Many of the houses on Proescher Street in Norfolk’s Olde Huntersville are more than 100 years old. But nestled among the homes that predate the first world war, there are a couple brand new ones.
They don’t stick out, but a second look makes clear that they’re new. The gray clapboard exteriors popular in current home construction set them apart from the yellow and white vinyl surrounding them.
Less than two years ago, these were empty lots with minimal prospects, owned by the city in a neighborhood that has struggled with neglect and some of the city’s lowest property values.
But Norfolk’s started offloading unused parcels of land in neighborhoods around the city – specifically to get more homes built to help ease the city’s housing crunch.
Since 2022, Norfolk has sold 43 properties through the program, primarily narrow lots between existing houses. They’ve gone to businesses, builders and even some individuals. All buyers agree to build homes on those lots within a couple years.
“In many of these neighborhoods, they’re looking sort of like missing teeth in a neighborhood, so it's really kind of threading the streets back together,” said Susan Perry, who heads Norfolk’s office of Housing and Community Development.
If the empty lots are missing teeth, Proescher Street just about has a whole new smile.
Two houses have already been finished and a third on the same block is under construction. Other houses in around the corner and in bordering neighborhoods are also underway, and the new builds are valued at nearly twice the existing homes around them.
The success of the auction program’s initial rollout means there will be many more coming.
This week, city staff got the nod from City Council to add nearly 400 more properties owned by Norfolk’s housing authority to the auction list.
Perry’s office is also working with other city departments to make larger lots available in future auction rounds, rather than just the narrow ones between existing houses they’ve mostly marketed so far.
The hope is to attract small multi-family developments like duplexes or apartment buildings of up to eight units that housing experts call “missing middle” housing.
“It still flows very well in a neighborhood, but would provide additional housing opportunities for residents,” Perry said.
Zoning often prevents the construction of missing middle housing, though Perry’s office has been working on that in Norfolk as well. The city established a housing trust fund last year as another way to spur development, though it's still working out how to fund it.
A 2021 state study cited a shortage of 200,000 affordable housing units in Virginia, and Hampton Roads has felt the impacts as property values have exploded and rents have skyrocketed.
“I think that residents have been loud and clear that there needs to be more housing in Norfolk and it needs to be affordable and at a variety of price points,” Perry said.
Many housing advocates say building more housing is the best way to tackle the affordability crisis at large, though Norfolk’s own housing study released earlier this year found rents haven’t dropped in the city even as thousands of new rental units come online.
Beyond the benefits it could provide residents and the larger market, Norfolk’s effort to boost the stock of housing also aims to help the city’s bottom line.
The program is taking unused city parcels that Norfolk had to maintain and passes the responsibility to private developers. That translates to more annual property taxes, plus the money earned from selling the land in the first place.
And more and more, government officials are talking about what Perry calls “housing as economic development.”
“When (Norfolk’s economic development office) is attempting to bring businesses into the community, they want to know that there are places for their employees to live,” Perry said. “So as we develop great housing projects, great neighborhoods, that only then makes Norfolk more marketable for economic development, to be able to retain and attract those businesses.”
That same sentiment was hoisted high at the state level last week, when Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced an executive order to put $75 million into efforts to build workforce housing in conjunction with business development around the state.
