Board of County Supervisors Meeting - Feb 04, 2025

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Prince William County Board of Supervisors 2h 40m 5 speakers 6 agenda items transcribed 1 day ago official recording ↗

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What affordable‑housing challenges does the county face and why are new units needed?

Deshundra Jefferson 0:00

We want to create communities where anyone can live. If they want to live in a particular community, they should be able to find some place that's affordable to them. And so affordable housing and providing more affordable housing. You know, as part of the development that's coming to the county is really, really important for that purpose. We are already actually let me take a step back. So when I started working for the county almost a year ago, You know, I actually used to live in Prince William County a number of years ago. Um several years before I, you know, started working here in the county. And you know, at that time Prince William County had a reputation of being, you know, relative to you know across the DC region, one of the more v more affordable places where you can find a home.

Deshundra Jefferson 0:43

But when I started my job uh almost a year ago, one of the things that I heard right away was Prince William County is becoming is becoming more too expensive that there are residents or employees who work here who are s moving to Stafford County or other counties because they can't afford to find a place or they they can't find a place here that they can afford. And so that was actually really surprising to me. Um, that Prince William County was now facing those same type of pressures, and so that really highlighted, you know, the importance of making sure that this county can have more units, more you know, homes, more apartments, what have you, whatever type of home a resident wants, that they can find a place that they can afford so that they can stay here um rather than having to move outside of the county in order to find a place within their budget.

Deshundra Jefferson 1:37

And Joni, can you tell us a little bit more about what your department does and how people can find out about the services that you offer?

Joni (Unknown) 1:44

I can tell you a lot about our department and what we do. How much time do I have? Um we have a very robust housing program. We have an amazing staff. We offer um not only housing assistance but other affordable housing options. Um we have our largest federal uh program that is funded is our housing choice voucher program. You may um have heard of it as Section 8. Um so we have um A lot of vouchers. We have a lot of voucher programs that we use, special vouchers that um serve Uh all of our programs serve our very low, low and moderate income households in our community. Um our special vouchers assist elderly, disabled, our veterans. So we work really hard to try to meet the needs of all the people in the community.

Joni (Unknown) 2:38

We also have state vouchers. Our state vouchers are also for a special population and they allow us to have both tenant-based and project-based housing. for uh persons in the community. We also administer through Northern Virginia Regional Commission our voucher program for persons with AIDS so that we are trying we are meeting the housing needs of of all the people that we possibly can. Um we also in our community development department um uh we uh administer program uh very robust also is our neighborhood housing rehabilitation program. Where that helps us to help people to stay in their homes. Um, our average rehabilitation project is a hundred and twenty-two thousand. It uh promotes health, safety, it also assists with ADA um modifications, um energy efficiency so that people that are of low and moderate income that cannot afford to make those rehabilitation items on their home can through our programs is for owner occupied.

Joni (Unknown) 3:51

We also assist our first time homebuyers. Um, this is a program very dear to my heart. We um assist down payment and closing for low and moderate income families. Our average assistance is a hundred and four thousand. That her her household to help build these communities and have that affordable housing and that stability for families. We were very fortunate, I know I asked for more money and I actually got more money this year. For our Virginia, we uh are allocated funding through the Virginia Housing Authority and um that money helps with lower interest rates for first trust financing.