2023 Budget Amendments: Support these Studies & Model Policies
Friday, January 20th, 2023
Item 114 #36h (Delegate Carr)/Item 118 #1s (Senator Ebbin): $500,000 ($200,000) for DHCD to conduct a comprehensive statewide housing needs assessment every five years.
- By regularly assessing Virginia’s housing needs, the Commonwealth will be well equipped to develop a statewide plan to meet the demand for housing.
Item 114 #1h (Delegate Maldonado)/Item 163 #1s (Senator Favola): $150,000 to study real estate practices depleting our affordable housing supply.
- Directs DHCD to work with George Mason’s Center for Real Estate Entrepreneurship to study factors that contribute to the inability to preserve and strengthen affordable housing, such as house “flipping”, real estate “wholesalers” and how to combat such practices.
Item 114 #3h (Delegate Bennett-Parker): $150,000 to provide data on how Virginia Housing Trust Fund dollars are deployed.
- This budget amendment will support one FTE at DHCD to collect data on Virginia Housing Trust Funded projects to measure whether those projects disproportionately benefit one or more groups of residents to the exclusion of other groups of residents who are members of protected classes
Item 53 #1h (Delegate Lopez): $35,000 to study the establishment of a right to counsel for indigent tenants in eviction cases.
- The National Center for State Courts will review case outcomes for represented versus unrepresented tenants in eviction cases, the number of attorneys needed to provide representation to indigent tenants, how much it would cost to provide representation, and how a right to counsel might reduce the burden on courts.
Item 369 #2h (Delegate Hayes)/114 #5s (Senator Locke): Creates a model criminal history screening policy.
- Requires housing providers receiving state funding from the Virginia Housing Trust Fund or the Affordable Housing Tax Credit to use a Model Criminal History Screening Policy made available to them by DHCD.
- This model policy will ensure that state subsidized properties are using a criminal records screening policy that is narrowly tailored and does not exclude tenants with minor or old criminal offenses.