‘Spinning our wheels’: As West Virginia’s housing crisis worsens, lawmakers put solutions on the back burner

Rising home values and increasing rent prices have made it harder for families to keep a roof over their heads.

English teacher Jennifer Unger lives in Martinsburg but recently started teaching across the state line in Maryland. She said she needed higher pay to keep up with the rising cost of living in the area as she’s looking to downsize her home after her divorce.

“The rent for a decent apartment is higher than the mortgage I’m paying now for a three-bedroom house,” she said. “An average two-bedroom apartment is at least $1,500 a month here.”

And Unger isn’t the only one concerned about housing costs. Across the state, many West Virginians are grappling with rising rents and a housing market that has priced out lower-income residents.

While counties like Berkeley and Jefferson are experiencing rapid growth, driving up housing costs, others like Tucker and Pocahontas counties are dealing with a surge in short-term rentals, limiting options for West Virginians struggling to find affordable housing.

Despite those challenges, lawmakers have put the state’s housing crisis on the back burner this session and have not prioritized legislation to address affordability and supply issues.

In fact, the only housing-related bills that have moved between the chambers target the state’s homeless population by banning public camping and preventing squatting, the act of living in a home without an owner’s permission.

And the deadline to introduce new bills has already passed the House and the Senate.

Heather Schneider, founder of the Appalachian Mutual Aid Collective in Upshur County, said lawmakers are to blame for the state’s housing problems and should be working to solve them by raising the minimum wage and supporting social services.

“Part of the issue here is that the systems that we have in place oftentimes are creating the problems, and it’s self-perpetuating,” Schneider said.

Lawmakers are still waiting for policy recommendations

On March 19, lawmakers heard from state housing experts for the first time this session during a House Economic Development Committee meeting.

Nate Testman, interim director of the state’s Housing Development Fund, told lawmakers he’s working with WVU researchers on a housing survey that will be completed this month.

Preliminary data shows that nearly 150,000 West Virginia households are considered “housing overburdened,” meaning they spend more than a third of their income on housing.

That includes 49% of renters and 20% of homeowners — an increase from 2015, when those numbers were 37% and 14%.

Families who pay more for housing have less money to spend on essential needs like healthcare, food and other bills. The financial strain can impact mental health and well-being.

Testman said the state’s housing crisis stems from high rent and home costs, a lack of supply of affordable housing and a growing inventory of dilapidated homes.

“In the Eastern Panhandle, housing prices have surged,” he said. “Working families are struggling to keep up as they compete with high-end buyers from D.C.”

Committee chairman, Del. Gary Howell, R-Mineral, asked whether the organization looked at housing data from nearby states like Maryland. He said many West Virginians lived along bordering states.

“Our tax structure is much better than Maryland, so the people that are moving are wanting to live on our side of the river,” he said. “That’s good for us but bad for the housing shortage.”

He declined an interview request about the meeting and the committee’s priorities. His Senate counterpart, Glenn Jeffries, R-Putnam, said he hopes more housing bills come through next year.

“My focus has been on microgrids,” he said. “Building microgrids will be a capital investment and spur economic growth.”

Jeffries also pointed to a bill he’s sponsoring this session that would help subsidize worker housing development projects for businesses by issuing loans covering up to 50% of project costs.

The bill advanced to the Senate Finance Committee but has not appeared on the agenda. It’s unlikely to pass before crossover day, a key legislative deadline where all bills must be moved out of each chamber tomorrow.

Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, asked what the WVHDF did with the information as the organization completes statewide housing surveys every five years.

“It feels like there’s just a lot of people doing this kind of work, and we’re just kind of spinning our wheels,” she said.

Supply, demand and the post-pandemic market

Since at least 2013, median home values and rent prices have increased annually, according to housing data from the U.S. Census.

In 2020, the pandemic exacerbated the housing crisis nationwide. A combination of supply chain disruptions made building materials more expensive, while low interest rates and remote work increased housing demand.

“We didn’t know what the future of the real estate industry was going to look like,” said Del. Patrick Lucas, R-Cabell, a real estate broker in Huntington.

He also said the state’s housing supply has dwindled as developers struggle to afford materials like lumber.

To help offset the cost of materials and to encourage more construction, lawmakers passed the Build WV Act, which created a housing development tax credit in 2022. Development projects that qualify receive a sales tax exemption for building materials.

Developers like Terrell McSweeney Burns, who has tried to build properties in Pocahontas County, told Mountain State Spotlight that she needed more state support outside of tax credits last year.

Home values and rent prices were already rising before the pandemic but grew rapidly as the housing market changed overnight.

Shari Stephens, director of the Hardy County Family Support Center, said home values in the Moorefield area have risen significantly over the past five years, while fewer houses are on the market.

“Prices for houses that are move-in ready are too expensive for young families in our area,” she said. “We definitely need areas of improvement for affordable housing.”

As housing costs rise and rents become more expensive, homeless populations grow, especially in urban areas, according to Pew Research.

Last year, the Department of Human Services reported that 1,400 people were homeless in West Virginia, an uptick of 24% since 2021.

Stephens said that as home values increased in Hardy County, so has the county’s homeless population.

“There’s no shelters in the county, so we’ve had to send folks to the panhandle,” she said. “Homeless people around here have been trying to find places to live for years.”

Reach reporter Tre Spencer at tre@mountainstatespotlight.org