Building more housing is the only way to make homes more affordable. Building housing with the right infrastructure would benefit everyone.
We’re all going to the Oak Bluff rezoning meeting tomorrow, right?
Housing prices in Crozet have increased significantly in the past 5 years. I’ve represented a lot of clients buying and selling in Crozet, Albemarle, and Charlottesville who have fought to be able to afford their homes. If we as a community want to have a community that is welcoming to grandparents coming to live with or near their kids and grandkids, or kids coming back to Crozet to live close to parents and grandparents, we need more housing — and I’d argue we need to prioritize non-single-family housing.
I have also had countless conversations with people unable to afford living in Crozet – or Central Virginia – because of home prices.
Society needs generational connectivity.
Seventeen percent of home buyers purchased a multi-generational home, the highest share in the data series. The top reasons for purchasing a multi-generational home were cost savings (36 percent), to take care of aging parents (25 percent), children over the age of 18 moving back home (21 percent), and children over the age of 18 who never left home (20 percent). – source
Limiting housing and housing choice/options by definition limits supply, and so long as Crozet remains desirable with more demand than supply, housing will should continue to appreciate.
Compare the numbers above with those of Albemarle County. For this type of conversation and post, I tend to pull current (2024), previous (2023) and pre-Covid (2019) data for context.
Crozet is a growth area, part of the 5% of Albemarle County that is the “growth area” (and the County lost potentially 3,000 homes when Biscuit Run died)
We need more housing (and businesses) in Crozet. We *also* need commensurate non-vehicular infrastructure, *and* we need people now to choose to walk and ride as often as possible – many of the neighborhoods east of Crozet Elementary absolutely could walk or ride to school rather than drive – and doing so would limit the morning and afternoon traffic we all complain about. (good reddit discussion on this, too).
There was a comment on the RealCrozetVA Facebook post that accompanied Michael Monaco’s post about rezoning, that ended with “Zoning and Land Use do not determine housing prices. The developer determines pricing to maximize profits in the context of market demand.”
Luckily, this thread popped up in my feed before I started researching a response: (bolding is mine)
The American Dream isn’t dead. It’s just been zoned out of existence. By simply allowing multi-family homes everywhere, we could: – Add 3-5 MILLION new homes – BOOST GDP by 2-3.5% – INCREASE median wages by 3-5% America’s biggest economic secret? Our zoning laws are CRUSHING economic growth. Single-family zoning is a silent killer of opportunity, innovation, and prosperity.
Right now, we have a MASSIVE housing shortage: 1.5-7.3 MILLION missing homes. Imagine entire CITIES worth of housing just… vanished. That’s our current reality. ? Legalizing multifamily homes = Economic SUPERCHARGE ? Potential economic impact: – $300-500 BILLION in new consumer spending – Reduced living costs – Better job markets – More innovation This isn’t just housing. – Young people can move where opportunities are – Entrepreneurs can take risks – Workers can follow better jobs
Related, with citations:
- Making housing affordable? The local effects of relaxing land-use regulation
- Upzoning Modestly Increases Housing Supply and Affordability, Study Says
