In a landlocked city with only 50 square miles and a growing population, Lynchburg city staff and area nonprofits are planning how to shape the city’s affordable housing landscape and hope to present the city’s elected leaders with an array of options for the future.
The current affordable housing statistics in Lynchburg paint a picture of a situation in need of change.
According to a presentation from Kent White, the city’s director of community development, as of November, the City of Lynchburg has 5,995 households in the city earning 50% or less of the area median income, while 3,655 of those households make less than 30% of the area median income.
According to 2020 Census data, Lynchburg’s median household income is $49,201.
In a city with 5,495 affordable housing units, only 1,410 of those units are occupied by households in the appropriate income tier. The rest of the units are occupied by individuals not in the appropriate income tier, leaving a gap of 4,585 households in need of affordable housing in the city, according to White’s presentation.
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The city has 1,914 housing units specifically dedicated as low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) properties, which was a program started in 1986 to encourage the development of affordable rental housing by providing owners a federal income tax credit.
The time period that these units remain at affordable rates is 30 years, and in Lynchburg, 524 units are at risk in the next 10 years of potentially shifting to market rate housing, which would take more affordable housing units off the market, White said.
Mary Mayrose, executive director for the Lynchburg Redevelopment & Housing Authority, said the current affordable housing market is approaching a “soon-to-be-crisis” situation.
“I don’t believe we’re at crisis level yet,” Mayrose said in a recent interview. “But what this means, is that if people do not have affordable places to live, they leave, they quit their jobs, they become homeless, they have to bunk up with whoever they can. So we have overcrowded housing, and overcrowded housing leads to severe crisis in the community. It can all kind of snowball into bigger issues.”
Mayrose said her organization has two primary ways of providing affordable housing to residents in Lynchburg.
The first, called the housing choice voucher program, is a program where families are provided the option to seek housing anywhere within a 25-mile radius of the city.
Once the family finds a place that meets the guidelines, the housing authority enters a contract with the owner, and the family will pay 30% of its income to the landlord while the housing authority covers the rest.
When the housing choice voucher program was launched in Lynchburg in March 2021, Mayrose said the application was open for five days, and the authority received more than 1,200 applications.
“During that time, we have been withdrawing names, pulling names off, determining eligibility, and issuing vouchers on a fairly consistent basis. We have, right now, probably 50 families out looking for housing now,” Mayrose said.
The housing authority’s other avenue of providing affordable housing, its public housing program, operates under more of a landlord-tenant style of management, as the authority owns and operates four apartment complexes in the city. Those complexes are Dearington Hills, Brookside Apartments, Birchwood Apartments and Langview Apartments.
Mayrose said there are about 1,800 families on the public housing waitlist.
In August, Mayrose announced the housing authority will demolish and rebuild the Dearington Hills apartments, likely in three phases.
“We are going to increase the opportunities for new families — part of that 4,500 — we plan to address an additional 242 families with affordable housing opportunities,” Mayrose said.
She said the first phase likely will include demolishing about 45 units and replacing them with 80 brand new units.
“Just taking a bite at the elephant here. It’s a really big one, but it’s really significant for the community, for the families living there, and it’s really significant for the families we have on our waitlist.”
In the housing choice voucher programs, only families making 60% of the area median income can be accepted into the program. For the public housing program, Mayrose said families making up to 80% of the area median income can be accepted.
Mayrose said many starting salaries in the area keep families stuck in the income band between 60 and 80% of the area median income.
“Starting teachers, certified nursing assistants, starting police officer salaries; you’ll see some professions, because there is no affordable housing for that income band, they are paying more than 50% of their income on rent, or whatever their housing is,” Mayrose said.
“Sixty percent and below is part time, no benefits. Sixty to eighty percent is working full time with very little benefits, but still working poor.”
This makes it very difficult for young families to get a head start, Mayrose said, entrenching them in a cycle of being forced to pay more for rent and less for other necessities.
Mayrose said the biggest misconception about affordable housing is the reputation it receives from many outsiders.
“People will have a perception of public housing that may be negative — not realistic, but negative,” she said.
“But when you look at the data for the families living in our public housing, it’s like 60% of them are full-time working. I think it’s like 9% that are on any sort of welfare; and lots of families with children.”
With the need for more affordable housing citywide, Lynchburg city staff and housing organizations, through the city’s housing collaborative, have been focusing on ways to provide city council with more “tools,” White said, to address home ownership and affordable rentals in the Hill City.
The city’s housing collaborative is a group of nine representatives of important area organizations that deal in housing. The organizations are: Cardinal Civil Resources, First National Bank, Hansen Realty, City of Lynchburg, Lynchburg Redevelopment & Housing Authority, Miriam’s House, Rush Homes, University of Lynchburg and Habitat for Humanity.
‘Concentrating poverty’
Not only is building quality affordable housing units an issue, but the potential locations of affordable housing developments also have come into question, with one nonprofit leader saying the city’s current supply is too concentrated.
“It’s not unique to Lynchburg, but certainly it is a problem, is that a majority of our affordable housing is really concentrated,” Sarah Quarantotto, executive director for Miriam’s House, said in a recent interview.
Miriam’s House is a Lynchburg nonprofit that works to eradicate homelessness citywide. The organization also provides transitional housing for members of the community in need.
“What that means is that we’re concentrating poverty. And concentrating poverty has really bad results. It results in higher increases in crime, less economic opportunity for families, often less access to basic needs like grocery stores, things like that,” Quarantotto said.
“The best way to deconcentrate poverty is to deconcentrate affordable housing.”
One way some localities are working on this is through inclusionary zoning, which White said promotes the use of mixed-income housing by requiring or encouraging developers to set a certain number of housing units aside in new or rehabilitated projects for low- and moderate-income residents.
According to the Inclusionary Housing database, five Virginia localities have adopted forms of inclusionary zoning: Alexandria, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Loudoun County and Virginia Beach.
While these developments often include affordable housing, they also can be built for workforce housing, which creates housing opportunities for teachers, first responders, nurses or other essential personnel, White said.
What inclusionary zoning does is allow households access to affordable housing options in neighborhoods where it might not exist already, opening up a world of economic opportunities for the individuals living there, Quarantotto said.
White said while it “does not mean we are going to run out and do this,” it is just another option that city staff and the housing collaborative have discussed as an option to address the lack of affordable housing units.
Covering the gap
Another major tool that city staff is looking to offer council is a housing trust fund, a program that has been launched in a few other Virginia localities in recent years.
White said the program is mainly about gap financing, which covers whatever the difference might be in the costs of paying for housing developments that provide affordable options.
“They offset the developers cost to keep the unit affordable,” White said about the program.
But that’s only one way the program works. White said the money could be used to incentivize the creation of single-family homes as well, not just for affordable rental units.
In recent months, as developments for apartments, townhomes and duplexes have come before council, some councilors have expressed their desire to see more single-family home developments instead of rental developments.
Just one of the many examples of how this tool could be used, White said, is since single-family housing developments typically do not bring in as much return for developers, the program could incentivize single-family development by covering the difference of what a developer would make if they built an apartment complex instead.
As a whole, the housing trust fund would give council flexibility in how the money is disbursed, with no limitations on where the money can be spent. The money comes from several different places, such as private funding, grants, local or state money, and additional federal dollars.
Not only would this help developers, but it also would help the residents of these by creating more access to housing outside of lower income census tracts, White said.
In 2019, the housing collaborative presented a housing stability study to council, White said, and city staff followed it up with recommendations to improve housing affordability in Lynchburg.
Similar to a recent ordinance the city passed about derelict houses, staff continues to want to give as many options as possible to city council as it works together to address the housing situation in Lynchburg.
The city also has a real estate rehabilitation and renovation program as another tool, which Anna Bentson, the city’s acting public information officer and assistant director for economic development, said freezes the assessment at the lower rate for 10 years if the property is approved in the program.
White said city staff will begin working on updating Lynchburg’s comprehensive plan, which he said is the city’s guide for land use, in 2023. The last comprehensive plan was approved in January 2014, and the document is updated every 10 years, White said.
Bentson said the city’s comprehensive plan is more about “where and what” the development will be, as opposed to “how much” potential units could cost.
Three new councilors will take the dais in January — Martin Misjuns, Stephanie Reed and Larry Taylor. They will replace outgoing incumbents Treney Tweedy and Beau Wright and fill the vacant seat of recently retired Randy Nelson.
“We’ll really kind of hear council’s voice in what their housing strategy looks like right away,” White said about the incoming city council’s upcoming task.
While the ultimate decision regarding housing will likely end up in the hands of council, both White and Bentson said staff will continue to present options to council to put in their “toolbox” for housing.
In the meantime, White said they will continue to work on ways to preserve the current affordable housing options while making sure potential development has services by infrastructure, such as water and sewer.
“In an ideal world, we want housing spread out throughout the community, and we want it connected through services,” White said.
Mayrose believes that’s important as well, to ensure everyone has the same opportunities.
“Say it’s a single mom, she wants to live in a place where her children can ride a bicycle. She wants some place where she wants to go outside at 7 o’clock at night in the summer and say, ‘Y’all need to come home,’ because they’ve been out playing with their friends. We all want the same thing.”
“I don’t believe we’re at crisis level yet. But what this means, is that if people do not have affordable places to live, they leave, they quit their jobs, they become homeless, they have to bunk up with whoever they can. ...”
— Mary Mayrose, executive director for the Lynchburg Redevelopment & Housing Authority