Uncategorized – Page 2 – Looking askance

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?

Data center FOMO with a side of nuke

(Reading time: 7 minutes)

What’s going on with Staunton Crossing?

Fifteen years and tens of millions of dollars after it was first conceived, the 300-acre industrial park at the corner of I-80 and U.S. 250 has finally achieved Tier 4 status, which signifies it is ready to do business. Which raises the question: what now?

What kinds of businesses should be recruited for Staunton Crossing, and how will the city measure the project’s overall success? Should Staunton put more emphasis on job creation—or on increasing its tax base? How much disruption to its infrastructure and social fabric can the city tolerate, and what’s a fair trade-off for the jobs and tax dollars that result?

These and other issues were raised last week at a regular city council meeting in a rapid-fire presentation by Tim Davey, a professional engineer and director of economic development for the Timmons Group, which had created Staunton Crossing’s master plan by late 2018. “In the marketing world, six years is a long time,” he conceded Thursday, explaining why the plan should be updated. Seven-plus years is an even longer time, but Davey was not one to get bogged down in details, rushing through his remarks as if by doing so he could somehow turn back the clock. Along the way, he managed to toss a couple of hand grenades.

The most obvious casualty of time’s passage has been the master plan’s inclusion of a data center, an industry that was all the rage last decade but which has since lost much of its luster, and which dominated much of last week’s discussion. Just how much of a data center was being contemplated in 2018 is hard to tell from the documents produced at the time. Maps of the site allocated 831,250 square feet to a data center that Timmons projected would be built in the fifth year—which is to say, before now. Elsewhere, however, in a chart that includes water and sewer consumption, the data center was inexplicably reduced to 375,000 square feet, shrinking its hefty water needs below those of a light manufacturing plant. And water, as the master plan noted, is key: “Nothing else matters more than water.”

The intervening years have had other implications for the master plan, which includes a modest level of retail but a significant amount of office space among its target end-users—two categories, as pointed out by Mayor Michele Edwards, that have seen significant post-Covid shifts in demand. Such changes, in turn, affect bottom-line calculations about how many jobs and how many tax dollars Staunton Crossing might generate. Office space, for example, requires relatively little taxable capital investment but generates a lot of jobs when compared with light manufacturing, which requires more taxable spending on equipment and facilities but hires fewer people. Back when the master plan was first assembled, the outlook was for “3,000 quality jobs,” apparently considered a sufficiently high return on the many millions of state tax dollars lavished on the site in the name of job creation. But whether that’s still in the cards remains to be seen.

Data centers completely flip the calculus. Once such a center is built, typically by a transient workforce, its employee headcount is measured in dozens rather than hundreds. A data center’s potential boost to the city’s tax base, on the other hand, is enormous, thanks to its capital-intensive nature. In one sense, then, Staunton’s financial interests are at cross-purposes with Virginia’s, since state-funded land development allocated to a data center essentially transfers state capital to the city’s coffers—a nice offset for Staunton taxpayers, if not so great for the Staunton workforce.

A questionable transfer of tax dollars aside, data centers over the past decade have evolved in public perception from a relatively benign, low-impact and “clean” form of industry into power-guzzling, water-sucking vampires that can be noisy neighbors and a threat to local air quality, thanks to their reliance on diesel- and gas-fired emergency generators. With residential electricity rates climbing and water scarcity exacerbated by such developments, progressive Democrats are pushing a national moratorium on the construction of data centers nationally. A growing number of municipalities are following suit on a local level.

Despite all that, however, Tim Davey clearly believes that data centers should stay in the mix for Staunton Crossing—and not just a data center, but possibly an on-site electric plant to supply its energy needs, up to and including a “small” nuclear reactor.* Data centers and their associated energy sources are “things that people are asking about, and I’m not advocating for it, I’m just telling you that it’s just one of those things that people are asking about and you need to have an answer for that,” he counseled.

City councillor Corrie Park pushed back on such assertions, citing all the drawbacks associated with data centers and the resistance she has encountered from city residents on the subject. It would be “inefficient of us” to pursue a data center at this time because Staunton residents “won’t go for it,” she contended, a waste of time better spent going after more acceptable land uses. Davey, on the other hand, wasn’t having any of it, suggesting various work-arounds for some of the objections, offering for example that some data centers are using closed-loop cooling systems to reduce water consumption. And, of course, there was that whole nuke thing to avoid distorting local energy costs.

But the bottom line for Davey seemed to be . . . the bottom line. The Virginia boom in data centers will have run its course in another five years, he predicted, so it would be in Staunton’s best interests not to miss the gravy train. “I pose the question to my clients, do you want to be the only jurisdiction in Virginia without one, and the tax revenue that could come from it?” he asked the city council, leaning into fear-of-missing-out anxieties. “If the answer is yes, then that’s great—but the tax revenue is pretty impressive.”

What happens next is not clear. Davey’s presentation ended with several recommendations, starting with development of “a diverse, internal marketing team” and creation of “a target marketing portfolio,” which presumably would revisit the kinds of industries the city would try to recruit for Staunton Crossing. Yet the overall package smacks of a rush job staffed by insiders. There is no suggestion that public input would be sought—even for so weighty a subject as the desirability of having a “small nuke” within city limits—and the whole business plan refresh could be done within just 90 days, Davey assured the council.

Doubts about data centers aside, other questions about Staunton Crossing abound. For example, a key question raised by Davey on behalf of Staunton Crossing prospects is, “Where will my employees live?” To that, Davey replied, “I believe you guys are in a very good, healthy position to answer that,” which may come as news to the recently created Staunton Housing Commission and various local groups grappling with the inadequate supply of affordable housing—and all the more so if Staunton Crossing delivers on its promise of 3,000 new jobs. That’s a lot of fresh housing demand!

It’s also worth noting that whatever goes into Staunton Crossing, whether light manufacturing plants or a data center or both, will put additional demands on a water and sewer infrastructure that is already under stress. It’s ironic, therefore, that Davey’s presentation was immediately followed by a request to increase utility rates by 5% to 7% to pay for long overdue water and sewer improvements and maintenance. The increased amount, everyone agreed, will raise only a fraction of what’s actually needed.

There were no comments made at the public hearing on the rate increase, which was then approved.

*Once you’ve picked your jaw up off the floor and want to get the full context of the casual reference to nuclear reactors, you can find Davey’s comments here, starting at around the 54-minute mark. It should go without saying that any onsite power plant, nuclear or otherwise, would need additional coolant water.

Rethinking Staunton Crossing

(Reading time: 4 minutes)

Much of tomorrow’s (April 9) Staunton city council meeting, which starts at 7 p.m., will be focused on next year’s budget and proposed increases in utility fees, neither of which is insignificant. But an even weightier matter, because of its long-term repercussions, will be taken up by council members at their work session preceding the regular meeting, when they will be presented with a long overdue “business plan update” for Staunton Crossing. What’s unclear is whether the “update” will include a reexamination of what should be built on this rather expensive chunk of real estate.

For the uninitiated, Staunton Crossing is a 300-acre site at the intersection of I-81 and U.S. 250 that is readily identified by its million-gallon water storage tank, perched on a concrete pillar abutting the interstate. The city purchased this acreage back in 2009 and spent nearly a decade figuring out what to do with it. A comprehensive design was finally prepared by the end of 2018, and millions of dollars have been spent before and since to pave the way for . . . well, that’s the question. Because while this project inched along, the rest of the world was hurtling into a once unimaginable future.

Case in point: one of the four core businesses envisioned for Staunton Crossing was, and is, a data center of the sort that has exploded across the country generally, and in Virginia most notably—indeed, the state now leads the nation with 579 such centers. As originally designed, Staunton Crossing’s data center would total more than 800,000 square feet, far exceeding the square footage occupied by offices (375,000), retail (162,300) or advanced manufacturing (a paltry 13,000 square feet). Various alternative options were also advanced, but in all of them the data center component remained unchanged—and, apparently, unchallenged.

There are several problems with this, not so much because of bad planning but because what seemed reasonable in 2018 is at least questionable today. Less than a million square feet of data center space might have seemed ambitious eight years ago, but today it’s quite a bit on the small side. The proliferation of data centers, primarily in northern Virginia but in other parts of the state as well, not only makes the Staunton site unremarkable but puts the city at a disadvantage for an industry that tends toward clustering. Most significantly, the metastasizing and increased size of these centers has highlighted just how environmentally taxing and destructive they are, driving up electricity and water consumption—and rates—while threatening air quality with their reliance on fossil fuel generators for back-up power.

The precarious state of Staunton’s water supply has been widely chronicled, due both to the aging-out of its supply infrastructure and because of our repeated drought alerts. Local electricity rates, meanwhile, have started climbing after years of being noticeably below those of other states, with Dominion Energy’s overall prices growing 11.6% over the past year and the generation portion of its bill increasing 16.8% over the same period, largely due to rising demand from all those energy-sucking data crunchers. Over the next year, Dominion ratepayers can expect to see another rate hike of around $11 a month.

There are, in other words, so many red flags popping up around the data center explosion that state lawmakers are mulling a slew of proposed regulatory and legislative constraints, raising the possibility that they will make Virginia an increasingly unattractive option for the industry. The feeling in Staunton should be mutual, but whether tomorrow’s business plan update will go in that direction remains to be seen. One line in the power-point presentation prepared by the Timmons Group is suggestive: on the “Current Trends” slide, item 4 is “AI Site Elimination vs Site Selection.” My vote would be for the first half of that equation.

One final note, sparked by that same slide. No. 6 on the list of current trends is the perennial question, “Where will my employees live?” Ironically, the original discussion of what should go into Staunton Crossing included the possibility of workforce housing—a possibility that was inexplicably dropped, with no known record of the thinking behind the exclusion. Eight years later, that looks remarkably short-sighted.

Staunton council is in a tax squeeze

(Reading time: 8 minutes)

As Staunton wrestles with the math of trying to make revenues match expenses, its options are actually quite limited. Roughly one-fifth of its income comes from the state, while a quarter or so comes from a grab-bag of smaller taxes that can’t be pushed much higher, primarily the local sales tax, restaurant meals tax and lodging tax. But the biggest slice of the income pie, at just under half, comes from general property taxes, and by far the dominant segment of that category is real estate taxes. It’s therefore disconcerting to realize, after even a little analysis, just how self-defeating it is to pin our city’s fortunes on such an economically stupid way of raising money.

Not that Staunton, or any other city, has much choice. Real estate taxes are the one significant revenue tool left to municipalities by a state that reserves for itself the lion’s share of other taxes, such as taxes on income. Even with that, however, a city’s taxing ability is severely circumscribed by Virginia’s embrace of the Dillon rule, which essentially prevents any kind of municipal initiative that isn’t explicitly allowed by state law. The result is a rigid set of constraints that strangle innovation.

That’s too bad, because the way real estate taxes currently function has at least two hugely deleterious effects. One, as briefly explored in my post Sunday, is as a brake on Staunton’s ability to raise sufficient revenue to fix aging municipal infrastructure before it becomes unserviceable. The second is the way real estate taxes contribute to housing blight while simultaneously raising housing prices overall, making a significant contribution to the affordable housing crisis we’re currently experiencing.

To understand why that is, take a minute to consider how property taxes work. The rationale behind them is that the bulk of city services—roads, sewers, waterlines, fire protection and, to a significant extent, police protection—go to property, not people. And as the value of property rises, so too does the value of the services it receives, so the tax should increase accordingly. That seems straightforward enough, but here’s the question that tends to be overlooked: why does a property’s value increase?

Why, for example, does property in an urban core get valued more highly than in agricultural areas? As should be readily evident, a parcel’s value is highly dependent on what’s around it. You can buy a larger house on more land in a rural part of Augusta County for the same price you’ll pay for a smaller home on much less land in Newtown, largely because of the latter’s proximity to downtown and Gypsy Hill Park. Ready accessibility to shopping, recreation and cultural pursuits is worth a lot, as is not having to foot the bill for maintaining a well and septic system. A significant portion of land value, in other words, is collectively and publicly created.

Meanwhile, the value of what’s on that land also goes up as improvements are made, be it an addition, a renovated kitchen or bathrooms, new windows and doors or a new roof. As a result, the owner of a well-maintained home pays more tax than the owner of a poorly maintained house across the street, even though the city’s cost of maintaining a paved road and the utilities between them remains unchanged. In purely economic terms, therefore, a real estate tax provides a negative inducement for improving one’s property. A slumlord who neglects his property because he views it in cash-flow terms, not as a home that is building generational wealth, nevertheless profits from the improvements made by surrounding homeowners, who by their stewardship raise the value of all the properties in the area.

But that’s not all. When housing is in short supply, as is true in Staunton and most cities today, cheaper homes will appreciate faster than more expensive homes because of increased pricing pressure caused by unmet demand. In simple terms, a million-dollar home may appreciate only a couple of percentage points from one year to the next, while a home that a few years ago may have gone on the market for $150,000 will be listed today for nearly twice that amount, as anyone following Staunton’s real estate listings can attest. That makes real estate taxes extraordinarily regressive, with low-income people getting priced out of homes they can no longer afford because their market value has gone up even as their actual value, measured by their physical condition, has deteriorated.

For numbers nerds eager to explore this subject more deeply, the University of Chicago’s property tax project provides a granular analysis of the subject nationally, with a look at Staunton’s 2023 property tax rates and their regressivity available here. This is truly wonky territory, but the bottom line is this: Staunton three years ago ranked as the 45th least regressive of the 131 Virginia cities and counties in the project’s sample, as its home values were above average nationwide and regressivity levels were in the bottom quartile. So compared to others, Staunton has been fairer than most.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the data is three years old, and since then the city has seen a 14.45% increase in the median residential assessment. More to the point, pressure on the city to raise revenue is only going to increase as its infrastructure demands keep growing, but hiking real estate taxes—the one significant revenue source over which the city has any control—would fall most heavily on those who can afford it least. Is there no escape?

TO BE SURE, there are a few workarounds Virginia has made available to taxing localities, chiefly in the form of tax exemptions for low-income homeowners. But that approach, while individually helpful, must be seen as a limited patchwork that only underscores how unevenly real estate taxes are applied and doesn’t solve the bigger problem.

One theoretical, if politically unlikely, solution would be to make real estate taxes explicitly progressive, in the same way that income is taxed progressively—those who make more get taxed at a higher rate. Under that approach, homes appraised below a certain level would be taxed very little or not at all, while higher appraisals would be taxed at progressively higher rates. Instead of the current rate of 91 cents per $100 of assessed value, for example, Staunton could have a rate of 85 cents per hundred for homes assessed below the current median value of $251,240, then increase the rate by 5 cents for every additional $50,000 in assessed value, to a maximum of $1.35 per hundred dollars for homes assessed at $750,000 or more. Which, as it happens, is the tax rate in Alexandria, which is no stranger to homes in that price range.

Yet another approach, and one with some academic credentials, is to tax land but not the improvements—or as summarized by conservative economist Milton Friedman (yes, yet another University of Chicago reference point), “the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land.” That would at least eliminate the tax disincentive for investing in one’s property, even if it would not address the underlying problem of speculators benefiting from their neighbors’ investments. Moreover, a land value tax (LVT) instead of the common real estate tax would be a huge deal for small land developers and builders, who don’t have the political muscle to push for tax abatements or other incentives. That could make a major difference for a city like Staunton that is trying to incentivize in-fill projects.

The curious thing about our current real estate taxes is that we already assess land and any improvements on it separately—but then combine the two into one assessment to which a single tax rate is applied. Theoretically, then, it would be a simple matter to separate the two and tax land at a higher rate, determined by its development potential, while dramatically reducing the tax rate on improvements that have already been made. Theoretically. Whether that’s even possible under the state’s Dillon rule is, however, questionable.

None of the exposition above will make any difference this Thursday, when the city council will be formally presented with next year’s budget. But it should prompt our elected officials and their administration to question what the city can do long-term to ensure adequate funding of our infrastructure while also protecting our most economically precarious residents, because without that discussion we’ll just find ourselves in the same bind—but worse—a year from now, and for many years after that. That could mean pursuing one of the ideas above. It could mean something entirely different. Whatever it is, however, the real estate tax should be a leading candidate for reform, even if that requires an assault on the Dillon rule.

There’s thrifty—and there’s cheap

(Reading time: 6 minutes)

It’s crunch time for Staunton’s budget decision-makers, and for anyone looking at the big picture, it doesn’t look good.

Last year’s budget came with a 2-cent increase in the real estate tax rate, but even that small bump prompted some push-back from city council member Jeff Overholtzer, who worried about its impact on lower-income homeowners. So this year, perhaps wanting to avoid stiffer resistance, city manager Leslie Beauregard is holding the line on requesting a tax increase (well, except for a 10-cent-a-pack increase on cigarette sales taxes) and instead is looking to hike water, sewer and refuse fees. The proposed fee increases will raise the average household bill an estimated $7.41 a month.

That doesn’t come close to what’s actually needed, guaranteeing a much more expensive reckoning down the road.

To understand the financial sinkhole lying in front of us, it helps to think of Staunton as a 100-year-old house. It’s got great bones and period architectural details, but a lot of crucial maintenance has been deferred and it’s starting to show. With an actual house, that might mean a roof that’s been leaking long enough to create a mold problem, or plumbing that gets stressed every time the ancient furnace kicks in. With a city like Staunton, it means corroding water and sewer lines. A smart home-buyer who acquires such a vintage Victorian will budget anywhere from 5% to 10% of his purchase price, annually, to address the issues he’s inherited. Staunton, by contrast, puts aside just 1.8% of general fund revenues for its capital improvement plan (CIP).

Much of the CIP, it should be noted, goes not for maintenance of existing infrastructure but for expanding what’s already there, such as the $10 million projected for extension of water and sewer lines to Uniontown. But maintenance is hellishly expensive. Replacement of the existing water mains along Richmond Avenue, from Frontier Drive to Greenville Avenue, is expected to cost more than $13 million. Upgrading existing sewer lines will cost an estimated $7.5 million. And replacing the 16-inch mains that bring water into the city, now a hundred years old, will cost $42 million or so—$42 million that is carried in the budget as an “unfunded” expense. Which is to say, no one has figured out yet where that money will come from.

The $42 million “unfunded” expense aside, it’s not the least bit clear how Staunton will pay for any of the other infrastructure repairs just mentioned, nor additional millions in other needed maintenance. As the city manager forthrightly acknowledges, existing capital fund balances and projected inflows won’t come close to covering projected costs. Indeed, the fund used to pay for Staunton’s share of the regional landfill is “in danger of becoming insolvent,” while three needed positions in the public works department to properly service water and sewer operations have been frozen since 2023. (Although if they were ever thawed, good luck finding decent job applicants for a starting wage of just $17.37 an hour.)

Okay. That’s the expense side of the books. What about the income side? Why doesn’t Staunton have the income it needs to meet its expenses?

Part of the problem is that the city has a history of presenting itself as a low-tax, affordable place to live, unburdened by the socialist pretensions of its bigger brethren, which is why Staunton is so far behind the eight-ball in addressing its housing needs. Almost half of its revenue is from general property taxes, but despite some city residents feeling they’re already over-taxed, Staunton’s property tax rates—91 cents for real estate, $2.90 for personal property—are among the lowest among all of Virginia’s 38 cities. At the end of 2024, for example, Lexington had rates of 92 cents and $4.25, respectively, while Harrisonburg was at $1.10 and $3.45, and Winchester was at 83 cents and $4.80. Waynesboro, meanwhile, raised its real estate tax to 89 cents (from 77 cents!) at the same time Staunton bumped up its rate, but had a personal property tax rate of $3.25. Only five Virginia cities had lower personal property tax rates than Staunton last year, and until last year, only seven of them had lower real estate tax rates.

So purely on a comparative basis, Staunton has room to increase its property taxes, no matter how worrisome that may be for some. But Staunton is further hobbled by another conceit, which is not only that it’s a low-tax haven but that its utilities are self-supporting enterprises like those found in the private sector, such as Dominion Power or Columbia Gas. Indeed, as explained to city council in a presentation March 12, Staunton’s water, sewer and trash collection services are supposedly supported by user fees, not local tax dollars. “Revenues must be sufficient to operate the system and invest in infrastructure without relying on general tax dollars,” according to Staunton’s chief financial officer, Jessie Moyers.

Except, of course, that they’re obviously not.

A small but growing number of Staunton residents are waking up to the crisis that is building up around them, with the recently released 2026 American Community Survey showing a 9% decrease in public perception of “the overall quality of utility infrastructure,” matched by a 9% increase in respondents wanting to see the city give the issue a higher priority. But that concern is scarcely touched by the budget proposal now under consideration. While leaving the general fund and its CIP untouched on this issue, the 2027 budget nibbles around the edges of the infrastructure problem by proposing utility fee increases that will raise just $517,000 a year in additional revenue from water and sewer customers. At that rate, Staunton will accumulate enough money to replace those 16-inch mains by the year . . . 2107.

Not only do the proposed fee increases fall far short of what’s needed to maintain infrastructure without relying on tax dollars, but they’re so timid that if adopted, Staunton would still have the lowest utility rates around. A Staunton household using 9,000 gallons of water over two months, for example, would be billed $48.72, compared to $73.81 for a Waynesboro household and $76.53 in Augusta County. Similarly, the Staunton bill for 9,000 gallons of sewage would run to $67.20, compared with $119.20 in Waynesboro and $121.02 in the county.

Everybody loves a good bargain, but these are illusory savings—the equivalent of eating your seed corn. Whether the city council understands it’s being asked to kick a fiscal can down the road, with even more dire news awaiting future council members, may be evident this Thursday at city hall: the city council work session (open to the public) starts at 5:30 p.m. and will be followed by the regular meeting at 7 p.m. The 2027 budget and the proposed fee increases are on the agenda.

Next up: is there any way for cities to break out of their fiscal strait-jackets?

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?

A solid ‘A’ on Staunton’s report card

(Reading time: 5 minutes)

Staunton city council received its biannual report card this past week, giving council members every reason to feel downright chipper. But it’s not all wine and roses, and a couple of red flags popped up.

The report card was Staunton’s second National Community Survey (NCS), which every two years polls city residents on a wide range of topics about city services and quality of life. The survey also compares Staunton’s responses with those of more than 400 other cities that the NCS also surveys, as well as with a smaller subset of that group that more closely matches Staunton demographically. The good news? Staunton’s residents overwhelmingly feel good about their community, and in almost every instance give it higher marks than they did just two years ago. Moreover, Staunton residents rate their city as high or higher than their counterparts in the comparison groups, with only a couple of exceptions.

City residents should look at the survey results to draw their own conclusions, but there are a handful of findings I think are worth singling out. Most encouraging, perhaps, is the great increase in public confidence in city government after several new council members took office in 2024, ending a turbulent few years of contending factions on that governing body. As a result, more city residents think their government is honest, open and transparent, up 15%, and more of them believe their government is acting in their best interests and welcomes resident involvement, up 14%.

Although the great majority of responses were similar to those of two years ago—this year’s survey has a 95% level of confidence, but in its comparisons with 2024, the difference has to exceed 5.97% to be statistically significant—27 items had an upward trend and five ratings decreased. The drops, notably, included a 10% decline in ease of travel by public transportation and a 9% decrease in the overall quality of utility infrastructure. More about both those downturns in a moment.

In addition to overall trends, a key measure in the NCS survey is the gap between the quality of a service or resource and its importance to the respondent. In most cases the weights given to those measures are quite close to each other, but for the two most important categories, there’s a yawning chasm between importance and quality: the city’s economic health was rated at 94% for importance, but got only a 49% rating for quality—and that’s down from 53% two years ago. And the city’s utility infrastructure, rated at 92% for importance, was dinged at merely 57% for quality.

The economic health rating was consistent with the answers to other, similar questions. While Staunton got high marks for the quality of its business and service establishments and the vibrancy of its downtown, those rating its economic development as excellent or good declined to 47% from 51% in 2024—not statistically significant, but suggestive nonetheless. That response also dovetails with a remarkably low 15% replying positively to the question, “What impact, if any, do you think the economy will have on your family income in the next 6 months?” That’s down from 23% two years ago, and while it’s not a Staunton-specific question, it does attest to a broader anxiety that colors local perceptions.

Meanwhile, the gap between the importance of the city’s utility infrastructure and its quality points to two problems with this kind of survey. One is the lack of precision, leaving it up to the respondent to decide what “utility infrastructure” means: does that refer to city-owned and operated utilities, principally water and sewer? Or does it include utilities in the city that are non-municipal monopolies, such as gas and electric, over which the city has little control? The second problem is one of timing, which in this case might have influenced the answers of city residents who lost water shortly before the survey was conducted because of a massive main rupture—or who might have been disgruntled instead by a sudden spate of street closures due to work by Columbia Gas, which also occurred around the time of the survey.

In other words, are Staunton residents waking up to the long overdue need to upgrade a century-old water distribution system, or are they simply unhappy because of ill-timed work by a private utility?

Finally, no summary of high- or low-points would be complete without mention of two of its lowest-rated aspects: the availability of affordable quality housing, which came in at 23%, and the city’s care of its vulnerable residents, down from 44% last year to 38% now. No surprise there, albeit distressingly so. If there’s any silver lining, it’s that both those findings are similar to those of other cities—which only means that we’re no worse than anyplace else, although that’s hardly praiseworthy.

The bottom line, it’s fair to say, is that Staunton’s residents really, really like living here, they feel that the city government is working in everyone’s best interests, but they’re also economically anxious and unsure about the future. Sounds like a solid ‘A,’ but with room for improvement.

P.S. I said I’d get back to the decline in ease of travel by public transportation. That’s another of those questions that is clouded in ambiguity, but I’ll submit again the roundly ignored recommendation I’ve made before: after spending more than a million bucks on upgrading the BRITE Bus hub on Lewis Street, would it be a budget breaker to post maps and schedules on the bus shelters? “Ease of travel” begins with knowing where the buses go, and when.