RICHMOND, Va. — Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Friday revealed a plan that he said will increase affordable and accessible housing across Virginia. He called it the “Make Virginia Home” Plan.
"For far too long, Virginians have faced unnecessary burdens that have limited their housing options and opportunities. Today’s plan is a needed step to improve housing options and keeps my commitment to lower the cost of living and make Virginia the best place to live, work, and raise a family,” Gov. Youngkin said.
The plan focuses on three key areas—increasing the supply of land for housing, removing regulatory barriers to housing development and align housing development with economic growth.
Here's a closer look at the key areas.
Increasing the supply of land for housing
- Create reasonable linkages between discretionary state grant funding to localities and local policies and actions that encourage housing growth through executive action or statute
- Establish guard rails for zoning/land use review processes that include deadlines by which localities must act, and consequences if they do not, for localities seeking state assistance to increase the growth of their economies
- Create transparency by requiring localities to report on their policies and actions that impact housing development
- Investigate comprehensive reforms of Virginia’s land use and zoning laws
Remove regulatory barriers to housing development
- Provide a more efficient way for public and private economic development and infrastructure projects to meet mandated wetlands and stream mitigation requirements in a way that does not jeopardize the quality of that mitigation by working to operationalize Virginia’s existing Wetland and Stream Replacement Fund.
- Continue to improve and streamline environmental permitting processes.
- Translate Virginia’s building regulations into Spanish
- Investigate potential procedural changes in the building code adoption process that balances technical code provisions more closely with construction cost controls.
Align housing development with economic growth
- Housing is prominently included in the Commonwealth’s economic development planning and site development process.
- Establish public/private partnerships with site selectors early on to include workforce housing in the site development and selection process.
Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick said, "This plan will align housing development with economic growth as part of our site development process and we will engage with site selectors earlier in the recruitment process on housing to ensure workforce housing needs are addressed."
