Chesterfield joins national housing initiative to increase affordable housing supply

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) -- As the U.S. faces a housing crisis, Chesterfield County has been selected to participate in a national housing initiative, Counts for Housing Solutions (C4HS).

According to the county website, the program is from the National Association of Counties (NACo) and Smart Growth America, which aims to help urban counties increase the supply of affordable housing.

C4HS helps counties implement ideas from NACo's 2023 Housing Task Force to address the housing shortage. They aim to reduce rents and assist young and working-class families.

“It is a well-known fact that we, as a nation, are in a housing crisis,” said Clover Hill District Supervisor Jessica Schneider. “So, when I learned of this cohort, I reached out to our Community Enhancement Department. We all agreed that the time and effort would be well worth it, if it meant there was a chance to increase affordable, attainable housing opportunities in the county for our public sector workforce and young families.”

Over 12 weeks, the county will work to develop "underutilized, county-owned land as affordable housing," evaluate available land before partnering with developers and identify finance solutions for affordable housing development.

“We have identified some underutilized land that is owned by the county, which creates a great jumping off point toward making the housing development more affordable,” Schneider added. “Through this collaborative working group we hope to gain valuable insights and create a replicable ‘toolkit’ of sorts that we can use to develop this—as well as other surplus properties in the future—with regional partners. The deficit of affordable units is a bit overwhelming, when you consider that only 1% of vacant units are considered ‘affordable,’ but we must start somewhere and hopefully this program will get us headed in the right direction.”

For more information about the C4HS program, visit the NACo website.