Affordable or attainable housing: Can you find it in Loudoun?

By Laura Longley

These days, we hear a lot about Loudoun’s lack of affordable homes, although most area residents would be hard pressed to tell you what that means and to whom it matters.

Just to clarify: “affordable” and “attainable” in housing lingo are not the same thing.

“Affordable housing is subsidized housing,” Erin Shine, founder of AttainableHome.com explains. “Typically, the subsidies come from the government and are designed to make homes affordable to those on low incomes.

“Attainable housing is housing that is affordable to households earning around the Area Median Income (AMI). Households living in attainable housing and earning between 80 percent and 120 percent of the AMI should not need to spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs.”

Translate those percentages into dollars. In Loudoun, the AMI is $99,700. With that income, you might be able to buy a house at $720,000—the median sold price in Loudoun in March—especially if you’re half of a two-income couple. But what about next year with home prices trending up 7.3 percent year-over-year?

Now what’s the likelihood that your average young teacher, middle-aged police officer, or senior citizen can swing a home purchase or even rent here? What kind of help, if any, can they expect when they make too much for government-subsidized affordable housing programs but not enough to buy or rent an “attainable” house, condo, or apartment.

Let’s look at a few people who fit the profiles.

A licensed teacher would start in the Loudoun County Public Schools in 2024 at a salary just under $56,000. Let’s say she’s single with no dependents and not widowed or divorced. She’d like to live alone, as a “one-person household,” in a one-bedroom rental apartment. Her LCPS income, however, would put her outside the $29,900 – $49,850 range of eligibility for Loudoun’s Affordable Dwelling Unit Rental Program as published on the loudoun.gov website’s ADU Pre-Screening Questionnaire chart. Therefore, she could not apply for an ADU one-bedroom renting for $630 to $1,170 in one of the nine complexes currently listed on the site—seven in Ashburn, one in Sterling, and one in Dulles. There are none listed with a western Loudoun location.

She’ll need to go shopping to spend no more than the federal government-recommended 30 percent of her income on housing. On her $56,000 yearly salary, she can afford $1,400 per month in rent. But the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Loudoun County is $1,993 based on a survey of 30 rental listings conducted by Hello Data, Inc. and last updated on April 27. That’s nearly $600, or 42 percent, over her budget.

Particularly sad to see are senior citizens heading for the exit because they can no longer manage the property taxes or stretch their Social Security payments and savings to stay.

Take the senior citizen who moved to western Loudoun in the early ‘90s, before AOL and data centers, to work as a manager for a local contractor. He bought a ramshackle historic house at a bargain price for his wife, himself, and two children. He fixed it up and lived there happily, all the while dutifully paying taxes to help build more and more schools in the east. The only physical improvement to the structure since he sold it is a $25,000 HVAC system.

The house just went on the market for $650,000. He recently learned that he and his wife would qualify for Loudoun’s ADU Purchase Program based on income. Their combined fixed income is between the guidelines of $34,200, or 30 percent of the median for a two-person household, and $79,750 (70 percent). But they could not afford a down payment of even 10 percent—$65,000—or prequalify for the mortgage loan amount, which is a requirement for Loudoun County’s ADU Purchase Program. So, they will continue renting a small house on a farm in Clarke County.

These are the kinds of people who would—or did—live in Loudoun County but just can’t swing it without help or changes that make homes more “attainable.”

What, if anything, is being done to help them?

The Board of Supervisors and county staff talk about “affordable housing,” but strictly speaking, they’ve homed in on “attainable housing” and “the missing middle.” As staff pointed out in the supervisors’ Strategic Initiatives Work Plan of 2018 “the missing middle” includes “a range of housing types that lie between the expensive housing monocultures of single- family detached homes on large lots and large-scale, luxury apartments. Typical missing middle housing types include the duplex, triplex, fourplex, courtyard apartment, bungalow court, townhouse, multiplex, live-work units, and accessory dwelling units.”

The report recognized “the importance of supporting a vibrant economy by providing housing that is affordable to households with incomes below 100 percent of the area median income (AMI) and particularly below 60 percent AMI, in the County.”

To address this and other housing issues, the Board of Supervisors adopted the Unmet Housing Needs Strategic Plan (UHNSF) in September 2021. Its housing goal is to ensure that people who want to live and work in Loudoun can access housing they can afford. The UHNSP sets annual goals for attainable housing of 20 percent, or 8,200 units of the total forecasted new homes (40,950) by 2040 and affordable access to an additional 7,800 for a total of 16,000 attainable housing opportunities.

The county has already implemented a new Rental Housing Acquisition and Preservation Loan Program with a funding award to support the acquisition of 102 market affordable units that will become rent-restricted affordable housing for 30 years.

Additionally, since 2017, the county has been implementing an Affordable Multi-Family Rental Housing Loan Program that has provided over $25 million in gap financing to support Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) rental communities. The Board of Supervisors also has committed to providing an amount equal to one-half penny of the real property tax rate to support affordable housing in the county, or approximately $6 million. Plus, several new positions have been created to support the fair housing goals of the UHNSP.

Zoning is a huge factor in the county’s ability to add moderate- and low-income homes. As part of the UHNSP implementation, Loudoun County is undergoing a wholesale zoning ordinance rewrite. One piece of the zoning ordinance rewrite aims to improve the county’s inclusionary zoning program as well as to make other changes that could encourage more affordable and attainable housing.

Loudoun’s plan is now part of a Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Regional Fair Housing Plan that was developed with seven other member governments. Loudoun’s partners are the District of Columbia; the City of Alexandria, Arlington County, Fairfax County, and Prince William County in Virginia; and the City of Gaithersburg and Montgomery County in Maryland.

Among the top five barriers to fair housing in the region are (1) lack of affordability, (2) government failure (government inability to address the issue), (3) racial discrimination
(4) lack of housing stock, and (5) lack of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility.

The team identified the following top five solutions: (1) more programs and staff with culture and language competency, (2) creation of accessible housing for persons with disabilities, (3) creation of accessible housing grants, (4) improved building code, zoning, and planning regulations, and (5) more navigation support (i.e., housing counseling).

The final plan will be the subject of a Board of Supervisors Public Hearing by July 2023.

May 15, 2023: This article has been updated to reflect a minimum income of $29,900 and a maximum income of $49,850 for a one-person household to be eligible to participate in the Loudoun County Affordable Dwelling Unit Rental Program as published on the loudoun.gov website’s ADU Pre-Screening Questionnaire chart. A similar questionnaire and chart with different income eligibility brackets is also available there for the ADU Purchase Program.