New Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s first-year housing agenda delivered new money and new tools for affordable housing preservation, but it fell short on the package’s biggest supply-side proposal: a statewide push to allow multifamily housing by right in many commercially zoned areas.
A pair of bills would have required local zoning codes to allow multifamily and mixed-use residential development by right across broad swaths of commercially zoned land. Supporters said the approach could convert underused strip malls, parking lots and office corridors into thousands of apartments without case-by-case rezonings.
Both measures advanced through the House and Senate before stalling amid objections from local governments and some suburban lawmakers, who said the proposal would erode local control over land-use decisions and infrastructure planning.
The failure of the by-right proposal leaves Virginia’s housing affordability strategy weighted toward subsidies and preservation, even as the state’s affordable housing shortage is estimated at a minimum of 300,000 homes.
Preservation and subsidy measures move forward
Even without the zoning overhaul, lawmakers approved several parts of Spanberger’s housing package.
The General Assembly passed a right-of-first-refusal framework for subsidized affordable properties. The policy gives localities a chance to step in when properties are at risk of sale, allowing cities and counties to preserve existing affordable units rather than see them convert to market-rate housing.
Lawmakers also approved a revolving loan fund intended to support mixed-income developments.
They expanded the Virginia Eviction Reduction Program, directing additional funding toward keeping tenants housed.
Together with enabling legislation for local affordable housing programs, the measures provide local governments with more funding streams and administrative tools to support affordable housing efforts within existing zoning rules.
Local control concerns derail zoning rewrite
Virginia — particularly Northern Virginia across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. — has faced sustained housing cost pressures.
“As rent increases continue to outpace income growth, one in three households in Virginia is housing cost burdened,” the Virginia Housing Alliance said in a 2025 report.
Supporters of the by-right bills argued that Virginia’s strict separation of commercial and residential uses limits housing production in job-rich areas.
Opponents countered that a statewide mandate would impose a “one-size-fits-all” approach and constrain local decisions about roads, schools and utilities. Some suburban legislators also cited constituent concerns about traffic and school crowding.
Local officials in Arlington County and Alexandria raised concerns as well. Both jurisdictions have enacted local ordinances to allow more “missing middle” housing, and both have faced resident backlash and lawsuits.
By early March, the Senate effectively killed the House bill. With the session nearing its end, there was no clear path to revive the measure this year.
“Housing near jobs would have been the most impactful bill we could have passed on housing affordability,” Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg told a local radio station.
The Senate version was not taken up for a final vote in the House and was sent back to committee, leaving open the possibility that lawmakers revisit the issue in a later session.
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