Jersey-based Fortune 500 human-resources firm Automatic Data Processing (ADP) recently invested more than $32 million to locate an office with 1,800 employ- ees, rents are prohibitive for some workers. With the average renter in Norfolk earning about $33,000 a year “not many of those people … can afford to live downtown where rents are very high,” says Ed Ware, director of communications for the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority. While developers are trying
to meet the burgeoning demand for affordable rental housing, Ware says, it takes time to obtain permits, financing and tax credits.
Rents triple in trendy district Downtown Richmond also
is drawing more residents. “We’re seeing a lot of people moving back into the city, moving into parts of the city … where people haven’t lived since the mid-1900s,” says Lee Downey, director of Rich- mond’s Department of Economic and Community Development. In the popular Scott’s Addi-
tion area, not far from downtown, residential rents have more than tripled over the past decade to as much as $1,700 for a two- bedroom apartment. In the city’s recently released
North of Broad/Downtown Redevelopment Project, it has included a “meaningful” mixed- income housing component as a requirement in a request for proposals from developers. The 20-acre project also calls for replacing the 47-year-old Rich- mond Coliseum as well as build- ing a new convention center hotel and a bus-transfer plaza. “We want to make sure that
our teachers and our firefighters, the working class, that they can have an opportunity to live in the city that they work in,” says Downey. The city wants to see a full slate of housing options in
Photo by Shandell Taylor
www.VirginiaBusiness.com VIRGINIA BUSINESS 55
the project, ranging from subsi- dized, low-income apartments to workforce-priced homes for sale. City planners and developers
have largely been unprepared for the influx of millennials. “People were a little bit asleep at the wheel in terms of demographics shifts … and the rate at which [millennial migration] has been increasing has caught people off guard,” says Daniel Parolek, principal of Opticos Design Inc., a Berkeley, Calif.-based architecture and urban design firm.
Not keeping pace A majority of millennials,
who now outnumber baby boom- ers, want to live in walkable, urban environments, but developers aren’t building affordable housing fast enough to keep pace with demand, he adds. In 2010 Parolek coined the phrase “the missing middle.” It describes the type of workforce-priced housing that
has been largely absent from cities for the past several decades. Such housing is particularly sought by older millennials who may be starting families and who may be forced to consider a move to the suburbs or to less-expensive cities if they can’t find available housing stock at an affordable price. American planning and
zoning policies since the 1950s have been successful at enabling the development of single-family housing projects and high-density multifamily apartment buildings, Parolek says. Yet, they haven’t prioritized the construction of “missing middle” options such as duplexes, triplexes, courtyard apartments, town houses and live/ work/play communities. Faced with increased demand
for affordable housing, cities and developers now must meet this need with creative options, Parolek adds, including a mix of for-sale and rental properties
More people are moving into Scott’s Addition near downtown Richmond, an area where many old buildings have been renovated and rents have more than tripled over the past decade. The Preserve at Scott’s Addition is one of the new apartment projects.
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