THE PROBLEM
Most of Virginia’s urban counties are running housing permit shortages against measured household growth where it matters most for the state’s workforce.
Between 2010 and 2024, Loudoun fell 6,949 units short of net new households. Prince William: 11,053 short. Richmond city: 6,891. Alexandria: 3,373. Chesapeake: 3,242. Virginia Beach: 3,176. Newport News: 2,065. Hampton: 1,870. Chesterfield, Henrico’s direct neighbor, ran a 1,697-unit shortage. These are the localities where Virginia’s economic dynamism concentrates and where the supply gap is widest.
The statewide surplus survives at all only because a smaller number of counties are issuing permits that are keeping up with new household formations.
THE OUTLIER
Henrico County stands out from its peers because it is aggressively issuing permits to tackle housing affordability.
Between 2011 and 2024, Henrico approved 21,286 residential building permits. Across the same window, the county added 12,696 net new households. The permit-to-household ratio: 1.68. The statewide rate: 1.26. Henrico is permitting at 33% above the state average.
Virginia is barely net-positive on housing. Henrico, with 4% of the state’s population, produced 39% of Virginia’s surplus.
THE MECHANISM
Henrico’s data outlier status did not happen by accident. The county built four deliberate policies:
1. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund
In May 2024, the Henrico Board of Supervisors created a $60M Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The Trust Fund is seeded by tax revenue from Henrico’s data centers to generate into subsidies for attainable homeownership.
The fund underwrites land cost reductions, sewer-connection-fee relief, and other regulatory offsets for developers who build for buyers earning 60 to 120% of Area Median Income. The five-year goal is to create 750 attainable homes.
Four projects are already in motion. Parkside Townes in Varina opened in August 2025. The Crossings at Mulberry in Fairfield opened in May 2025. Quioccasin Road Townhouses in Tuckahoe, now selling. Pemberton Row broke ground in September 2025 with U.S. Senator Mark Warner attending.
2. R-5B Zoning
Behind the Trust Fund sits a parallel zoning innovation. Henrico’s R-5B General Residence District allows lots as small as 3,000 square feet at densities up to 10 dwelling units per acre.
3. The 2025-2030 Consolidated Community Development Plan
In July 2025, the Board adopted a 2025-2030 Consolidated Community Development Plan with twelve formal goals that channels federal HUD block grant resources through a single integrated housing strategy. The county would channel resources towards preventing homelessness, preserving affordable housing, and supporting special-needs populations.
4. HenricoNext
HenricoNext, the comprehensive plan now in development for the 2045 horizon, goes further. It explicitly studies the connection between non-residential development and housing demand by occupation and industry. In effect, Henrico is treating workforce housing as an economic-development input rather than a downstream consequence.
On January 1, 2026, Cari Tretina, formerly Henrico’s Chief of Staff and Deputy County Manager, became Executive Director of the Henrico Economic Development Authority. Her stated priority pipeline includes the redevelopment of the 93-acre former Best Products headquarters site near the I-95/I-295 interchange.
THE EVIDENCE
Those four policies translate into measurable outcomes across three categories of evidence: workforce conditions, real-estate transactions, and household affordability.
Henrico boasts a well-educated workforce, with nearly half the workforce population holding a bachelor’s degree or higher (over 10% higher than the national average) and an unemployment rate of 3.1%, below both Virginia’s rate and the national rate.
Henrico County GIS records 75,817 residential property transactions between January 2000 and April 2026.
Monthly transaction volume held above pre-pandemic levels through 2025. Median sales price climbed from roughly $200,000 in 2020 to roughly $390,000 by late 2025, a 95% lift in 5.5 years, and has held in the $375,000 to $405,000 band through April 2026.
The transaction record reveals the layered character of Henrico’s housing stock. Single-family homes account for 71% of the 26-year transaction window, townhouses 12%, condos 8%. The age distribution is the most telling part: roughly 31,000 transacted homes were built between 1950 and 1989, while 12,757 were built between 2000 and 2009, and 12,304 since 2010.
Roughly 1 in 5 Henrico home sales in 2025 was new construction. That is the highest mark in the available record, climbing from 12% in 2016. A sustained 18-20% new-construction share is the transaction-side signature of a market where permits are flowing and builders are absorbing them.
Among Henrico homeowners, 22% are cost-burdened, outperforming the Virginia state average of 25%. The typical Henrico mortgage costs the median household 29% of its income, right at the traditional lender front-end qualification threshold.
Renters carry a much steeper cost-burden rate of 52%, slightly above the state’s 48%. That is the housing-market pressure the multi-family permit surge and the Trust Fund pipeline are sized to relieve. The 1,548 multi-family unit permits issued in 2022 and 1,805 in 2023 will translate into deliverable rental supply over the next 24 to 36 months.
APPLICABLE USES FOR OTHER JURISDICTIONS
The Affordable Housing Trust Fund is replicable. Any Virginia jurisdiction with material revenue sources can adapt the funding structure. So can any locality with another sustained corporate tax base willing to underwrite the gap between AMI households and market-rate prices.
R-5B-style zoning, or even denser zoning, is replicable. Any planning department willing to stand up a small-lot, higher-density residential category can produce the structural shift Henrico produced.
A 5 year HUD-aligned consolidated plan is replicable. Every Virginia locality already files one, but few use it as the integrating spine for housing strategy the way Henrico has. The HenricoNext approach to treating workforce housing as an economic-development input is a unique template jurisdictions in the Commonwealth can incorporate into their plans to attract jobs.
Henrico is a leading contributor to the statewide housing supply push. The Commonwealth is barely net-positive on issuing housing permits. Henrico accounts for 39% of the surplus. Take Henrico out of the equation and Virginia loses two-fifths of its supply margin.
SOURCES
- Esri, Inc. (2025). 2025/2030 Updated Demographics. Esri Demographics, June 2025 release.
- U.S. Census Bureau. (2024). American Community Survey, 2023 Five-Year Estimates, Tables B25070 and B25091.
- U.S. Census Bureau. (2024). Building Permits Survey, 2011–2024 county-level series.
- U.S. Census Bureau, in coordination with the National Association of Home Builders. Survey of Construction, completion rate benchmark.
- Henrico County, Virginia. (2024). Affordable Housing Trust Fund
- Henrico County Board of Supervisors. (2025, July). 2025–2030 Consolidated Community Development Plan.
- Henrico County. (2026). HenricoNext / Henrico 2045 Comprehensive Plan.
- Henrico County Zoning Code, R-5B General Residence District provisions.
- Henrico County. (2025, September 8). Warner joins Henrico officials, local housing leaders to announce new development under Affordable Housing Trust Fund [official news release].
- Virginia Public Media (VPM News). (2025, September 11). Henrico County breaks ground on new affordable housing development.
- Richmond BizSense. (2025, September 10). 20-unit townhome project moving forward on Quioccasin with assist from housing trust fund.
- Henrico Citizen. (2025, September). Warner’s visit to affordable housing groundbreaking spotlights Henrico as innovative, national model.
