James City County is looking for people to serve on the inaugural board of directors overseeing an affordable housing trust.
Applications for the community land trust (CLT) board open in March. The Board of Supervisors will pick members by summer.
The trust separates owning a home from the land it’s on, which lowers the cost of homeownership. Buyers only pay the cost of “improvements” to the land, generally meaning the house built on it. The trust owns the land and extends renewable 90-year ground leases to homebuyers.
Simultaneously, homebuyers agree to cap the property’s resale price at an affordable level and set a percentage of appreciation that they can keep if they sell. A portion also goes to the trust to use for expenses or buying more houses or land.
The CLT will operate as an independent nonprofit. Though the Board of Supervisors is appointing the first board members, the portion of county-appointed members will be reduced to at most a third after the CLT gets started; one third will be homeowners in the trust and the final third will be county residents who don’t live in the trust.
The board structure is required for the trust to be designated a community housing development organization by federal and state governments. Recognition may take years but it will open up grant opportunities so that the trust relies less on local support. It will also be able to seek donations
The county will give the trust its first 47 homes, a community called "The Moores," which is expected to be finished by the end of 2027. The county will pay for the land and construction using money from a private developer and money collected across 25 years from the sale of affordable housing projects completed with a mix of federal, state and local funding.
The CLT model is an approach to preserving affordable housing stock for low-to-moderate income homebuyers with roots in the Civil Rights Movement. About 350 trusts now exist throughout the country, including five in Virginia.
Vaughn Poller, James City County neighborhood development administrator, believes that the model can be another “arrow in the quiver” to address affordable housing needs as home prices are surging. Property values grew by nearly 12% on average and median home sale prices at the end of 2025 surpassed $500,000, according to the Williamsburg Area Association of Realtors.
Higher home values and subsequent property tax bills, leave thousands of households struggling to keep up and prevent low-to-moderate income earners from buying.
Poller said in the fall that the CLT isn’t going to lead to “a tsunami or tidal wave of affordable housing.”
"It will be something that is measured and that is methodical."
Gillian Pressman with YIMBY Hampton Roads, an organization that advocates to address housing shortages and affordability, said CLTs are good ideas but only a Band-Aid. She believes the county needs to consider zoning changes and streamline the process for more multifamily homes to make a bigger impact.
“There is a dire shortage of housing and that is what is driving up rents and mortgages and home prices,” she said. “We’re really going to need aggressive building of all types of housing, including by government, including by market players.”
Doing so might be difficult. Residents can bristle at high-density and affordable developments, though Poller said in November that it’s not impossible when you consider the more dense New Town community.
“But that is the result of long, focused, comprehensive conversations that we had in the county before that was built,” he said. “If there were ever to be more of that, we’d have to go through that same process of having a focused, deep conversation with the public about what they would want to see; I don’t think it can be imposed from the outside.”
The county, however, may soon have its hand forced if bills in the General Assembly are successful. A bill requiring local governments to increase housing stock by 7.5% across five years starting in 2028, HB804, was sent to the Senate after approval by the House of Delegates in January. Another House-approved bill, HB816, makes localities allow multifamily homes and apartments in business and commercial areas without public hearings.
Both bills are under consideration in the Senate’s local government committee.
