SESSIONS

When a government shutdown and other unexpected challenges froze a $4 million HUD grant renewal for 77 days, SupportWorks Housing faced an existential question: how do you keep 214 vulnerable residents housed when the funding that supports them simply disappears? This session walks through the real-time decisions, emergency fundraising, and stakeholder communication strategies that resulted in zero housing loss, along with the candid self-assessment that followed. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for funding disruption planning, including reserve fund strategy, crisis communication protocols, and the institutional knowledge gaps most organizations don't discover until it's too late.

Manufactured home communities (MHCs) represent 66,343 individual homes in the Commonwealth. HB375, enacted this summer, marks a significant step toward preserving them as a vital source of affordable housing by giving residents, nonprofits, and local jurisdictions a fair shot at owning and protecting these communities for the long term. This session will translate the law into actionable strategies for local governments, nonprofit partners, lenders, and resident leaders. Drawing on experience within Virginia and best practices from across the country, panelists will share what it takes — legally, financially, and organizationally — to move from intent to successful community preservation and long-term stewardship.

Reeling in the aftermath of the 2017 white supremacist invasion, Charlottesville turned its attention to redressing generations of housing segregation and exclusion by taking on a multi-year, highly contentious process to rezone the entirety of the City via an equity lens. “We Rezoned, Now What?” explores the what has happened – and not happened -- since. Panel members will recount Charlottesville’s journey from adopting a new Land Use Map to navigating the realities of implementing its ambitious rezoning. The session will unpack why the anticipated levels of new development—particularly added density and bonus affordable housing—have not materialized as quickly as hoped. Panelists will dive into emerging technical challenges and the complex regulatory landscape shaping project feasibility. Using real case studies, we will highlight both Missing Middle and larger scale developments to illustrate what’s working and what’s not. The presentation will also address policy adjustments that could better support the city’s goals. Attendees will walk away with key lessons learned and actionable insights for improving the path from zoning reform to built outcomes.

This presentation explores a new approach to rural community development through the role of a Community Network Builder, a position created to address housing, workforce, and economic opportunity as interconnected parts of a shared community system. Drawing on early projects, small wins, and lessons learned in Virginia's Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula, it highlights strategies for building partnerships, sustaining community engagement, and turning local priorities into action.

Our housing non-profits, both small and large, are often called on to respond to big challenges in our community. This session will be a discussion about building capacity to respond to emerging challenges through education, advocacy, and community partnership. The session will include space for stories from participants about how they have "met the moment" and addressed challenges in their community, and opportunities to discuss together how we can all partner closely and work together to ensure all our neighbors have access to safe, stable, affordable homes.

This presentation from faculty at Virginia Tech focuses on adaptive reuse housing projects in Southwest Virginia 

This session explores the link between housing counseling services and effective eviction prevention strategies, with a focus on how coordinated, family-centered support combined with financial assistance can stabilize households. New statewide resources through DHCD and recent General Assembly law changes for eviction prevention provide a key opportunity to deepen the partnership between housing providers, residents and human service providers to increase housing stability for Virginians with support and financial assistance.

Is it possible to build affordable housing faster, smarter, and more predictably—without sacrificing quality? This session explores a first-of-its-kind modular multifamily development in Richmond’s East End, where project:HOMES partnered with Module and Urban Hope to deliver nine deeply affordable housing units. By combining factory-built efficiency with nonprofit-driven development, this project serves as a real-world test case for modular multifamily housing production and innovative cross-sector partnerships. Presenters will share lessons learned from both the construction process and the collaboration between a nonprofit housing developer and a nonprofit provider of deeply affordable housing, offering insights into how modular construction can help expand affordable housing opportunities across Virginia.

Housing is not usually as simple as the sticks and bricks - it's also about building trust and honoring the community's experiences and needs. Housing can even be engaging and educating locals about what you do and why its important. Some programs go as far as hiring local representatives to teach, endear, promote, build trust, refer, connect, and participate with their organization. Learn about the benefits of investing in intentional and grassroots community outreach through the work of Richmond Heirs Property Network, Greater Charlottesville Habitat for Humanity, and Virginia Community Voice.

Incremental development—the small-scale, lot-by-lot pattern that produced many of the country’s most durable neighborhoods—was the dominant model prior to World War II. Modest, locally financed projects such as duplexes, mixed-use buildings, and neighborhood retail allowed communities to evolve in response to market demand and local capacity. Postwar zoning, parking mandates, and financial underwriting standards shifted the development landscape toward large, capital-intensive projects, effectively sidelining small developers and constraining fine-grained neighborhood change. This session examines how that transition concentrated financial risk, narrowed the pool of viable builders, and reduced adaptability in the built environment. It then presents incremental development as a contemporary strategy for addressing these structural challenges. Incremental approaches distribute risk across smaller projects, align more closely with real-time demand, expand pathways to local ownership, and enable gradual neighborhood reinvestment rather than episodic megaprojects. In this session, Alli Thurmond Quinlan (an experienced devleoper and architect) will show how incremental development can function as a systems-level intervention—supporting attainable housing production, strengthening local development capacity, and improving long-term community resilience. In the context of persistent housing shortages and market volatility, incremental development is not a niche alternative but a necessary complement to conventional development models.

The decision to develop affordable housing is one of the most significant a community of faith can make. For many, the question of "how will we pay for this?" is where the discernment process stalls. This workshop will explore how faith communities can build diversified funding strategies that align with their mission and capacity; how to identify and cultivate relationships with government agencies, CDFIs, foundations, and private developers; and how to sustain financial momentum across the five- to seven-year arc of a typical development timeline. Attendees will leave with a framework for assessing their funding readiness and a set of concrete next steps for moving from vision to viable housing.