Polling shows Virginians’ top concern ahead of the 2026 legislative session is housing affordability. Industry advocates praised recent legislative success and asked for more solutions at a Virginia Housing Commission meeting this week.
According to a YouGov poll from August, 84% of Virginians want the legislature to make housing more affordable. Earlier reporting suggests rezoning efforts may make headlines but market conditions actually led to housing booms in states like Texas.
Andrew Clark is with the Home Builders Association of Virginia. He pointed to two recent changes he said should help Virginia’s housing market even if zoning reform comes later.
First? Low-income housing tax credits.
“The developers get tax credits awarded from Virginia Housing, those tax credits are then syndicated to investors who provide the upfront equity,” Clark told officials. “That’s the riskiest part of the deal.”
A 2021 bill from Senator Mamie Locke created Virginia's low-income tax credit system, and Clark said expansion of it approved in 2025 is already being utilized from Winchester to Norfolk.
And second? Allowing local economic development authorities to issue grants to finance affordable housing. This gives stakeholders flexibility to lower financing barriers, like funding tax abatement programs.
“As an incentive for that developer to set aside a certain number of units at a range of AMI set by the city, the city, through the EDA, will reimburse the incremental increase in tax revenue,” Clark said.
Richmond’s version of the program has been up and running since authorized legislatively 2023; 24 developments have since been approved, with over 2800 units for those under 80% AMI.
As for 2026? Clark hopes the state can do more to address one of new construction’s biggest costs: utility hookup fees. That money, as much as $40K per unit on multi-family homes, helps maintain existing utilities, but as systems age, localities and developers can’t bear the cost alone.
He’d also like to see more transparency at the state and local level on the permitting process - Clark said using that data could help build solutions to existing problems, and the data is already in public systems… just not in one place.
As for future zoning reforms, and the long-standing push and pull between local authority and legislative overreach, Clark said he hopes that conversation is broached eventually.
“Just as we set regulations and guardrails on developers when it comes to environmental protections, measures in the future could create a uniform, consistent set of rules for localities to use when reviewing these plans,” he said. “That would increase predictability and reduce risk.”
The 2026 legislative session starts in January.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
