Virginia is seeking to ease restrictions on manufactured housing, a part of a bid by Gov. Abigail Spanberger to deliver down housing prices.
Spanberger signed half a dozen payments Tuesday promising to deliver extra housing improvement within the state. That features a package deal that goals to ease improvement of manufactured housing communities and defend residents in these houses from charges.
Talking at a producing plant for Cavco in Rocky Mount, Spanberger defended the success of the housing affordability agenda that has led to a spate of latest legal guidelines and a set of government orders this 12 months.
“Virginia is taking concrete steps to deal with the housing disaster—increasing provide, defending tenants, rising transparency, and ensuring that manufactured housing has the identical standing below Virginia legislation as every other house,” Spanberger mentioned.
These authorized adjustments might have repercussions for the Virginia housing market. Median record costs within the commonwealth have climbed 34.4% since 2019, in accordance with knowledge from Realtor.com®. The Realtor.com State-by-State Housing Report Card gave Virginia a B- final 12 months.
Manufactured affordability push
The package deal of latest payments comprises a number of zoning and oversight provisions for manufactured housing. HB655 legalizes manufactured housing by-right statewide to all areas the place site-built housing is allowed. It additionally blocks zoning or land use restrictions that deal with manufactured housing otherwise from different houses.
Spanberger additionally signed HB1463, which makes it simpler to position new manufactured houses in legitimate parks. A 3rd invoice, HB374, is aimed toward blocking sudden charge will increase for homeowners of manufactured houses by requiring rental agreements to element charges and value will increase.
HB375 permits residents proper of first refusal to buy a park if the proprietor decides to promote. That permits residents to band collectively and work with nonprofits or authorities entities to buy the land.
The entire payments had bipartisan assist within the Home of Delegates.
“Zoning legal guidelines throughout Virginia have typically handled manufactured housing as one thing ‘lower than’—blocking it from neighborhoods the place conventional site-built houses have at all times been welcome,” Spanberger mentioned in an announcement. “This has left households with fewer choices and a housing market that doesn’t work for them.”
Spanberger additionally signed a legislation to create a brand new revolving-loan fund to spur mixed-income housing manufacturing. HB196 locations it below the Division of Housing and Group Growth and Virginia Housing Growth Authority. The 2-year program should incentivize building or rehabilitation of low- and moderate-income residences.
A ultimate invoice, HB356, requires extra annual reporting on housing coverage adjustments by localities with populations over 3,500.
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Tristan Navera is a senior reporter on housing coverage, overlaying tendencies and options within the housing market from Washington, DC. He was beforehand a senior reporter at Bloomberg Regulation, and earlier than that lined actual property for the Washington Enterprise Journal. Earlier in his profession, he spent a decade reporting on enterprise and actual property in Dayton and Columbus, OH. A Cincinnati native, he holds a journalism diploma from Ohio College.
