minutes)

Staunton’s census tracts, showing homeownership percentages (in black) and poverty levels (in red), with Census Tract 2 highlighted in pink at left; from Anna Leavitt’s presentation to Staunton City Council on June 25.

For several weeks now—ever since the latest American Community Survey statistics were released—I’ve been thinking about writing something tentatively titled “A Tale of Two Cities.” The piece would have focused on the West End generally, and on Census Tract 2 specifically, and on the various disparities between that area writ small and Staunton overall. And then this past week Anna Leavitt beat me to the punch, at least partly, with a presentation to city council that was an unexpected and bright counterpoint to Staunton’s generally sluggish approach to such matters.

Leavitt, former director of CAPSAW (Community Action Partnership of Staunton, Augusta and Waynesboro), apparently has an affinity for complex acronyms: these days she identifies herself as Staunton’s EMOSA, which stands for Economic Mobility and Opportunity Special Assistant. She’s been in that position only since January, yet already has done more to fill in the terra incognita portions of Staunton’s demographic map than any of the numerous studies and plans generated over the past decade. That’s truly good news. But it’s only a start.

The bottom line in Leavitt’s presentation on Thursday was that it doesn’t matter where you live in Staunton, a median household income is no longer enough to buy you affordable housing. That holds true regardless of whether you’re a lower-income single parent with one child, a two-earner moderate- or middle-income household with two children, or a retired senior living on a fixed income: in each case, expenses outstrip income by several hundred dollars a month. In some parts of the city, however, the deficits are larger than others, and Leavitt’s analysis thus far is only scratching the surface of what that means.

Look at the statistics for Staunton’s seven census tracts, and you’ll be immediately struck by the extremes of Census Tract 2. This is the area south of West Beverley Street often recognized as a major part of the West End, which as defined by the city also includes a hefty chunk of Census Tract 3, on the north side of West Beverley. But Census Tract 2 is considerably more immiserated than its counterpart, as evidenced by median household incomes—$49,470 for tract 2, $80,914 for tract 3—and other indicators of economic well-being. As a result, discussions about the West End generally blur many significant variations; they also obscure the even more stark comparisons between Census Tract 2 and Staunton overall.

For starters (and as Leavitt pointed out), Census Tract 2 has the highest poverty rate of any Staunton census tract, at 19.2%, compared to the city’s overall rate of 12.6%. It also has one of the city’s lowest homeownership rates, at 43%, compared to a citywide average of 61%. That means nearly three of every five homes in Census Tract 2 are owned by someone who lives elsewhere, whether that’s in the house next door or in Virginia Beach, accounting for the large number of complaints from area residents about absentee landlords and neglected properties. It also means the tract’s 4,000 residents have limited financial resources, and therefore limited mobility, to improve their living conditions.

Moreover, the housing that exists, for renters and homeowners alike, ain’t that grand. Of the census tract’s approximately 1,120 rentals, nearly half have what the Census Bureau calls a “condition”: either a lack of complete bathroom facilities, a lack of complete kitchen facilities, an occupancy higher than one person per room, or rent that takes more than 30% of their tenants’ income. Homeowners aren’t faring a whole lot better, with nearly a quarter living in a home with a “condition.” Overall, then, it’s safe to conclude that a huge chunk of Census Tract 2 residents are living in crowded conditions or are paying way more for housing than is financially sustainable for the long term.

 Other Census Tract 2 statistics further underscore the challenges its residents face. Eleven percent of the population was without healthcare coverage in 2024—a percentage sure to have climbed this year because of the federal government’s decision to end Obamacare subsidies—as against 6.4% for Staunton overall. Sixteen percent of Census Tract 2 residents are disabled, which is not that much higher than the city’s rate of 15.2%, but which is more consequential in the context of all the other problems they face. It’s also noteworthy that 45.5% of Census Tract 2 residents have never married, a metric typically associated with household stability and individual health and longevity, compared with a citywide average of 33.9%. And a bit more than 15% of the area’s adults older than 25 don’t have high school diplomas.

The residents of Census Tract 2, in other words, face numerous obstacles that are more limiting than those found elsewhere in the city.  

THE POOR HOUSING SITUATION in the West End generally, and in Census Tract 2 specifically, is no secret. Indeed, having recognized the area’s potential to go into an economic tailspin, the city in 2020 embarked on a four-year exercise to forestall disaster by studying the area and formulating a remediation plan. The result was the 115-page West End Revitalization Plan that the Staunton city council formally adopted at the end of 2024. Woven throughout the plan are the concerns and complaints of area residents about a lack of available and affordable housing, as well as the widespread deterioration of existing housing stock.

But housing, as it turned out, was only a small part of the plan’s remit. And the final plan’s remedial housing recommendations are . . . superficial, to say the least. The leading “action item” regarding housing, for instance, calls for connecting West End homeowners “to existing resources” that would help them address “building and property maintenance code violations.” Only one of the plan’s proposals directly addresses renters, and then by suggesting they should be educated about their rights, presumably so they could hold their landlords accountable for providing decent, safe and sanitary quarters. Indeed, when you parse the handful of housing-related recommendations, it all boils down to a lot of talk but no action or any commitment to provide new city assistance.

It should go without saying that people one step away from being homeless are hardly in a position to insist that their rights be respected. When you’re scraping by at a job that pays less than $20 an hour but still have to fork over more than $1,000 a month for rent because there’s nothing available for less, your airy “rights” take a back seat to more pressing concerns when your landlord won’t get around to fixing the AC. You suck it up. And as I wrote 18 months ago, while the wool-gathering that went into the West End Revitalization Plan encountered repeated complaints of unscrupulous landlords and neglected properties, little of that got more than a passing acknowledgment in the plan itself, apparently because anecdotal stories are easier to ignore than hard numbers.

The lack of hard data should by now be a matter of civic embarrassment. Roughly six years after the revitalization study was started, city planners still do not have an inventory of vacant and developable land in the West End, or an inventory of deteriorating or abandoned dwellings that should be refurbished or condemned. (The city tax assessor presumably has that data, but that speaks to another city problem, of siloed information.) The city has no idea how many rental properties are owned by people who live outside of Staunton. And then there’s the problem of information bias creeping into studies like the Revitalization Plan: of approximately 170 responses to a community survey conducted for the plan, for example, only 78% were from people who actually live in the West End—and of those, nearly 90% were homeowners. In other words, responses from the renters comprising the majority of Census Tract 2 residents were vanishingly few.

Little wonder, then, that the revitalization plan’s proposed remedies regarding housing instability are so toothless. A meaningful recommendation, for example, might have called for adoption of a rental inspection program specifically targeting Census Tract 2, similar to programs operating in Roanoke, Winchester, Hopewell, Colonial Heights, Petersburg—cities throughout the Commonwealth that are both larger and smaller than Staunton. Such programs focus on specific areas in each city where older residences, absentee ownership and low incomes create an environment conducive to property neglect and housing deterioration.

Although the Virginia Landlord and Tenant Act makes landlords largely responsible for the living conditions in their properties, it doesn’t have a mechanism for tenants to enforce its provisions when a landlord ignores complaints. So a tenant’s options when faced with an intolerable living situation are to move—not exactly an alternative in the current market—or to file a lawsuit, which is an even more burdensome proposition. In cities that have rental inspection programs, however, rental units are subject to periodic inspections to ensure they conform with the state’s Maintenance Code, providing some assurance that such problems are less likely to crop up in the first place.

Waynesboro seemed about to adopt such a program three years ago, but then scrapped the effort amid claims that it would be too expensive to implement and that it would raise the already high cost of housing. That sounds remarkably like the fallacious arguments often made against increasing the minimum wage, serving mainly as a rationale for paying people slave wages or, in this instance, keeping them in blighted housing. But it gets repeated uncritically by those who don’t believe government should get involved in housing issues in the first place.

So, for example, asked why Staunton doesn’t have a rental inspection program, John Glover, whose job title is Building Official in the city’s Community Development department, replied that city staff had looked at the possibility in the past and “decided it was not necessary.” Having such a program, he wrote in an email that echoed Waynesboro’s rationale, “can increase the cost of rentals, which is detrimental to affordable housing.” It would require additional staffing, “which can be costly for the city.” A more cost-effective approach, he maintained, is complaint-based enforcement of the state’s Maintenance Code, which can result in the city taking legal action against property owners who don’t remedy violations.

Without providing any specifics about how many complaints have been investigated or how many times a property owner has been taken to court, Glover concludes that “this approach has proven to be very effective for many years.” Perhaps. But as with so many city responses to the West End’s problems, that assertion is made without a factual grounding. It assumes that people living in deficient housing not only know of the city’s complaint-based enforcement of the Maintenance Code—a code that gets only a single, unexplained mention in the Revitalization Plan—but that they have enough courage or desperation to risk calling attention to themselves by filing a complaint. A scarcity of complaints does not necessarily indicate the lack of a problem.   

ALL OF THE ABOVE presupposes that indeed there are unattended housing problems in Census Tract 2. Given the area’s general economic data and the anecdotal feedback received by the Revitalization Plan, that seems like a pretty safe bet. But that very wobbly assertion also attests to the city’s willingness to not look at things too closely.

If you can say with a straight face that you don’t see a problem, then no one can fault you for not fixing it, and that’s pretty much how Staunton has approached its housing problems in the past. That’s true city-wide, but especially so in the West End, and Census Tract 2 more specifically. That’s why the hard data is so spotty. It’s why city staff can so blithely declare that city intervention or oversight “is not necessary.” It’s how residents’  feedback can be superficially acknowledged but ignored when spending and policy-making decisions are made. It’s why planning study after planning study ends up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.

That changes are afoot, albeit at a glacial pace, is not due to any sudden epiphany, but because at some point being oblivious stopped being an option. Our homeless population is not going away, and indeed—as may be confirmed mid-July in a special Point in Time census—appears to be growing. The state, which historically has left zoning decisions up to localities, is now mandating that Staunton and other cities allow construction of accessory dwelling units—essentially a second home—anywhere they allow single-family homes, an option over which Staunton has been dithering for at least the past year. Another state initiative, signed into law last month, allows churches and other tax-exempt nonprofits to build affordable multifamily housing on their property without prior city approval. And meanwhile the gap between what people are paid and what they have to pay to keep body and soul together is widening.

Staunton’s new EMOSA seems intent on plugging some of those data holes, which will make a deliberate ignoring of the problem much, much harder to sustain. Good luck, Anna!

Follow the colored-dot road . . .

(Reading time: 17 minutes)

A draft of Staunton’s revised and updated Comprehensive Plan is out for review, following 18 months of data collection, meetings and pulse-taking—including hundreds of colored dots on a wall of easels—and presumably is heading for rapid city council adoption in early June. Public comments are being received until May 26. We should hope there are many.

As plans go, this latest iteration is an improvement over the original, which was adopted July 11, 2019—before Covid and before the post-pandemic explosion in real estate prices, an affordable housing crisis, devastating downtown floods and numerous other shifts in the firmament. That initial “plan” was far more descriptive than prescriptive, more a gazeteer than a road map suitable for navigating two decades. Its conservative approach meant the original plan avoided being derailed by the Covid era, but even on those few occasions when it tried to peer into the future it often missed the mark, as when it projected that Staunton’s population in 2040 would be 25,442—a number the current draft revises upward by 10%.

Predicting the future is tricky business, to be sure. But the 2019 plan also was hindered by its blinkered view of what properly falls within the city government’s scope of responsibilities, a perspective shaped at least as much by philosophy as by financial limitations. The plan’s view of housing, as “primarily a private system that is influenced by factors beyond those controlled by local government,” is perhaps the most egregious example of a hands-off attitude that produced a planning document with obvious blind spots. The result was a soulless slab of prose, devoid of vision or inspiration, suffocated by the expectation that the Staunton of 2040 would be just like Staunton in 2020 only more so.

The new draft, by contrast, takes a more expansive view of the city’s role, which is a welcome change. But it also goes to the opposite emotional extreme, so devoted to “vision” that it often reads like a romantic ode, a fulsome psalm to a city that is welcoming, vibrant, empowering, resilient, inclusive, thriving, harmonious, sustainable . . .  and on and on.  Fair enough—who wouldn’t want to live in a place like that?—but at some point it does become a repetitive blur. The new draft also is big on graphics and states forthrightly it intends to “minimize text,” which may be a nod to shortened attention spans but which undermines its credibility as a planning document. We think, analyze and plan more with words than with images, although images do provide a better complement to the whole “vision” thing.

But whether dry or frothy, both the original and the revision fall short of being either “comprehensive” or of being a “plan.” The update is more aspirational than the original, to be sure, but its attention to detail is erratic and uneven, ranging from the highly specific—even providing exact dollar amounts for specific sidewalk expenditures—to the kind of broad-brush statements of intent with which no one can quibble but with little or no guidance regarding how to get there. The lack of sufficient affordable housing, to offer just one example, is acknowledged as being “a foundational theme that touches nearly all chapters” of the plan, yet the housing section has the least number of proposed “tactics” of any of them, and even those few are wan at best.

Does it matter? On the plan’s own terms, it should. The Comprehensive Plan, according to its introduction, “guides Staunton’s efforts to update local ordinances, justifies city programs and initiatives, helps officials set budget priorities, and directs decisions or development applications.” In other words, the plan defines what’s important and what isn’t. If something isn’t in the plan, it doesn’t exist and stands a good chance of being overlooked. Any evaluation of the plan therefore should pay as much attention to what isn’t there as to what is.

Land Use

In the news business, it’s called burying the lede: starting a story with peripheral details, only getting around to the core concept many paragraphs later.  In the section on land use, the lede is buried in a grey table of “tactics” that makes passing but repeated mention of “updates to the Zoning Ordinance” to solve various problems (infill, residential development in commercial districts, cottage courts, accessory dwelling units, etc.) without any prior narrative introduction of the ordinance, its limitations, or whether the whole thing should be overhauled rather than be subjected to a thousand tweaks and cuts. Instead, the explanatory text preceding the “tactics” (recommendations) is replete with mostly generic drawings of various land uses and how they might be improved, seemingly borrowed from the Cincinnati Urban Design and Architecture Studio, together with concepts like “building to street ratios” that it doesn’t explain. It’s all very colorful, but given the lack of a comprehensive review of the zoning code, mostly unhelpful.

How much more useful would this have been if the plan’s drawings were of actual Staunton city blocks, the streets and existing buildings clearly labeled, together with a vigorous discussion of how Staunton currently assigns land use and how it might do so differently? As it is, an ostensibly comprehensive plan casually presents information that should—but doesn’t—elicit sharp questioning, such as its unquestioned endorsement of reserving nearly a quarter of the city’s land for “heritage farmland.” Should it?  Why? How is it sensible to set aside municipal acreage for cattle grazing when we’re surrounded by the state’s second largest agricultural county?

That’s not to say that the misleadingly labeled “ag-forestal” (much more ag than forest) corner of the city should be turned into suburbs, but that there is no sign that the comprehensive plan even considered alternative uses for the land.  It also plays into repeated nonsense like this statement: “Trends analysis indicates that roughly 86% of Staunton’s land is already developed, meaning future housing growth will rely primarily on reinvestment, infill development, and reuse of existing structures.”  That sounds dire, doesn’t it? But given that 22% of Staunton’s land mass is, as just noted, undeveloped agricultural land, it’s also absurd.

A more accurate—and helpful!—statement would be that “roughly 86% of Staunton’s land is already developed under current zoning constraints,” which opens the door to all kinds of fresh possibilities.  Zoning is something we invented. It’s something we could change. And if we did, it’s amazing how much land would abruptly be available for all sorts of urban designs.

Farmland aside, there are numerous examples of ostensibly “developed” but underutilized land in Staunton. Consider, for example, the commercially zoned dog-leg rectangle between N. Central and Augusta that runs from West Frederick to Pump Street. Covering approximately 7.5 acres, this three-block area is immediately adjacent to the much more densely occupied multi-use downtown area that is generally regarded as an example of enlightened land use. But what do we find here? Five financial institutions, two fast-food restaurants and a store-front church—eight buildings altogether, with a combined footprint a tad over 35,000 square feet, covering just 11% of the land they occupy. As for the other 289,000 square feet of that “developed” land? Mostly asphalt parking lots and driveways.

Imagine if, instead of all those borrowed graphics, the plan had mapped out this three-block expanse and showed how it could be redeveloped for maximum use and return on the dollar. Yes, the land is privately owned. But the private sector, more readily than government, recognizes how it benefits economically from greater density and its synergistic effect on business. What the private sector doesn’t have is the overarching vision and resources to assemble such a transformation. That’s where the comprehensive plan could make a difference.

Blind Spots

The unquestioned acceptance of continuing the ag-forestal land-use designation is symptomatic of a bigger problem within the comprehensive plan: that of failing to see or question what’s right in front of our faces.

Decaying churches

Staunton is chock-a-block with churches, many with congregations that are aging out and increasingly unable to support large sanctuaries. Some are relatively modest, others may include spacious grounds and additional buildings. But like aging parents with a house stuffed full of belongings that no one will know what to do with when they die, too many will pass away without proper dispensation of their assets.  For one example of what that looks like, see the former Bibleway Community Church on West Beverley, vacant for all of this decade and increasingly showing it.

Aging churches can be revitalized or repurposed in various ways, most notably but not solely as affordable housing. But whatever transformation may occur often requires the intervention of an outside agency, such as the city, working from an inventory that assesses which churches can continue to flourish and which ones need hospice care. Most critically, repurposing church properties typically requires someone else to initiate the conversation, since most aging congregations are reluctant to acknowledge they can no longer support their long-established houses of worship. That’s an understandably delicate exchange to have, but it only gets harder the longer it’s postponed.

Even without an inventory of an estimated 76 Staunton churches, there are a couple of obvious places where the comprehensive plan could get the ball rolling. The Marquis Memorial United Methodist Church on West Beverley, for instance, has more than two acres fronting on one of the city’s principal gateways, as well as several vacant and near-vacant buildings. It also has a dwindling congregation and can afford only a part-time pastor. Heating and cooling costs for its large sanctuary are so high that the church frequently holds services in other spaces on the property that have lower ceilings. How much more productively could that property be used?

Or consider Christ United Methodist Church on Churchville Avenue, also a Staunton gateway. A potential candidate for revitalization rather than repurposing, Christ United sits on five acres that present several development possibilities. Some of that land, for example, could be used for housing or a mixed-use development that would generate revenue for the church, thereby creating an income stream that offsets declining financial support from a diminishing congregation. But here, too, it might take creative city outreach to set such a change in motion.

Other iffy assets

Numerous though they are, Staunton’s churches are hardly the only large buildings that are under-utilized or facing obsolescence. Two of the most notable are the vacant and decaying Ingleside Resort, on the north end of town, and the spooky, shuttered sanitarium next to the Frontier Culture Museum. The former apparently is mentioned nowhere in the comprehensive plan. The latter gets a nod in one of the two appendices, in which attendees at an open house suggested the “DeJarnette campus” has development potential. No explanation or context is provided for that description, which would be meaningless for Staunton residents without a good historical grounding, and no attempt is made in the plan to explore the development potential of either property.

An even larger property within the city, widely referenced by the plan as a notable asset while avoiding a direct examination of its precarious outlook, is Mary Baldwin University. The plan does make a brief suggestion that the city should “develop plans for what to do if the worst-case scenarios unfold,” but then fails to describe what those scenarios might be or how the city might respond. That’s unfortunate. The university encompasses 58 acres of prime land and multiple buildings, including dorms that could be repurposed as low-income housing. While closing the campus would be a significant loss to the city, it would open other possibilities to which Staunton should be ready to respond in a timely fashion.

In addition to such major examples, Staunton has numerous vacant buildings whose existence the plan acknowledges but doesn’t address, beyond mentioning that it would be a good idea to inventory them. We’ve known that for years, of course, but for some reason such an inventory has yet to be assembled, which means the city is often flying blind when trying to match unmet needs with unused assets. One example is the city’s recurring failure to find space for a day shelter for the homeless—even though there is, and has been for quite some time, a vacant storefront right next to city hall, as well as several vacant buildings on South Augusta Street, all of which would be more than sufficient for the purpose. And then there’s the former Coca Cola bottling plant at the intersection of Augusta and Churchville streets, which at one point was eyed as a possible brewery but which remains empty year after year.

How is that we have people who need a roof over their heads, and buildings that have roofs but no tenants? And how is it that such an obvious pairing of needs and resources goes unaddressed in the city’s “comprehensive” plan?

Infrastructure

Sewer and stormwater systems are among the infrastructure elements that make it possible for more than 25,000 people to live in close and supportive proximity to each other. But so is the network of water mains and pipes that delivers potable water to every city home and business, and while the comprehensive plan has much to say about storm water it is almost entirely silent about the drinking kind.

That may be the inevitable result of the very visible destruction caused by recent flooding, leading to the plan’s emphasis on storm water management, versus the comparative invisibility of the water that’s being moved underground. On the other hand, last year’s major water-main break came in the middle of the comprehensive plan’s drafting process and should have been top of mind. Instead, the plan says nothing at all about pipes that are now more than a century old, or about a water delivery system that loses more than one in every four gallons that are pumped into it—a rate nearly twice the national average—or about the $40 million to $50 million the city says it will need to fix these problems.

The city shows no sign of knowing where that money will come from. This plan won’t be any help in that regard.

Economic development

To read the comprehensive plan, you might think that the only economic vitality in Staunton is centered on the downtown area, and that the only kind of business the city wants to attract is the kind that plays well with tourists: outdoor recreation, arts and music festivals, restaurants, galleries, theaters, pop-up markets and so on. If the city wants to attract manufacturing of any sort, you wouldn’t know it from this document. Nor would you know what kind of business development the city would like to see along Greenville Avenue or Route 250.

But the plan’s biggest economic oversight is the blind-eye it turns toward Staunton Crossing, which it mentions not at all despite the millions of dollars already poured into that industrial park’s development. That may be because among the park’s targeted industries is a data center, with all the electricity and water consumption issues and controversy that entails—reason enough, perhaps, to just pretend that there’s no “there” there. Unfortunately, that also means there is no consideration in the plan of possible alternatives for the park, such as manufactured housing or solar panels and batteries, which would create many more long-term jobs than a data center and at a far lower social and environmental cost.  

 Ignoring the inevitable

Unlike blind spots, which refer to things the plan simply doesn’t acknowledge, there are several problems or issues the comprehensive plan does see—and then ignores.  

Homelessness

As mentioned above, the new comprehensive plan goes where the old one didn’t by recognizing the centrality of housing to virtually every aspect of the city’s vitality, from economic development to meeting educational needs to community health. And as have other plans that seek community input, the draft plan acknowledges public concern about the consequences of inadequate affordable housing. When plan consultants conducted what they describe as “public intercepts,” housing was the number one concern voiced by the people they encountered, by far. Attendees at an open house highlighted “the lack of focus on vulnerable populations, particularly homelessness, in current plans.”   Vision statements for the city called for “more services for the unhoused.”

So it comes as a surprise that the comprehensive plan presents not even one suggestion for meeting the needs of people who lose their homes, even as it gives pro forma recognition to “the challenges faced by people facing homelessness.” Instead, it deflects. Housing is a “national issue,” the plan explains, presumably as much beyond local control as climate change. “Local efforts are unlikely to ‘solve’ the housing affordability problem.” (Bye-bye, Staunton Housing Commission?)

But failing to “solve” the housing affordability problem, it should go without saying, only guarantees that the number of people who are homeless will continue to grow. Indeed, Alec Gunn, executive director of the Waynesboro Area Relief Ministries, says that demand this past winter for overnight emergency shelter grew 26% over the previous year, even as the number of churches willing to provide such shelter is declining. Efforts to create a day shelter for the homeless have been even more ragged, with a church that was intermittently open for that purpose last summer—a first—declining to do so again this year.

Regarding all this and more having to do with homelessness, the comprehensive plan is silent.

Student population growth

While the plan draft acknowledges that Staunton’s public schools are at or beyond “functional capacity,” its forecast of what that means for the future is tentative at best—even as it cites the possibility of “urgent space management.” “If” current population growth continues, the plan states, “further modular units and long-term facility expansions will be necessary.” But the plan makes no effort to project how much the student population may grow, or in what parts of the city, basically deferring to Staunton City Schools to “assess current conditions and identify future infrastructure, modernization and capacity needs.”

That may be appropriate in jurisdictions where there is greater distance between municipal and pedagogical governance, but the two are intertwined more tightly in Staunton. The city, because of its planning and zoning responsibilities, is in a better position than the school district to assess future growth patterns. At the same time, the city inevitably will be involved in whatever financing is needed for new school buildings, and possibly for expansion or renovation of existing facilities, suggesting that city planning for such developments should be more proactive than the comprehensive plan contemplates.

In closing . . .

To the extent that the revised comprehensive plan is more user-friendly than its predecessor, thanks to more graphics and minimized text, it may pull in more eyeballs and thereby increase public engagement. That’s a good thing. The not-so-good thing is that such overly visual and summarized presentations tend to diminish critical analysis, acting like cotton candy for the brain: long on mouth-feel, but neither filling nor nutritious.

Much of what the comprehensive plan presents is a distillation of the aspirational and critical comments it received from the public in multiple forums—and yes, that’s also a good thing. But most of that feedback was in response to alternatives presented by the plan’s architects (for this feature, do you prefer A or B?), which means public input was largely limited to the subjects and choices it was given. That’s why the plan has so many blind spots, and presumably many more than the few I’ve offered. And when the public was given a more open-ended opportunity to voice concerns, subjects it raised that didn’t fit within the plan’s parameters often would be acknowledged but then ignored.

Making 20-year decisions based on how many colored dots ended up on a series of easels, which was one of the primary methods used to solicit public feedback,  is better than casting a series of animal bones onto a blanket to divine the future. But not that much better.

The housing squeeze, part two

(Reading time: 8 minutes)

I recently wrote about the housing affordability crisis in our region (although we’re hardly unique) that can be summarized in just two numbers: a median home sales price in February of $330,000 (jumping to $347,250 in March) vs. a median Staunton wage income of $55,023. That puts the average home out of affordable reach of most two-earner households, never mind single-parent households, who then have no recourse but to lease a home—where, no surprise, they put greater upward pressure on that market, pushing local rents above $1,300 a month.

If wage incomes and housing costs were in balance, the market would respond by building more housing until equilibrium is restored. But while a lot of housing is in fact being built, it won’t do anything to relieve the affordability shortage because it costs too much. That’s not because developers are greedy, but because local incomes haven’t increased as much as have labor, materials and the other costs of building new homes. Those new homes will be sold to people moving in from elsewhere—and working elsewhere, where they’ll get paid more. In other words, what we have here is a broken economy.

When other aspects of a local economy are broken, we don’t expect it to miraculously heal itself. We turn to government, with its size and scale, rule-setting powers and taxing authority. If roads must be built or repaired to facilitate commerce, government does that. When economic inducements are needed to lure industry, government provides those. But when it comes to helping people get into affordable housing, well, that’s historically been a different story. People were expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even when they didn’t have boots, and while that attitude is changing, it’s a long, slow process.

To be sure, there are government programs to help with housing—it’s just that they’re relatively few in number and rarely up to the task. Community Development Block Grants, for example, often are touted as one such source of help. But while Staunton has received such grants for several years, you’ll be hard-pressed to point to even one affordable housing unit that exists because of CDBG funding, with most of the money going instead to projects such as fixing sidewalks or getting a new kitchen for the Salvation Army. With the Trump administration now seeking to defund the CDBG program altogether, even those limited expenditures may soon seem fanciful.

Indeed, Trump’s budget proposals are consistent with a stubborn insistence on the extreme right  that we’ll never have sufficient affordable housing until government gets out of the way. “The states should reduce barriers to multifamily housing investment by cutting property taxes and liberalizing zoning and building regulations,” urged a Cato Institute spokesman in Congressional testimony last May, apparently oblivious to the fact that property taxes are set at the local level. Or, for that matter, oblivious to the necessity for raising property taxes in many localities.

Unfortunately, many of the libertarian Cato Institute’s simplistic remedies, and those of its philosophical soulmates, are given legs by their more telling critique of today’s status quo. Take just one example, made topical by a recent legal threat to derail an affordable housing project in Waynesboro, the first in our region since 2020 to benefit from the federal low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC). LIHTC apartments rent at below-market rates to families with incomes below the median income, which in our area are legion. They’re also nothing new to the area, in which developers used LIHTC funds for the first time in 2001 to renovate Fairfax Hall in Waynesboro, and subsequently added 968 rent-subsidized apartments and town homes at 11 separate locations in Waynesboro, Staunton and Augusta County. But getting to that point wasn’t easy, and now is becoming less so.

The way LIHTC works is thus: each year, the Internal Revenue Service distributes credits to the states, which in turn award them to developers to cover part of their costs of constructing or rehabbing apartment buildings. In exchange, the developers agree to cap rents for low-income tenants. The developers then sell the credits to investors to raise cash with which to start construction, giving investors equity in the projects and credits to apply against their tax returns over a 10-year period. That sounds like a win-win for most everyone—except that this process has grown into such a bureaucratic nightmare over the years that most builders won’t even pursue LIHTC projects.

It also provides Cato and other critics with their most powerful ammunition against “the growth of the welfare state.” For example, the LIHTC statute and related IRS regulations are 442 pages in length, the IRS auditing guide for the LIHTC is 344 pages, an IRS guide for LIHTC building compliance is 214 pages.  An industry guidebook to the program runs to 1,942 pages.  That’s a whole lot of deterrence against even applying for LIHTC certification, and it doesn’t end there: once such a project is completed, building owners must adhere to rent caps and tenant income limits for 30 years and keep records of each residents’ income, assets, and family composition.

Because of these and other LIHTC requirements, the cost of such units is significantly above those of non-subsidized housing. Those requirements also result in increasingly complicated financing packages, referred to as “capital stacks,” to underwrite construction. Such stacks consist of an array of government and other subsidies, each of which comes with its own rules and fees, and each of which takes time to cobble together, thus adding to the bottom line. The LIHTC cost disadvantage, according to various estimates, is around 20%, although it can be twice as high in more rural areas. That’s just so much raw meat for the free-market crowd.

No wonder, then, that the LIHTC train ground to a halt locally over the past six years, despite a dozen successful projects completed in the previous decade. Who can handle that kind of aggravation when there’s plenty of demand for new housing at more profitable market rates?

Last year, however, a non-profit developer of affordable homes, Enterprise Community Development, announced it would build Alston Court, a $35 million 96-unit apartment complex near the Texas Roadhouse in Waynesboro. All 96 units would be rented at affordable rates, according to Enterprise, meaning tenants would not pay more than 30% of their income for housing. Eight units would be reserved for households making less than $18,000 a year, which is just 30% of the local median income. An additional 75 units would be set aside for those making less than 60% of local median income, and 13 units would go to households making between 60% and 80% of the median. All that works out to monthly rent topping out at $1,200 a month—and dropping to less than $450 at the low-income end.

But having secured its LIHTC package, Enterprise Community Development had to assemble the capital stack needed to make it all work. It acquired $4.4 million from the state’s Affordable and Special Needs Housing program, a $560,000 grant from the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission, a commitment of $125,000 from the Community Foundation and another $125,000 in smaller, three-year loans of $10,000 to $25,000 each from a variety of local organizations. It got a commitment from Valley Community Services Board to support 12 to 14 units through its permanent supportive housing program, and a promise from the Waynesboro Redevelopment and Housing Authority to likewise provide housing vouchers for the project. But that still left it $500,000 short of what was needed . . .

. . . and that’s when the City of Waynesboro agreed to pitch in with a grant to meet the shortfall. That’s also when city resident Mary McDermott, a retired telecommunications attorney, decided to get her dander up. As chronicled by the Augusta Free Press, McDermott fired off a letter April 15 protesting a city council vote to “donate” taxpayer dollars and threatening to sue the city in Circuit Court. No grounds for such a suit were outlined in McDermott’s letter, which lacked the rigor one would expect from someone educated at Harvard Law School and which seemed to consist primarily of McDermott’s belief that the grant should have been a loan. Moreover, the whole kerfuffle quickly blew over when McDermott decided just days later—also without much of an explanation—that she wouldn’t sue, after all. If nothing else, however, McDermott demonstrated how precarious such initiatives can be, thanks to their underlying complexity.

Meanwhile, as these numbers illustrate, even an experienced subsidized housing developer like Enterprise Community Development, which already has built more than 19,000 homes across Maryland, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, can be hard-pressed to keep its costs down because of the additional costs associated with LIHTC. Alston Court, it should be noted, will pencil out to nearly $365,000 a unit—more than the median sales price of new homes locally, and therefore just the kind of bloated initiative that gets the Cato Institute and its ilk all revved up. Forgoing subsidized housing, on the other hand, only means more people forced to live beyond their means in over-priced housing, many of whom invariably will end up on the street.

Rather than tossing the baby out with the bath water, isn’t it better to repair and streamline the rickety bureaucratic structure that makes affordable housing possible? Because, really, what else is there?

The housing squeeze, part one

(Reading time: 7 minutes)

To the casual observer, it must seem that we’re in the middle of one heckuva residential building boom—and indeed we are. In Staunton, several dozen apartments have been carved out of what were once commercial buildings, 130 apartments have been built off Middlebrook Avenue, and the planning commission is reviewing an application to build 267 single-family homes in a planned residential development at the end of Richie Boulevard. All that pales when compared to what’s going on in Waynesboro, however, where more than 1,200 new apartments, town homes and single-family homes are being built or have been recently completed, and several hundred more are being discussed.

So what’s with all the local angst about a lack of affordable housing? Aren’t we being swamped by new homes and apartments?

The answer to that lies in the word “affordable.” Yes, there’s a lot of ongoing construction, but all of the examples mentioned above are of homes that will be sold or rented at market rates—and the market is a beast. The house price index in Staunton, for example, rose from 100 in the year 2000 to 185 in 2020, which is to say, home prices rose 85% in that period, or an average of just over 4% a year. But by 2025 the index had jumped to 299.48, zipping along at a brisk 23% average annual increase. Translated into dollars, that boosted the February median home sales price in the Staunton-Augusta-Waynesboro (SAW) area to $330,000, according to local realtor Rick Kane, who’s been tracking these stats for a couple of decades.

Nor is renting a bargain. According to the city’s most recent consolidated plan, prepared as a requirement for receiving federal community development block grants, the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment—appropriate for a family with at least one child—in 2024 was $1,149 a month. Apartments.com, meanwhile, currently shows Staunton rents as averaging $$1,151 for a one-bedroom and $1,264 for two bedrooms. (Parenthetically, it’s noteworthy that 45% of all Staunton households with children have only one parent present, according to latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics.)

To put those numbers in perspective, consider that the federal standard for housing affordability is less than 30% of household income. Spending more than that puts you in the “cost-burdened” category, while spending more than 50% pushes you into “severely burdened” territory. To reasonably afford that market-rate two-bedroom apartment, a household would have to be earning $46,000 a year. Homeownership, no surprise, is even pricier: the $330,000 median home sales price will require a six-figure annual income unless the buyer comes in with a downpayment upwards of $66,000—and even then he or she will need an annual income of roughly $80,000.

Now consider this. The median annual wage income for Staunton’s full-time, year-round workforce, according to the most recent U.S. Census report, is $55,023. See the problem?

Unless a household has two wage earners, local homeownership is out of reasonable reach for most. So are rentals for the 1,651 full-time workers in Staunton that the U.S. Census says make less than $35,000 a year. A look at the city’s job openings illustrates how new employees almost invariably will be forced into the rental market: elementary school teachers, for example, start at $53,000, police officers at less than $51,000. The starting wage for a water treatment plant operator is $20 an hour, which works out to affordable rent of just $1,000 a month. Good luck finding such a place.

Many households, of course, have more than one wage-earner, which is why Staunton’s household median income is $11,000 higher than the median for wage-earners. And, of course, there is nothing ironclad about the 30% rule. People routinely pay more than 30% of their income to put a roof over their heads—but that’s the problem. The more someone spends on housing, the less there is for all of life’s other essentials, including food, transportation, health care, clothing and childcare. Small wonder, then, that the 2025 Community Needs Health Assessment prepared by Augusta Health reported that 25.8% of Staunton residents don’t have enough cash on hand to cover a $400 emergency expense.

One of the problems with such statistics is that they paint with a broad brush, glossing over the glaring disparities among various subgroups. This is especially true in any discussion of housing affordability, as illustrated by the graph above. Relatively few people making more than $75,000 a year will have trouble finding affordable housing, not only because they make more money but also because the housing market will have more choices for them. Conversely, those who make less than $30,000 are overwhelmingly cost-burdened, not only because they can’t afford much of a home but because they’ll be lucky to find anything in their price range. As a result, two-thirds of them get pushed into the “severely burdened” category, putting them one misstep away from being homeless.*

(While these bar charts are for the U.S. as a whole, they track the local situation pretty closely. For example, a statistically dated Central Shenandoah Planning District housing study released last year reported that more than 42% of Staunton and Waynesboro renters were cost-burdened, or roughly the percentage for 2019 shown above for “all renter households.”)

All of which raises the question: who’s going to be buying or renting all those new homes that are popping up in our two cities? And the obvious answer is: for the most part, not people who are already here. They can’t afford it.

Some of the new housing in Waynesboro undoubtedly will be snapped up by employees of Northrup-Grumman, which has a new plant that is filling more than 300 new jobs paying an average of $94,000 a year—but an estimated 80% of those jobs require four-year college degrees or more, suggesting many if not most will be filled by employees from elsewhere. But Waynesboro also has become increasingly attractive to a better-paid Charlottesville workforce searching for housing that’s more affordable on this side of Afton Mountain—and once you’ve crossed the Blue Ridge, Staunton is just an additional 20 minutes down the road. So presumably the developers behind all the new construction have looked at all that and concluded there’s a market demand they can meet.

The unmet market—the housing market for median wage earners already here—is another story. As the above analysis should illustrate, there are two sides of the affordable housing equation that can be addressed to make things equal: pay people more money, or build cheaper housing. Neither is about to magically happen, but there is a workaround: subsidize housing builders so they can sell or rent at below-market prices.

Unfortunately, that strikes some people as being, um . . . too much like socialism?

*The statement about homelessness is not hyperbolic. The usefulness of this year’s Point in Time (PIT) count of homeless people in the SAW region was limited because it coincided with the extreme ice storm that paralyzed the region, preventing census takers from seeking out those who were unsheltered. But even surveying just those who were in shelters underscored some troubling trends: 39% of the 157 respondents were homeless for the first time, and 29% were 55 or older. Unemployment and eviction were the two most common reasons they provided to explain their homelessness.

Next up: The housing squeeze, part two. Waynesboro leads the way toward a socialist utopia. Can trouble be far behind?

Housing worries are making us sick

(Reading time: 7 minutes)

Tax season is fully upon us, so it’s only natural for people to grumble about the Internal Revenue Service. But here’s one undeniably good thing for which the taxman can take credit: because of an IRS rule dating back more than a decade, tax-exempt hospitals are required to periodically assess the health needs of the communities they serve. That’s the good news. The bad news, for anyone reading Augusta Health’s report card from last year, is that our health in some key areas has declined steadily since 2016, and a significant reason for that decline is housing affordability issues that weren’t even on the radar a decade ago.

Indeed, the most recent Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) provides a sharp contrast to the first in a series dating back to 2013. That freshman effort took a notably upbeat approach by noting that Augusta was the 31st most healthy county in the 20th healthiest state in the country. “Augusta County is living up to its motto ‘Let the ages return to the first golden period,’ referring to a period of simplicity and happiness,” it rhapsodized, in less than scientifically detached fashion. “In general, the Augusta County, Staunton, Waynesboro area outperforms the state averages for health status. Where local results fall at or below those levels, we see an opportunity for combined actions that result in improved community ratings.”

But then, in a prescient turn of phrase, it added: “There are several lifestyle gaps that need to be closed to move Augusta County toward greater overall health.”

Fast forward a dozen years, and last year’s CHNA indicates that those gaps not only were not closed, but that some grew into chasms.  While the 2012-13 assessment ranked chronic disease management, as well as health behaviors (“particularly related to obesity and physical activity”) as its top two health priorities, the 2025 ranking vaults mental health to the top spot. And although physical activity and weight retain their number two ranking, right on their heels as number three is housing, which scarcely registered in the earlier assessment.*  Meanwhile, chronic diseases, led by diabetes, trail behind in importance.

To be sure, the 2013 assessment was significantly more superficial than the reports that started coming out in 2016, when the grunt work was handed over to Professional Research Consultants and a 28-page report metastasized into a document nearly nine times as long. Moreover, the greater detail was complemented by a consistency of format, enabling comparisons across the three-year intervals that followed. The problem is that this consistency also highlights just how much backsliding has occurred.   

AMONG THE ASSESSMENT’S housing-related findings for Staunton (anyone wanting to focus more on Waynesboro or Augusta County can peruse the complete assessment here), nearly a third (32.1%) of residents worried or stressed over their rent or mortgage payments in the previous year—apparently with good reason, as 12.3% reported they had been displaced from their housing within the past two years, and 9.9% said they’d been homeless in that same time period. Another 11.2 % said they were living in unhealthy or unsafe conditions.

For the SAW region as a whole, the incidence of unhealthy or unsafe living conditions jumped significantly from 2019 to 2025, from 9.9% to 14%—but even more sharply for renters, to 19.5%, compared to 10.5% of homeowners. An even wider disparity between renters and homeowners was found in response to the question of housing instability, with 17.8% of renters in the SAW region saying they had to find emergency housing in the previous two years, compared to 4.8% of homeowners. Meanwhile, the overall incidence of housing instability in the SAW region doubled, from 5% in 2016 to 10.2% in 2025.

Homelessness in the SAW region—defined as adults reporting “a time in the past two years when they lived on the street, in a car, or in a temporary shelter”—was zero in 2016, then climbed steadily through each reporting period, to 6.8% in 2025.

The health consequences of being homeless or of living in unsafe housing can be intuited by most people, but less immediately obvious is the toll on mental health taken by persistent anxiety over losing the home one already has. And while there are numerous reasons for depression or suicidal ideation, the parallel growth of deteriorating mental health and of insufficient affordable housing strongly suggests a link. Indeed, as housing stress has grown significantly over the past decade, the area’s mental health has taken a dive:

  • Asked to rate their overall mental health, 21.9% of SAW adults believe it is only “fair” or “poor,” a 150% increase since 2016. Staunton leads the way on that metric, with 27.8% reporting fair or poor mental health.
  • A total of 41.7% of SAW adults (and 50.4% of Stauntonians) say they have had two or more years in their lives when they felt depressed or sad most days. The open-ended nature of that measurement would dilute its significance, were it not for the fact that it is nearly double the 21.8% reading in 2016.
  • More than a third (35.5%) of SAW adults say they have been professionally diagnosed as having a depressive disorder, a 138% increase from the 14.9% reported in 2016. Moreover, that incidence jumps to a whopping 47.1% of Staunton’s adults, which is more than twice the 20.4% incidence for Virginia overall.
  • Local residents aren’t just depressed; 17.2% of SAW adults say they feel that most days are “very” or “extremely” stressful—a percentage also up significantly from the 10.5% recorded in 2016. Staunton leads the pack on this metric as well, with 22.1% reporting they feel stressed out.

Such ailments, alas, afflict some demographic groups far more severely than others, with low income and LGBTQ+ respondents greatly over-represented in all negative ratings—demographic groups that also have less visibility within the larger community, and less political clout with which to address the issues that are making them sick. Nor, once they do get sick, are there adequate mental health and related services to provide the care that’s needed.

The CHNA includes literally scores of comments from local doctors, social services providers, community leaders and others, detailing what they believe are the reasons for this intractable morass. To be blunt, there isn’t much that’s revelatory, although some of the anecdotes—a 35-year-old father, working two jobs to house his family in a motel room, dying from a stress-induced heart attack—get at the human cost of the illness permeating our body politic.  And then there’s the occasional assessment item that further drives the point home, such as the finding that 19.3% of local adults acknowledge they have been “hit, slapped, pushed, kicked or otherwise hurt by an intimate partner.” That rate, too, has doubled since the 9.7% reported in 2016.

The problem with health exams, as all too many physicians know, is that patients will yes them to death—exercise, stop smoking, eat more nutritionally, cut down on the booze, yadda-yadda—and then go blithely on as though no red flags had been raised. So it seems with the 2025 CHNA’s section marked “evaluation of past activities.” Number two on its list of previous strategies was meeting the health care needs of the homeless through a four-pronged approach, all of which were implemented in 2023—and all but one, and then only minimally, going unaddressed in 2024, due to a vacant RN Health Educator position.

Vacant since November 2023, that is, or almost two years prior to the 2025 CHNA’s release.

It’s a near certainty that Augusta Health’s unfilled position is a result of budget constraints, but as with all such cuts, choices reflect priorities. Short-term rewards have a way of biting us in the ass down the road, and a high-salt, high-cholesterol diet almost invariably morphs into diabetes and obesity. But what are you going to do when it’s your doc who’s ignoring sound medical advice?

Meanwhile, it’s clear we have to move beyond discussing the lack of sufficient affordable housing simply in economic terms, or of viewing housing issues through a policy-making lens that bogs down in abstract philosophical differences. The lack of sufficient housing for city residents earning what passes for a living wage locally is a serious health issue every bit as insidious as lead poisoning, seeping into the populace largely unseen and unremarked until it explodes in seemingly inexplicable violence, depression and apathy. The 2025 CHNA waved several red flags. How many more such studies will we need to awaken us to the epidemic that’s underway?

* “Scarcely registered,” indeed. The single mention of housing in the 2013 CHNA was in a graph showing the SAW region’s top three health and community issues, in which “affordable housing” came in at no.21 of 22 issues overall.

On some tests a failing grade is better

(Reading time: 3 minutes)

Sometimes you can stumble across the most alarming news in the most unexpected places.

Case in point: Staunton today put out its February activity report, which includes a regular update on how many articles and stories have mentioned Staunton in the past month, as well as how many eyeballs may have seen them. Fourth on the list this time, with a “reach” of more than 40 million, was a piece on Realtor.com headlined, “Best Mountain Towns Where Homes Deliver the Strongest Airbnb Returns.”

Care to guess which “mountain town” came in tenth on the list? That would be Staunton, of course, where homes have a median listing price of either $370,000 or $418,000 (Realtor.com couldn’t settle on a single figure) and an “average annual revenue potential” of $43,000. “We are seeing investors with proven track records buy strategically in Staunton, where they know they can implement their knowledge of the market with robust design and differentiated amenities,” Realtor.com quotes Sydney Robertson, identified as a real estate agent with Loring Woodriff Real Estate Associates—which, as it happens, is based not in Staunton but in Charlottesville.

Robertson may be good at tossing word salads (“robust design and differentiated amenities”?), but it should be noted—especially since it was ignored by Realtor.com—that she also is chief sales officer for Carriage House STR. Carriage House, as of a couple of years ago, was operating scores of Airbnbs across central Virginia, including more than two-dozen in Staunton proper, to which it gave a thumbs-up for the city’s lack of short-term rental restrictions. So, not exactly a disinterested observer.

The list of mountain towns so conducive to making money for “investors” was created by AirDNA, a firm that compiles and analyzes Vrbo and Airbnb data. What makes cities like Staunton so attractive to people who think in terms of balance sheets, according to AirDNA chief economist Jamie Lane, is that all the really hot mountain destinations have gotten too expensive. That makes second-tier cities like ours look like bargains. “The markets on this list tend to benefit from steady, multiseason demand and more affordable home prices than those in top mountain destinations,” Lane elaborated. “That combination can create a more balanced investment profile, with strong revenue potential relative to acquisition costs.”

Just how much of a bargain Staunton represents is encapsulated by AirDNA’s ranking system, which looks at five variables to generate a score between 40 and 100. A score of 90-100 is an A. Waynesboro merited only a 70, Lexington and Winchester notched a slightly higher 74, but Staunton roared to the head of the class with a list-making 93. Which all sounds terrific for Staunton, until you realize that what’s being assessed is Staunton’s attractiveness for people who view housing as financial assets, not as homes.

The five variables feeding into this grade include investability, rental demand, revenue growth, seasonality and regulation—or, more accurately, the lack of regulation. Or to put it in English, Staunton offers high curb appeal year-round, with under-priced real estate compared to what the short-term rental market will pay. That may come as a surprise to Staunton residents who can’t find a house they can afford to buy, but that’s what happens when our housing supply is being picked over by people who don’t have to live here.

All the handwringing about Staunton’s lack of sufficient affordable housing is pointless as long as there’s essentially no city regulation of short-term rentals. Without it, the transformation of homes into business assets will continue, largely unseen and unchecked, and articles like this one reaching as many as 40 million people will only accelerate the process. That may be something for the new Staunton Housing Commission to ponder as it plots its future course.

Thinking of giving? Think carefully

(Reading time: 9 minutes)

At a time when an increasingly frayed “safety net” is in danger of collapsing altogether, starved of funds and overseen by a vastly hollowed out federal bureaucracy, it’s only to be expected that social service agencies will step up their fund-raising efforts. At our household, for example, we get a plea for donations to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank at least once a month, to which we respond as we’re able. But the line of those in need cuts across all of life’s essentials, and seems to get only longer, and you have to wonder how it will all end.

One thing about which we should not have to wonder, but which is rarely addressed publicly, is the level of institutional need. Yes, people are hungry, and in need of shelter, and wanting for adequate medical care or school supplies or decent clothing. But are the agencies working to help such people equally needy? How well do they apply the funds they raise, and how accountable and transparent are they with their donors? Do some have more than they need to help their constituents? Or have some squandered the donations they’ve received, as was so blatantly true of the now defunct local United Way a couple of years ago? How many local affiliates of national organizations coast on the latter’s reputations, rather than on their actual accomplishments?

These are tough questions to pose, because they threaten to tarnish institutions seen as local champions of the downtrodden. But the reality is that the pot of community goodwill and financial support is finite, and likely to shrink even as the need keeps growing. Giving money to Agency A means there’s less money to give to Agency B. Yet the few local institutionalized sources of such help—such as Community Development Block Grants, the Community Action Partnership of Staunton, Augusta and Waynesboro (CAPSAW) or the Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge—pay scant attention to the financial statements of their grant applicants, showing more concern for how many people their contribution might benefit.  Private contributors, meanwhile, are even less likely to do their homework when responding to the latest tug at their heart strings.

SAW Habitat for Humanity

One prominent example of muddled financial accountability is provided by the SAW Habitat for Humanity, which a couple of years ago was roiled by scandal involving its then-executive director, Lance Barton. Initial accusations of sexual assault by Barton were followed by reporting in the Augusta Free Press of years of Barton’s alleged verbal abuse of staff, temper outbursts, uncomfortable conversations about sex, substance abuse, drunken behavior at work and supposed financial irregularities. By late spring of 2024, Barton was out of a job, Habitat’s board of directors had virtually a complete makeover, and an interim director was brought on to manage the transition until a permanent replacement could be recruited.

That replacement was Brad Bryant, a widely respected local builder, teacher and former Habitat board member who was hired almost ten months ago. To be fair, Bryant inherited a mess—but it’s also fair to question his lack of public progress thus far in setting Habitat’s financial house in order. Although Bryant says the organization recently completed its first financial audit on his watch, its findings have not yet been publicized. Meanwhile, the most recent Form 990 tax return posted on Habitat’s website—the IRS form all non-profit organizations are required to submit to maintain their non-profit status, a form that potential contributors can consult before giving their money—is for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2022. That was almost four years ago.

More recent Form 990s have been filed with the IRS, but Bryant had not seen them before this week. One was for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2023. A second, following an apparent decision by the interim executive director to change Habitat’s fiscal year to a calendar year, was filed for the year ending Dec. 31, 2023. Depending on how diligently someone in the public searches for financial accountability, then, there’s been a lack of reporting for more than two years, and possibly quite a bit longer.

Some of that gap may get filled when the recent audit results are published, but even then, the report will be notably deficient in at least one material aspect. Among the financial assets in Habitat’s possession are nearly 300 pieces of poster art that were purchased by the disgraced Barton on a junket to Poland, ostensibly as an investment that could be sold to American collectors at a hefty mark-up. The art was purchased with Habitat funds, on a trip underwritten by Habitat that was rationalized as an unconventional but potentially lucrative fund-raiser. The art now sits in a locked room. It has never been shown to the public, and it has yet to be professionally appraised. Whether it’s a significant if unrealized financial asset, or whether it’s just a lot of worthless paper, the product of Barton’s feverish imagination, remains unknown.

In Bryant’s assessment, any fuss over the Polish art is a tempest in a teapot, much ado about nothing at a time when he’s struggling with more substantive issues to make Habitat “viable again.”  He may be right. He may also be markedly wrong. The point is that a somewhat bizarre aspect of Habitat’s bookkeeping is a black box that the organization doesn’t want anyone looking into. When I asked Habitat’s new chairman of the board, Charles Edmond, for an explanation of the Polish art fiasco, his terse response was to say that “due to ongoing litigation, our attorney has advised us to not talk about this issue at this time.”  Yet as Bryant conceded, there actually isn’t any litigation, just repeated failed attempts at getting the Commonwealth’s Attorney to look at the possibility.

There’s no question that Habitat was left in tatters by its departed executive director, and that restoring its luster—not to mention its effectiveness at actually building affordable housing—is a monumental task. But that task is not made easier in the face of financial inscrutability. Not when organizational viability is dependent on the public’s willingness to open its wallet.

Valley Mission

A diametrically opposite set of circumstances is provided by Valley Mission, which provides long-term shelter and case management for our area’s homeless population. It is perpetually over-subscribed, with a waiting list that can stretch for months, and even though the Mission ostensibly has a six-month window within which its clients are encouraged and worked with to obtain permanent housing, the reality is that a year or more of residency is not unusual. There just isn’t enough affordable housing to meet the need.

It may seem paradoxical, therefore, that the Covid pandemic was very good to the Mission’s financial fortunes. Money poured in from various sources, so even as expenses climbed, revenue far outstripped what was needed, jumping from a more or less normal $1.3 million in 2019 to $2.5 million in 2020 to $3 million in 2021. And although income declined somewhat thereafter, it remained significantly higher than pre-pandemic revenue.

Give the Mission a thumbs-up for showing restraint in the face of this bounty: although expenses have continued to climb every year, they have not outstripped the Mission’s two main sources of regular income, contributions and grants, and the income generated by its thrift stores in Staunton and Waynesboro. The surplus has instead been banked, some in cash and some in investments, where it has been generating an enviable amount of interest income: $103,909 in 2023, for example, and an additional $121,642 in 2024.

All told, then, the Mission ended 2024 (its 2025 financials have not been filed yet) with just a tad less than $3 million in cash, $1.6 million in investments, and a total of $5.4 million in unrestricted assets. To put that in context, the Mission’s total expenses in 2024 were $2.3 million—which is to say, the organization is now sitting on enough liquid assets to operate for two years without a single additional dollar coming in the door. It is, in one sense, functioning like an investment bank, which may not be what potential donors want their contributions to fund.

A possibly bigger problem is that even as it hoards a lot of cash, the Mission continues seeking and receiving funding from the same sources used by other local social service agencies, many of which are also trying to help people meet their housing needs. That includes Waynesboro Area Relief Ministries (WARM), Valley Supportive Housing, New Directions Center, and Renewing Homes of Greater Augusta, all of which operate on a shoestring. Meanwhile, in recent years the Mission has been receiving approximately $7,940 annually from Staunton’s Community Development Block Grant, was awarded $11,500 from the Community Foundation in 2024 and $161,000 in 2023, and in the year ending June 30, 2025, received $36,622 from CAPSAW. That’s all money that would have had a far more meaningful impact elsewhere.

There’s another aspect of the Mission’s growing wealth that is problematic. Not only is the Mission not meeting the full demand for the services it already provides, but there are numerous adjacent needs of the homeless population that remain completely unaddressed.  Among the most prominent, for example, is the lack of a day center in the SAW region to provide shelter and services to people who otherwise are left wandering the streets in search of winter warmth, summer shade and refuge from rain and other extreme weather in all seasons.  There are several reasons why this state of affairs exists, but among the most prominent is a lack of adequate funding.

Providing a day center is not the Mission’s responsibility. On the other hand, it’s not unreasonable to think that perhaps the Mission could expand its efforts to answer an unmet need that is entirely aligned with its core mission.  Perhaps it will.

The Mission’s executive director, Susan Richardson, left open that possibility by asserting that the Mission’s board and leadership “makes financial and strategic decisions based on what we believe is best for Valley Mission and the residents we serve.” So . . . not saying no either to expanding the Mission’s facilities to provide more shelter space, or to filling in other holes in the safety net provided to the same generalized population. But also not saying no to bellying up to the financial water hole frequented by all those other critters in the social services ecosystem, which after all is how the system works.

It’s a jungle out there.

A glimmer of hope for housing

(Reading time: 5 minutes)

The new Staunton Housing Commission, the city’s attempt to address issues of homelessness and an inadequate supply of affordable housing, got off to a rocky start with its first meeting last week. Two of its nine members were not present, and the meeting itself—one of only four scheduled for this year—occurred two months later than initially scheduled. Moreover, much of the meeting was marked by red flags waved by city planner Rebecca Joyce, who asked commission members to trust her efforts over the next year to steer their work.  

“We have to stay in a certain lane,” Joyce cautioned, warning against scattershot thinking on the one hand and thinking there is a magic formula to fix everything on the other. “Guard rails” were mentioned repeatedly.

For all that, the 30 minutes or so of group discussion that took place during the 75-minute session were the liveliest on the subject since the commission’s progenitor, the Staunton Housing Strategy Group, started meeting 18 months ago. This was, in part, due to the addition of new voices and perspectives that were notably absent from the strategy group, including those of Robin Miller, a developer, and Hans B. Kettering, a young man searching for housing he can afford while working for Fisher Auto Parts. So perhaps there’s hope for some innovative thinking.

One hint of a possible clash of ideas and values came, interestingly enough, from city vice mayor Brad Arrowood, who was an early proponent of creating such a commission. Noting that Staunton has more cows than most cities its size because of its more than 2,000 acres (of less than 13,000 total) zoned for agricultural use, Arrowood suggested that this flat and gently rolling land could eventually be developed for housing.  That contrasted with an observation made later in the meeting by Miller, the developer, who noted that building out a road map—that is, building roads, curbs, sidewalks and utilities, including electric, water and sewer lines, plus storm drains—currently costs between $1,700 and $2,000 a linear foot.

Imagine what that means for an entire traditional subdivision. With the exception of Bell’s Lane, a narrow asphalt road, Staunton’s ag-forestal district has none of that infrastructure, so building housing there will be enormously expensive. So expensive, in fact, that there’s only two ways it can happen: either by building very large, very expensive homes, or by building lots and lots of homes within a much smaller footprint. Easier, cheaper and faster, Miller offered, would be to fill in what’s already here, building on vacant lots in the developed parts of Staunton. Indeed, he added, one of the quickest ways Staunton could generate more affordable housing would be to allow greater density overall, and to allow accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in particular.

ADUs have become exactly the kind of quick-fix housing solution that makes Joyce fret, universally offered as a sure-fire way to get more people housed by allowing property owners to build second or even third homes on their existing lots. They invariably come up in these discussions because they’ve become so widespread—elsewhere. Miller mentioned that Richmond just recently adopted an ADU ordinance, despite heavy opposition. A map I published back in November showed the stark contrast locally, with Staunton and Waynesboro as non-ADU islands surrounded by the ADU-receptive sea of Augusta County.

Although the Staunton Housing Strategy Group ostensibly embraced the ADU approach, the formal housing strategy it presented to city council last fall slow-walks the concept—and one possible reason was advanced by Arrowood, who told last week’s commission meeting that it’s fraught with possible unintended consequences. What if, he suggested, homeowners on large lots put up several ADUs, only to position them as short-term rentals, or Airbnbs?  Staunton would be helpless to prevent a transformation of quiet residential neighborhoods into beehives of transient activity, while scarcely increasing the amount of affordable housing for teachers, fire fighters and other essential workers.

The obvious response is not to obstruct ADUs but to regulate Airbnbs, as other Virginia localities already do. Albemarle County, for example, requires short-term rentals to be on a minimum of five acres with a rural zoning.  But a regulatory approach runs into another philosophical roadblock, which Arrowood also articulated and which goes a long way toward explaining why Staunton is in the spot it’s in: houses are private property. They’re not just homes, but financial assets.  Airbnbs are property owners’ entrepreneurial effort to better themselves, comparable to the boarding houses of yore, when widows would let out their spare rooms to working class stiffs who couldn’t afford their own homes. Any attempt to regulate such enterprise would be downright un-American.

Airbnbs, which are rented by the day, week or month to transient guests, are nothing like boarding houses, but the comparison appeals to a certain rosy nostalgia. It also highlights the tension, albeit not one that was further explored at last week’s commission meeting, between two opposing views of how we move from here. On the one hand, an assertive embrace of a higher density and infill strategy that builds on what already exists; on the other, a long-range contemplation of how a blank canvas, otherwise known as the ag-forestal district, might be shaped while avoiding upsetting the status quo.

As with many such tensions, the outcome most probably will lie somewhere between the two. But it will be interesting, in the months ahead, to see how clearly these differences are articulated by commission members and how they’re resolved. That could make for more of the animated conversation that showed briefly last week, before Joyce threw up those guard rails, and just might lead to a more durable and meaningful consensus.

* * *

March 11 postscript/clarification: I’ve misstated Hans Kettering’s interest in local housing issues, as he wrote to let me know that he has decent housing and an amicable relationship with his landlord. As Hans further noted, “I was speaking for friends and people of the community that can’t find anything in Staunton at a reasonable price.” My apologies for my mistake.

Public housing faces multiple attacks

(Reading time: 5 minutes)

As far as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is concerned, March came in like a lion.

Starting in late February and continuing into this week, the federal agency responsible for most public housing fired off a volley of proposals guaranteed to make its tenants miserable. The timing, as the economy teeters on the edge of a downturn, affordable housing remains more mythical than real and the war on immigrants continues unabated, couldn’t be more heartless.

The first assault came Feb. 20, when HUD published a proposal to prohibit immigrants who are ineligible for housing assistance from living with family members who are eligible, as is the current policy. The ineligibility list includes immigrants who are otherwise in the U.S. legally, such as immigrants with student visas or those with Temporary Protected Status. Such mixed-status families currently receive prorated housing assistance that covers only the eligible members, which means the family as a whole pays proportionally higher rent than fully eligible families. If adopted, the proposal would force mixed-status families to separate or to leave their homes altogether.

A second shoe dropped just a week later, when HUD took steps to repeal a requirement that public housing agencies and private homeowners accepting vouchers provide their tenants with a 30-day notice before filing for eviction for non-payment of rent. The Feb. 26 announcement was designated an “Interim Final Rule,” which in a ready-fire-aim twist, means that despite a comment period that runs through April, the repeal will go into effect March 30. Although HUD’s notice acknowledges that the 30-day eviction notice “provided tenants with longer runways to undertake remedial actions to become current with their rent,” the agency contends that too many tenants simply took advantage of the additional time to go deeper into arrears.

Besides, HUD added, dropping the 30-day window will improve housing access by “opening up housing opportunities” for people on waitlists for affordable housing. Which fits right in with the Orwellian phrase, “War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.”

Consider the graph at the top of this page, which shows that a third of all evicted renters have incomes of less than $30,000 a year. Even at the top of that range, monthly rent of more than $750 pushes a tenant into the “rent burdened” category, which leaves little wiggle room for other necessary living expenses or emergencies. Falling behind on rent by even a month creates a nearly insurmountable financial hurdle for catching up.

But that’s not all. While an estimated 80,000 people would lose their housing assistance because of the mixed-status family rule change, and more than 2 million HUD-assisted households will be impacted by the loss of the 30-day eviction notice, an estimated 3.3 million would lose their rental assistance as a result of a March 2 proposal to impose work requirements and time limits on housing assistance. The estimate, based on an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, includes 1.7 million children who could lose their homes.

The proposed work requirement, long embraced by political conservatives who fret about welfare queens, would require “work eligible” adults to put in up to 40 hours a week at programs and projects that “address local needs and goals.” Failure to comply with work requirements would be grounds to terminate housing assistance. But potentially even more onerous is the proposal to allow PHAs and housing owners to establish two-year limits on housing assistance for non-elderly, non-disabled families.

All of these proposals are more nuanced than these brief summaries reflect, but the bottom line is that there are more than 10 million people in the United States who have a roof over their heads primarily because of federal rental assistance programs. Most people in HUD-assisted housing who can work do work: in Virginia, 81% of non-disabled people without young children worked in the past year, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. With the minimum wage in the state set at $12.41 an hour, and Virginia’s fair market rent for a two-bedroom home coming in at $1,749, it should be obvious why subsidized housing is the only way many state residents can have a roof over their heads. Now that’s at increased risk.

Nehemias Velez, executive director of the Staunton Redevelopment and Housing Authority, says he knows of no local families that will be threatened by the proposed mixed-status family proposal. The local effects of the other two proposals, however—not to mention other shots HUD might take in the weeks ahead at the people it ostensibly serves—remain to be seen. But it’s already quite clear that the fragile existence of people depending on federal tax dollars to survive is becoming ever more precarious. And as more of them inevitably get pushed out of their homes, it’s going to be up to municipalities like Staunton to pick up the pieces.

That’s not good. We’re not meeting current demand as it is, with long waiting lists at the housing authority, the Valley Mission and Valley Supportive Housing, so where will the new waves of suddenly homeless people go? How many more emergencies like the one we had in late January will it take before we get serious about developing an adequate supply of affordable housing, as well as providing sufficient transitional emergency shelter spaces to tide people over in the short term? Where is the political leadership we need to start beating the drum on these issues?