A new Virginia housing dashboard gives local officials, nonprofits and residents a property-level look at when federal affordability restrictions on tax-credit apartments may end. The tool identifies more than 18,000 of the state's nearly 108,000 Low-Income Housing Tax Credit units as likely to lose those protections by 2030, including a 74-unit Richmond townhome community and a Loudoun County complex, according to details reported by the Virginia Mercury.
Housing Forward Virginia launched the tool in September with the Virginia Housing Alliance and Locus Impact. It draws on data from Virginia's state housing authority to map residential parcels where Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC, properties are approaching the end of their affordability terms, per the same Virginia Mercury report. LIHTC is a federal incentive that helps finance apartments for tenants earning specified shares of an area's median income, and it is a major source of Virginia's subsidized rental housing. The statewide need extends well beyond the properties shown on the dashboard: the Virginia Housing Alliance estimates Virginia is short 300,000 affordable rental homes.
Richmond's Chicago Manor Is a Test Case
Chicago Manor, a 74-unit development of two-bedroom townhomes in Richmond's Blackwell neighborhood, is one of the properties identified for near-term attention. The community was placed in service in 1998 using 4% Low-Income Housing Tax Credits and tax-exempt bond financing, according to background compiled by Section8Waitlist. The Virginia Mercury reports that the property's LIHTC status is scheduled to lapse at the end of 2027 unless Richmond City Council takes steps to preserve its affordability.
The dashboard also identifies potential preservation deadlines outside Richmond. Hillside, a 36-unit LIHTC property in Tazewell, has credits set to expire in 2028. In Loudoun County, the Fields at Cascades is a 320-unit affordable complex built in the late 1990s, with 240 two-bedroom units and 80 three-bedroom units, according to project details from CBG Building Company and Virginia Housing. The Virginia Mercury reports that its credits are due to expire in late 2027. In the Greater Richmond region, nearly 2,000 subsidized units are projected to lose their restricted status by 2040 as tax-credit terms end, according to the Virginia Housing Alliance.
What preservation tools are available?
Virginia Housing says its grant programs, including REACH Virginia grants, support localities and housing partners working to create or preserve affordable housing. The agency also offers predevelopment loans and grants for early project costs. Developments financed with tax-exempt bonds can apply for 4% housing tax credits on a rolling basis, a financing channel that can help support preservation or rehabilitation projects if owners and buyers meet program requirements, according to Virginia Housing and its rental housing tax-credit guidance. The Richmond-area risk is part of a broader affordability squeeze. The Partnership for Housing Affordability reports that average rents in the region have risen at twice the rate of average incomes since 2009. It also warns that, without intervention, more than 40% of the region's dedicated affordable rental homes could fall out of affordability compliance over the next 15 years. That regional forecast does not determine what will happen to Chicago Manor, but it underscores why preserving existing units is a central part of the response.
A New State Law Gives Cities a Buying Option
The dashboard's launch lines up with a fresh legal tool for local governments. Governor Abigail Spanberger signed House Bill 4 into law on April 8, 2026, creating a new chapter of state code, effective July 1, 2026, that authorizes localities to pass ordinances giving themselves or designated entities the right of first refusal when publicly supported housing with expiring affordability restrictions comes up for sale, according to the Virginia Legislative Information System. Because Virginia follows the Dillon Rule, local councils needed that explicit state authorization before they could write their own purchase-priority ordinances, and Alexandria's City Council began drafting one in May, as reported by ALXnow.
Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker introduced the legislation, and the Virginia Mercury reports she has pointed directly to properties like Chicago Manor, Hillside and the Fields at Cascades as the kind of housing the right of first refusal is meant to protect. She has framed the stakes bluntly, saying Virginia has an affordable housing crisis involving these units and cannot afford to lose them, per the Virginia Mercury's reporting. Proponents of the bill emphasized preserving affordable rental units.
Timing and Money Remain the Hard Part
The dashboard's practical value will depend on whether local governments and nonprofit housing organizations can act before properties reach their deadlines. Identifying at-risk units and giving eligible buyers a purchase-priority mechanism are separate steps: the latter does not by itself provide the money needed to acquire a property on the open market, as the Virginia Mercury reports.
That funding gap is central to the debate. Preservation is typically faster and less costly than developing a brand-new unit of subsidized rental housing, according to the Virginia Housing Alliance, which is why preservation purchases are seen as the more efficient path when the money can be found. Nonprofit housing organizations largely rely on philanthropic donations and state and federal grants to make those purchases happen, the Virginia Mercury notes, and the new state law gives localities a purchase-priority mechanism.
Richmond Mayor Danny Avula has pushed for federal help to close that gap, urging during a meeting with Senator Tim Kaine that Congress should fully appropriate the funding provisions in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act in the coming months and years, per the Virginia Mercury. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law without President Trump's signature on July 11, 2026, after it passed the Senate 85-5 and the House 358-32, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. The law's roughly 60 sections expand Community Development Block Grant funding for affordable housing construction, reauthorize the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, and lift the Rental Assistance Demonstration program cap by 100,000 units. Separately, Virginia's own state-level Housing Opportunity Tax Credit, created in 2020 to match federal LIHTC investments, was slated to expire at the end of 2025 unless state lawmakers extended it, according to the Virginia Department of Taxation.
What the Dashboard Still Doesn't Show
The version of the dashboard now online is a first wave, and its backers say it will keep evolving. Virginia's state housing authority is expected to provide updated data by the end of 2026 that will include more LIHTC properties, including ones that have already expired, per the Virginia Mercury. Housing Forward Virginia and its partners say they will continue refining the tool so users can eventually see how specific LIHTC properties transitioned to market rate and which actions might have kept them affordable.
As part of that effort, the Housing Forward Virginia coalition has been talking directly with owners of properties whose LIHTC status has already expired, seeking to understand how the status lapsed and whether those owners tried to extend their credits before losing them, the Virginia Mercury reports. Some expired properties already appear in the dashboard's first wave of data, offering an early look at what could happen to Chicago Manor, Hillside and the Fields at Cascades if no buyer steps in before their own deadlines arrive.
