RICHMOND, Va. - Richmond City Council joined Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney during Monday's City Council meeting in declaring a housing crisis in Richmond.
It's an issue of both affordability and availability.
According to the declaration, the shortage of homes for sale or rent in Virginia is more than 165,000.
In Richmond, there's a shortage of just over 23,000 homes for sale or rent to meet the city's affordable housing needs.
There was concern from the public about outside buyers and investors exacerbating the problem.
Charles Willis, an active community voice and advocate in the city, spoke of rental units in the 6th district where he said people once paid $800 a month but new owners took over and monthly rent went up to as much as $1,400.
"It's my understanding they have a right to do that. So, in Richmond, we believe that there are housing or landlord gurus, and cartels that are coming into our city. They're taking advantage of our citizens," Willis said.
A few actions to alleviate the crisis, outlined in the declaration, include more advocacy for certain legislative reforms in the General Assembly.
The city has a goal of creating 1,000 new affordable rental units every year and 2,000 new homeownership opportunities for low-income residents by 2030.
It also called for the creation of an affordable housing commission to bring together public, private, and philanthropic leadership around the issue.
Among actions already taken include the Affordable Housing Trust Fund developing or preserving nearly 1100 affordable housing units between 2015 and 2021 and $10 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding resulting in 1,000 new affordable rental units.
Another $10 million in ARPA funding for housing efforts is still to come. In his budget proposal, Mayor Stoney also proposed a $50 million bond program over a five-year period to address the crisis.
Councilwoman Katherine Jordan said in addition to long-term solutions and strategies there is an action that could be taken more immediately like cracking down on short-term rentals.
"Those are housing units that could be put back online immediately. We need code enforcement; we need folks who know that they're not doing the right thing to step back and put those units back into our housing. Any added housing helps all of the housing in the city, because what happens is you have out-of-state and local owners coming in buying up rentals, jacking up the rent, or evicting the people who are renting and then turning them into short-term rentals illegally. So, I would love to see enhanced code enforcement on that issue," Jordan said.
According to the declaration, the city's Eviction Diversion Program has prevented 1,500 evictions since 2019 but a recent report by the RVA Eviction Lab says 87% of evictions in Richmond are being filed by out-of-state LLCs and just 15 landlords are responsible for more than half of all evictions.
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