Housing in Virginia

As with the rest of the United States and much of the western world, Virginia has an extreme crisis regarding housing affordability and availability.

Those most likely to be affected by the lack in affordable housing, a Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) study found, were renters, with low incomes, that live in urban centers, and work in common and essential occupations.

[3] Larger apartment buildings are the second-largest group of houses to have been constructed in the past decade, only behind single-family homes.

In 2020, more than three-quarters of all new homes in the Blackburg-Christiansburg area were apartments, most likely due to an influx of graduates from Virginia Tech and Radford University.

A joint study by Virginia Housing and the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) found that for every home built in an urban core of a small or rural city, more than three single-family homes were built in suburbs.

[9] Similar to apartments, lots of townhouses have been built in the Blackburg-Christiansburg area due to an influx of graduates from schools such as Virginia Tech and Radford University.

[13] Restrictive zoning has only added fuel to the fire, blocking lower-cost starter homes from being built with methods such as long permit processes and large minimum lot requirements.