Emerging solutions: What it takes to build affordable housing

Experts, incentives, philanthropists . . . and good will

Affordable housing can be built. 

It requires real estate lawyers, tax specialists, sociologists, investors, architects, funders and philanthropists. There is often an underpinning of subsidies, policies and targeted incentives involving local, state and federal government.

Affordable housing also requires markets and market players like architects, builders, management companies, landlords and real estate agents. Finally, affordable housing requires neighbors who are open to neighbors of different income levels. 

Social entrepreneurs like Molly Brooks of Hero’s Bridge in Warrenton and philanthropists like Chuck Akre, father of Rush River Commons in the Town of  Washington, brave the multiple obstacles to harvest solutions that are small but transformative for the families they benefit. The proposed Warrenton Village Center would build 386 new rental units along Broadview Avenue, but by making 10% of them affordable, would win flexibility on zoning permissions involving density. 

The various solutions to the affordable  housing conundrum start with one premise: markets alone aren’t solving the problem. Something extra is needed, whether it builds on government incentives or complex public-private collaboration. 

A comparison of median incomes and median home prices highlights the problem. Virginia Realtors, which represents 38,000 real estate agents in the state, studied households in the age bracket of 25 to 44. The median income was found to be $99,182, while the median home price of $382,725 requires a household income of $128,400. 

Realtor Alan Zuschlag of Washington Fine Properties sees “a perfect storm of economic phenomena” undercutting any sweeping solutions to the affordable housing dilemma. Construction costs have surged, due to higher prices for nearly all building materials and higher labor costs, factors that have led the Fed to fight inflation with higher interest rates, which push up mortgages, further raising the costs of buying a home. Add in more natural disasters, which drive up insurance costs, and the strain of finding a home within budget only worsens. 

“Eventually, we’ll build more to meet more demand from more people,” Zuschlag said.  

Windy Hill 

The Department of Housing and Urban Development defines affordable housing as costing no more than 30% of gross income for housing, including utilities. That more or less tracks the guidance that postwar parents told their adult children when they set out to find their first homes. 

When Virginians like Akre begin exploring housing solutions, they often study the Windy Hill Foundation, operating in Loudoun and Fauquier counties for four decades. 

Windy Hill began when a sense of shame rose up in a place of privilege. Affluent Middleburg harbored an underside: A small area of ramshackle homes where mostly African American retired farmworkers and low-income families scraped by, amidst outhouses, collapsing roofs and corpses of old cars. 

Irene “Rene” Llewellyn, an English-born Middleburg resident, raised the first $100,000 for an upgrade from her bridge club. Other residents jumped in. Soon, water and sewer lines were dug, and the dilapidated homes were replaced with safe, well-designed structures residents could afford.

In 1986, the Windy Hill project, and others like it, got a boost from the U.S.  Congress in the form of the federal low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC). The mechanism became the predominant federal program for advancing affordable housing, resulting in more than 3.5 million housing units since Congress acted. 

Windy Hill showed $11.4 million in assets in 2022, including $5.9 million in federal low-income tax-credits. Windy Hill now manages more than 300 units, spread across housing developments in Middleburg, The Plains and Marshall.  

Scaled-up enterprises

G. Kimball Hart, who steered Windy Hill’s expansion, is now the general partner of Good Works LP, a for-profit affordable housing developer. While residents of Good Works buildings need lower rents than are currently affordable on the market, Hart said, “everybody who lives in my projects works and pays rent.” Pointing to one Good Works development, Heronview in Sterling Va., he reported there are 104 jobs supporting the residents of 96 rental units. 

Hart also pointed out that Loudoun County has an advantage that Rappahannock, Culpeper and Warrenton lack – The Loudoun County Housing Trust Fund. Created in 1997 to promote and fund affordable housing, the trust takes in a small slice of residents’ property tax payments. In the current fiscal year, the fund has $37.3 million in available funds for affordable housing projects, including some that Good Works manages. 

“There’s nothing like this in the other counties,” Hart said. “That’s the problem.” Of course, Loudoun County is massively more populous than its neighboring counties. 

Small-scale community support 

The affordable housing challenge involves multiple approaches, and community-based small-scale support is clearly part of the mix. In Warrenton, Hero’s Bridge negotiates living arrangements for individual veterans threatened with homelessness.

Nearby in Bealeton, Community Touch intervenes with landlords to hammer out plans for staving off eviction of delinquent renters. In some cases,  financially strapped renters are assembled in group homes and coached on getting along in shared kitchens and living rooms.

In Rappahannock, long-time resident Hal Hunter matches elderly property owners who have outbuildings or extra space, with younger renters who have small incomes and can’t find any space. 

Jay Heroux, formerly a member of the Warrenton Town Council, gets involved in pushing for housing for low-income neighbors. “There are all sorts of things that people can do, but the foundation is that citizens of our communities have to ask themselves, ‘How do we want to treat each other?’ ”

Following are snapshots of three affordable housing projects, each with a different structure and approach, each facing its own complex challenges. 

Rappahannock | Rush River Commons built on philanthropy

Rappahannock’s first affordable housing project, Rush River Commons – part of a multi-use development– was born four years ago when resident Chuck Akre shifted his focus from running the immensely successful Akre Capital Management, to enlarging the reach of Fagus Foundation, his family philanthropic enterprise. 

Rush River Commons includes 18 apartments that will open to residents in the spring of 2025. Two of those will carry market rents, and the others will calibrate rents based on residents’ income. The project will include a cafe or restaurant and will house the Rappahannock Food Pantry, the county’s social services department and the nonprofit Rapp at Home.

The model is full philanthropy – no tax credits or investor groups. Akre isn’t going into the affordable housing business, and he isn’t looking to increase his family’s wealth. “This isn’t capital looking for a higher level of return,” he said. “This is capital looking to do something good for the community.”  

Akre already owned the 5.1 acre parcel on which the structures are going up.  He is also covering the costs of an unusually complicated construction plan. The buildings rise from wetlands and low-quality soil, requiring sophisticated engineering maneuvers. Absent Akre’s philanthropic safety net, these complexities would threaten to undercut the project’s objective – providing affordable rental housing. 

Before mapping the plans, Akre and his advisor Betsy Dietel studied Windy Hill’s experience and carried out a series of conversations in the community. 

“We had focus groups in the community – really listening lessons,” Akre said, “and we continued to hear the message that we were in bad shape on workforce affordable housing.” 

Akre added that “some said we had no problems,” but these weren’t the people who were combing the county for a home they could afford.

Asked what success will look like, Akre is clear: “Success is that the buildings are fully occupied and we’ve provided housing to some people – a mix of people – that they wouldn’t have had.”

— Tim Carrington

Fauquier | Hero’s Bridge Village: Solution or division?

In Warrenton, a senior housing proposal illustrates both the potential for creative housing solutions and the local discord it might ignite. 

Hero’s Bridge Village is a proposed 44-unit affordable housing community for senior veterans. The housing plan arises from a nonprofit organization serving a specific audience– elderly veterans. The project requires zoning changes, and some neighbors are uneasy.

“My hope is that it can be a place of peace and healing, and an example to the county that thoughtful, meaningful housing can be done within a small footprint,”said Molly Brooks, founder and chief executive officer of Hero’s Bridge. 

The village — a collaboration between Hero’s Bridge and the Warrenton United Methodist Church — is planned for a  5.2 acre U-shaped lot, in a neighborhood of single family detached homes. 

Hero’s Bridge would offer the senior veterans services, now difficult to deliver to older veterans who are dispersed and lacking transportation.  

“I never expected that housing would be the number two issue we would get calls about,” Brooks said. But since the 1980s, more veterans have found themselves at risk of homelessness, and the current housing squeeze makes it worse. 

“An entire generation of veterans are aging, it’s a difficult economy, and these are among the first people we should be welcoming and helping out,” said Warrenton Mayor Carter Nevill, a supporter of the project. 

But the plan has proved divisive. In October, long before any public hearings were held, shouting broke out at a Warrenton Town Council meeting between residents opposed to the village and council member Daivd McGuire, himself a veteran.

Some neighbors warned about traffic, density, property values and mental health problems veterans might have. At a Town Council meeting, Daryle Hawkins, a neighbor to the proposed village, demanded that  planners “find somewhere else.” 

While 84 opponents of the project have petitioned the Town Council to reject the necessary rezoning, a counter-petition from supporters, garnered more than 500 signatures. 

Brooks hopes the Warrenton Planning Commission will vote to approve the rezoning in June, and the Town Council in July. 

Hero’s Bridge then would turn to funding the idea. It has raised $1.7 million, including a $1 million grant within the federal spending package passed earlier this year. Brooks estimated Hero’s Bridge needs another $12 million.  

— Hunter Savery 

Culpeper | People Inc. has model for affordable rentals

Bryan Phipps, president of People Incorporated of Virginia, sees Culpeper as a place in deep need of more affordable rentals. 

In 2021, the nonprofit bought and rehabilitated Culpeper Crossing, a two-story apartment complex at 658 North East St., targeting households earning less than 60% of the area’s median income. Next, People Inc. is gearing up to break ground this summer on Lightfoot Apartments, near Culpeper Head Start at 1401 Old Fredericksburg Road. 

People Inc., which provides support for the economically disadvantaged, owns and operates 32 affordable housing developments in Virginia and Tennessee. Typically projects make use of federal tax credits, which reduce developers’ borrowing costs, thereby enabling them to charge lower rents. 

Phipps said that Culpeper County has rental units, but less than 1% of them are available, a vacancy rate far lower than the national level, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The short supply translates into higher prices for the apartments that are available, squeezing out lower-income families. 

Phipps said more people in Culpeper have nowhere to go, and without more affordable housing, homelessness rates will continue to climb.

The Lightfoot development will add 60 units. Meanwhile, Phipps said, a waiting list is forming for units in Culpeper Crossing.

Applicants aren’t always able to secure a lease. People Inc. reserves the right to reject an application if there is criminal history, a pattern of evictions or rent delinquency. 

Tony Hooper, longtime board member and current treasurer of Culpeper Housing and Shelter Services, said studies have shown that local zoning restrictions and a lack of sufficient density heavily contribute to the affordable housing problem. 

“It’s always difficult not only to find property,” Hooper said, “and then when you’ve identified potential property, there are issues of zoning.”

Andrew Hopewell, director of planning and community development for the Town of Culpeper, said with little room left to grow, the city hopes to loosen zoning restrictions and expand the utility of existing property, as with “accessory dwelling units,” which would include garage apartments and cottages.

— Ireland Hayes

About this project

Part One (Published March 14): A nationwide housing shortage brought down to the local level shows that homes are scarcer, costlier and more likely to be beyond the financial reach of teachers, health aides, elderly on fixed incomes and young adults.

Part Two (Published April 4): Community Voices: Across the three counties —Culpeper, Fauquier and Rappahannock — young families, elderly and underemployed residents tell how the housing squeeze left them cornered.  

Part Three (Published May 16): Emerging solutions show nonprofits, government and the private sector at work in a spirit of innovation and compassion in the three counties —Culpeper, Fauquier and Rappahannock. But the partnerships, financial arrangements and political approvals require commitment, carefully structured teams and patience. 

This three-county series is a Foothills Forum collaboration with journalists from the Piedmont Journalism Foundation, Fauquier Times, Culpeper Star-Exponent and the Rappahannock News.

The series is funded in part by a grant from the PATH Foundation. In compliance with Foothills Forum’s Gift Acceptance Guidelines, PATH had no role in the selection, preparation or pre-publication review of these stories. Nor did the Akre family’s Fagus Foundation, a major donor to Foothills Forum.