Todd R

Any conference road win is a good win! Mature players finding ways to win down the stretch.

Brand new, very wide street that is a primary east/west community route. Lots of families will use. Years between entitlement and construction. If ever there was an opportunity for a protected bike lane, this was it.

Infill is incremental growth. Just remove minimum parking requirements (which encourages bike/pedestrian), allow modest density, reduce setbacks and min lot sizes. It’s not a complicated set of proposals. Reverse the zoning ourselves into sprawl mentality.

If density is allowed then people will naturally live in areas conducive to bike/pedestrian/transport options. This is the type of infill that small developers can and will provide. Not in the national builder paradigm.

We worry wayyyyy too much about federal government policies and wall street investors when local governments have all the power to largely solve housing shortages and refuse to use it

Add smaller lot sizes, reduced setbacks and eliminated parking requirements and small investors will provide you with a lot of infill. Local builders cannot compete with national builders in the massively expensive and risky master planned rezoning process for new lots to build on

Questioning broad policy goals via anecdotes is endemic

It’s literally the antithesis of a Georgism taxation structure. Hey, let’s tax large landholdings of wealthy families less than a single family home or productive commercial building!

Total subsidies north of $15mm annually, very low % of state agricultural output, less than 5% of population receive the subsidy. Tax benefits already harvested via conservation easements.

A friendly reminder that land use taxation subsidy reform could be undertaken to provide 5-7 million dollars annually in County tax revenues to fund affordable housing initiatives (or other County budgetary priorities).

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Pro-housing reform is simple. Courage is required to face down well-heeled legacy homeowners.

They jealously guard “local control”.

Zoning reform, fast/predictable permitting and low fees. Supply friendly reforms that are long overdue. That is how you positively impact affordability without spending a dime of tax dollars

Also very ample objective evidence showing that permitting of higher end rental units in sunbelt cities like Austin are leading to double digit declines in Class C or the most affordable category of apartments. In markets with little supply those rents have risen

It’s frustrating how difficult it is to have elected officials to believe this as an effect of building higher end housing. It’s a latent distrust of the “trickle down” economic arguments.

And cities have to absolutely evaluate the full cost of “public” on street parking and charge accordingly. Most are afraid of angering legacy homeowners who have enjoyed free/subsidized street parking for long periods of time.

Glass half full view is that the Berkmar multi-use path Gets you very close to the airport from Rio on the west side.

It is nice to see analysis to quantify impacts. Informative and open to discussion using objective data and metrics. Thanks, Jim.

Severe median wage and median housing price mismatch

Lots and lots of forced car trips

The Waynesboro housing and retail renaissance is set to continue by housing the Charlottesville/Albemarle workforce.

Someone is making money off the highly inflated Cville land price market and excess wealth chasing those assets

As a builder, I can hire the same crew who is building in Waynesboro or Fluvanna. The crews just know that Alb is so high dollar they can make a lot more money by bidding higher there. All trades and services

These new construction house prices are almost exclusively a function of the price/availability, or lack thereof, in Alb Cty. Same building crews and same materials can be resourced identically in any of these surrounding counties

This is honestly hilarious when you think about it and how grossly dysfunctional the Albemarle land use and housing market is compared the the entirely of non-NOVA Virginia

My literal heroine! This is the local politics we need in all our communities to supply abundant housing. How students should be treated in a major university town and how housing is about “yes” where every single material project faces nimby opposition.

I suspect interest rates falling in an environment of flattish or slightly falling rents would still trigger supply so long as expenses and building costs are also seeing stabilization. Rates are the biggest lever

Small groups using well intentioned regulations such as architectural review and public engagement to block new housing systematically to the benefit of existing homeowners and landlords to the detriment or renters and entry level housing. Chapel Hill and Charlottesville college town model

The too wide sweeper excuse is cross jurisdictional haha. Maybe even universal