About three years ago, a housing study revealed about 1,000 housing units in James City County in “troubled condition — 82 of which were dilapidated and in need of repairs.
With the help of several state-funded programs, the county has gradually chipped away at fixing and replacing those dilapidated homes and making new ones available to low- and moderate-income families.
James City County is once again seeking to expand its reach to help rehab and resell those blighted properties.
The Board of Supervisors gave approval Tuesday for county staff to pursue grant funding under the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development’s Acquire, Renovate, and Sell program.
With the board’s blessing, county staff can now pursue $90,000 in state funding to tear down and rebuild two severely blight properties, Planning Director Paul Holt said. The county has not applied for or secured funding.
“These are houses that are not economically viable to renovate,” Holt said. “They’re dilapidated, as in, not one you’d normally, on average, find in OK or good shape.”
Under the program, the county would buy sub-par, undervalued housing and rebuild a new home in place for $45,000 per house. The homes can be vacant or foreclosed on, according to Board of Supervisors agenda documents.
Those two properties have not yet been selected, but they must be sold to people who meet income requirements — the household can’t make more than 80 percent of the 2019 area median income, which is $63,440.
Holt said about $300,000 in funding leftover from other similar housing projects aimed at creating low- to moderate-income housing can also be looped into the Acquire, Renovate, and Sell program.
“In terms of rehabs … that’s certainly a business we’ve been in for quite some time,” Holt said.
The county contracted the Housing Conditions Study, which published in 2016, to get information on where blighted houses were in the county.
“It came out with a lot of interesting findings,” Holt said. “There were a lot more structures out there that needed significant work on them.”
The study showed the most blighted or dilapidated housing was in the northern and southern parts of the county.
“In these instances, proximity to blight reduces property values and undermines James City County’s long-term fiscal strength,” the housing study reads.
The county’s 2035 Strategic Plan includes a goal to address those findings in the housing study.
Holt said there isn’t a timeline for any projects under the Acquire, Renovate, and Sell program because the county hasn’t applied for or received grant funds yet.
Typically, James City County staff stagger grant-funded home renovation and rebuild projects to avoid a substantial drain on staff time. The Acquire, Renovate, and Sell projects would be added to the mix if grant funding is secured.
Contractors would do the demolition and reconstruction. Those contractors will be chosen through the county’s typically public procurement process.
“You don’t want to do all of these at the same time,” Holt said. You can get some going, and once they’re up and going … you can start on the others.”
