Local governments across the region in recent times have been taking action – some more aggressively than others – to allow for more, and often more dense, housing to be built in what typically have been single-family neighborhoods.
Having uncorked that genie, it may be difficult to put it back in the bottle (unless current court cases challenging actions by local governments do the trick). But recent action by a General Assembly committee suggests that localities’ overlords in Richmond aren’t quite willing to embrace free-for-all zoning commonwealth-wide.
The Senate Committee on Local Government on Jan. 29 punted into 2025 a proposal from Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg (D-Richmond) that would have permitted residential development in a host of non-residential zoning categories where it currently is forbidden, including commercial and industrial.
Only land zoned agricultural or in a conservation district would be strictly off-limits under the proposal – SB 430 – which also mandates that at least 10 percent of the total number of housing units in such a development would be dedicated for households earning 120 percent of area median income or below.
In Northern Virginia, Arlington’s elected officials led the way on so-called Missing Middle housing policies, essentially throwing out single-family zoning to promote more dense development. Alexandria is following in its wake; both localities are facing court challenges on the matter.
Other local jurisdictions are moving, albeit in a more circumspect way, to consider the matter.
The VanValkenburg measure is unrelated to those policy shifts, which only apply to residentially zoned parcels. But its introduction seems unlikely to have pleased local governments, whose leaders often go apoplectic (sometimes privately, sometimes publicly) when the General Assembly dictates land-use policy at the local level.
The vote to “continue” the measure to the 2025 session was approved on a 15-0 committee vote. Sometimes in such circumstances, bills are quietly killed off in the months preceding the next session, while other times they are taken up for consideration in due course.
VanValkenburg, who sits on the local-government committee in the Senate, voted with the rest to consign his measure to a year’s political purgatory.
