SPORTS: Regional playoffs are underway in all sports, complete brackets, stories. PAGES 10, 11, 14. May 22, 2024
Our 207th year | Vol. 207, No. 21 | www.Fauquier.com | $2.00 VIRGINIA PRESS ASSOCIATION: BEST SMALL NEWSPAPER IN VIRGINIA 2017-2023
Emerging solutions: What it takes to build affordable housing Experts, incentives, philanthropists ... and goodwill By Tim Carrington For Foothills Forum
Affordable housing can be built. It requires real estate lawyers, tax specialists, sociologists, investors, architects, funders and philanthropists. There is often an underpinning of subsidies, policies and targeted incentives involving local, state and federal government. Affordable housing also requires markets and market players like architects, builders, management companies, landlords and real estate agents. Finally, affordable housing requires neighbors who are open to neighbors of different income levels. Social entrepreneurs like Molly Brooks of Hero’s Bridge in Warrenton and philanthropists like Chuck Akre, father of Rush River Commons in the Town of Washing-
PHOTO BY IRELAND HAYES/FOOTHILLS FORUM
Molly Brooks, founder and CEO of Hero’s Bridge, at the future site of the Hero’s Bridge Village, a proposed affordable housing community for senior veterans.
ton, brave the multiple obstacles to harvest solutions that are small but transformative for the families they benefit. The proposed Warrenton Village Center would build 386 new rental units along Broadview Avenue but by making 10% of them affordable would win flexibility on zoning permissions involving density. The various solutions to the affordable housing conundrum start with one premise: Markets alone aren’t solving the problem. Something extra is needed, whether it builds on government incentives or complex public-private collaboration. A comparison of median incomes and median home prices highlights the problem. Virginia Realtors, which represents 38,000 real estate agents in the state, studied households in the age bracket of 25 to 44. The median income was found to be $99,182, while the median home price of $382,725 requires a household income of $128,400. See HOUSING, page 4
When will broadband arrive in Fauquier County? It’s anyone’s guess. By Hunter Savery Staff Writer
Fewer than 14 months remain on All Points Broadband’s contract to deliver high-speed broadband to rural communities in Virginia, but not a single mile of cable has been laid in Fauquier County. With 60% of the contract period elapsed, All Points has not completed any of its milestones or project phases, according to the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative dashboard. An official delay has not been announced for Fauquier County, but one appears likely, meaning
about 10,000 homes and businesses will still have no access to high-speed fiber-optic internet and phone service. “We know that timeline is going to be extended,” Tom Innes, vice president of business development for All Points Broadband, told the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors last week. The internet provider initially aimed to be serving customers in Fauquier County by the summer of 2025, but delays across the state with getting electrical poles ready for service slowed the project’s progress, according to Innes. See BROADBAND, page 5 MAP COURTESY OF ALL POINTS BROADBAND
All Points Broadband planned to lay 660 miles of cable, depicted by the yellow lines, to connect approximately 10,000 residences and businesses, represented by dots, with high-speed internet.
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