New housing committee to advise supervisors

The Henrico County Board of Supervisors soon will have an additional voice advising it upon housing matters, once the new Housing Advisory Committee meets for the first time this month.

The board created the committee during a January retreat and tasked it with providing feedback about housing issues, strategies and policies in the county. It will be purely advisory in nature and will have no decision-making ability, said Henrico County Housing Specialist Eric Leabough.

“They’re not going to be involved with day-to-day decision making,” Leabough said. “But if there’s a particular policy, let’s say we bring to them a particular challenge with the community and we recommend a policy change, we could run that policy change by them just to get their feedback and input.”

A key goal for the committee is to help the board conceive revitalization strategies for Henrico’s older communities, Leabough said. This includes thinking of ways to incentivize the private owners of those developments to redevelop their properties for the benefit of their residents, he said.

Other localities, such as Alexandria and Virginia Beach, have similar advisory bodies for housing, Leabough said.

The Henrico committee currently has nine members, with the tenth yet to be appointed. The goal was to get a broad cross-section of unique perspectives in the housing field, including from people in fields such as construction, homebuilding, residential development, realty, finance, and non-profits, Leabough said.

To that end, included as members of the Housing Advisory Committee are Allison Bogdanovic, executive director of Virginia Supportive Housing; Laura Lafayette, chief executive officer of The Richmond Association of Realtors; Josh Goldschmidt, president at Eagle Construction of Virginia; Bernard Rogers, vice president of real estate development for the Better Housing Coalition; and Brian Jackson, partner at Virginia-based law firm in Hirschler Fleischer, among others.

Establishment of the committee will allow direct and faster feedback from the housing industry to the county, Leabough said.

“We try to do the best that we can and we stay on top of trends, but these are folks that are going to be able to report trends and what they’re seeing in the marketplace much more quickly and communicate that back up,” Leabough said.

During the committee’s first meeting this month, planning staffers will inform committee members about the county’s ongoing zoning ordinance update process and seek feedback about implications on housing, Leabough said.

The committee is set to meet on a quarterly basis – its second meeting is planned for September – but the schedule is adjustable and additional meetings may be called if needed, Leabough said. Committee members will be compensated for each meeting they attend.

Leabough views the committee as one that is here to stay.

“I would hope that it would be long-term,” he said. “It’s the board’s prerogative. As long as they see benefit in the committee, it’ll exist, I would think. They wouldn’t create a committee just to try it out. I think that they see value in this committee and its role, so I would hope that it’ll be around for a long time.”

Fairfield District Supervisor Frank J. Thornton said that the committee would help Henrico meet its goals for housing needs as a county. The need for affordable housing and a citizenry that understands how to access existing housing services are key issues in the county, he said.