Governor Spanberger, Please Keep Your Housing Promise
The time for action is now...
I’m a law student at UVA. I pay $1,800 a month in rent, not counting utilities, and that’s with a roommate.
That’s what life is like in Charlottesville in 2026.
I interviewed Governor Spanberger here during the campaign. She told me lowering costs for Virginians was a priority. I believed her then, and I still do. That’s why I’m writing this.
The average rent for an apartment in Charlottesville is now over $2,100 a month. 73% of Virginians say the state does not have enough affordable homes to rent or buy. When asked their top concern, 37% listed housing costs first, ahead of inflation and ahead of healthcare. Half of rural Virginians say they are worried about housing costs, too.
The legislature passed several important housing bills this session that would actually do something about this. Governor Spanberger has signed one of them, legalizing manufactured housing statewide. That’s real. But the two most consequential housing supply bills she was sent, SB 388 and HB 888, are still sitting on her desk. She has until April 13 to sign them. Here’s why she should.
Let Churches Build
Virginia’s faith communities own more than 74,000 acres across roughly 22,000 parcels statewide. A lot of that land sits in communities that desperately need affordable housing. Churches want to use it. Local land use laws stop them.
Right now, a church that wants to build affordable housing on its own property has to go through a full rezoning process: public hearings, lawyers, months or years of delay, with no guarantee of approval. The Church of the Holy Apostles in Virginia Beach had a large property on a bus line and wanted to build affordable housing. The obstacles were so overwhelming that they gave up and sold the land instead.
In the middle of a housing crisis, the law is stopping houses of worship from trying to help solve it.
SB 388 and HB 1279, the Faith in Housing Act, fix this. The bills allow by-right development on land owned by tax-exempt religious organizations and nonprofits. No special exceptions, no special use permits, no rezoning, no endless discretionary review.
This is not a blank check. At least 60% of units must be affordable housing and must stay that way for at least 50 years. Projects still follow local height limits, historic district rules, and environmental standards. The only thing being removed is the ability to drag churches through an approval gauntlet because a few neighbors don’t want new housing nearby. There is no good reason to veto this legislation.
Stop Forcing Developers to Build Parking Nobody Needs
Almost all Virginia localities require developers to build a fixed number of parking spaces for every housing unit, whether anyone needs them or not. A surface parking spot costs around $5,000 to build. A structured space can run up to $50,000. Add land acquisition on top of that.
All of it gets passed directly to renters and buyers. Near transit, where many residents don’t own cars, parking requirements are especially damaging. They inflate the cost of every unit before a single person moves in.
HB 888 requires localities near transit and affordable housing to approve at least a 20% reduction in parking requirements. Less mandatory parking means lower construction costs, more units on the same footprint, and more supply. This is basic housing economics.
The Pushback
Local governments are fighting these bills. Their argument is local control. But we already have complete local control over housing, and it has been a disaster. The absurd anti-housing policies of local governments are what got us into this mess in the first place. The fact that they are fighting bills this sensible tells you exactly why they should have less say.
If they were going to fix this, they would have done it by now. They haven’t. If the state doesn’t step in, this problem doesn’t get solved, and the campaign promise of doing everything possible to bring down housing costs turns out to have been empty.
The Deadline Is April 13
Governor Spanberger has taken affordability in other areas seriously. She cracked down on pharmacy benefit managers. She passed free tax filing. She has streamlined the permitting process for transmission lines. In housing, she deserves credit for working to reform permitting and signing the manufactured housing bill. For a state that spent the last four years vetoing housing reform, that’s a meaningful shift, and she deserves credit for it.
But SB 388 and HB 888 are not signed. Those are the two bills that would actually move the needle on housing supply in a serious way. Faith communities in Virginia are ready to build. Developers are ready to stop paying for parking nobody needs. Both bills are sitting on her desk right now.
She has until April 13 to say yes to progress on this serious issue. I dearly hope she does.
If you agree with this article, please tell Spanberger to sign these bills at this link:
NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) has been a problem since communities began to gel into a certain type of housing - homogenizing the area into a 'birds of a feather' composition.
I agree that the fear of loss of property value has some importance, but if the community planning aspect of government is done properly, then that wouldn't be a problem. As you can guess, that process is a late comer to local government. This means many communities are already 'set' as stand-alone housing. Breaking into this preset structure would be better accepted if the multiple unit housing is incorporated into the 'feel' of the existing community.
Good luck on this needed change in today's world. [I had no idea you were just over mountain from me! Very interesting. ]
Those parking requirements are a terrible waste of space – and not just in Virginia.
We're still suffering from echoes of the 1950s mindset which persuaded families that their lives were incomplete without a house with a two car garage in a barren subdivision located an hour away from workplaces and beyond easy walking distance from shopping and healthcare.
Better and safer public transit needs to be a part of any higher density housing so that people feel less need to have cars in the first place. Pardon my rant, but since the end of WWII it seems like we've been prioritizing cars over people when it comes to use of space.