Glenn Youngkin Says NIMBY Regulations Are Making Virginia an Impossibly Expensive Place To LiveThe governor blamed local restrictions on new development for the state's rapidly rising rents and home prices.
CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI
8.19.2022
Today, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin took a surprising YIMBY-inflected ("yes in my backyard") swipe at restrictive development regulations that he says are making the state increasingly unwelcoming for renters and homebuyers.
"The cost to rent or buy a home is too expensive," said the governor in a wide-ranging speech before the Virginia Senate's Joint Money Committee today. "We must tackle root causes behind this supply and demand mismatch; unnecessary regulations, overburdensome and inefficient local governments, restrictive zoning policies, and an ideology of fighting tooth and nail against any new development."
The state of Virginia is short roughly 105,000 homes, according to a recent study from the housing advocacy group Up For Growth. Another report commissioned by the state government found that while the state's population had expanded by over 10 percent since 2008, housing supply had only expanded by 8.7 percent.
For fast-expanding regions like the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., that's meant skyrocketing rents and home prices. The median home price in Arlington County, Virginia, is $836,806 according to the Zillow Home Value Index. That's up from $667,000 in 2017.
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Source:
https://reason.com/2022/08/19/glenn-youngkin-says-nimby-regulations-are-making-virginia-an-impossibly-expensive-place-to-live/