Question 1

What about housing affordability?

Accepted Answer

When we talk about affordability, housing is such a big component of that. Housing in Northern Virginia is extremely expensive. It's priced out for many people to even buy a home or to rent a space large enough to comfortably house a family. As a child, I experienced several years in elementary school where we lived in a camping trailer. It wasn't a mobile home; for us, that would have felt like a palace. It was a kind of camping trailer that you hook up to your truck, and that was my home for several years because we couldn't afford more. In my district now, we have two mobile home communities where people cannot afford rent, let alone make the move into first-time home ownership. There is no good reason why our housing inventory is so low. The certainty of a job or securing employment is so tenuous that folks can't even figure out if they can put a safe, clean, and secure roof over their heads. If you don't have a safe place to go after school or a safe place to put your head on a pillow at night, it's hard to learn in school. It's hard as a parent to perform at work if you're so worried about your child. There is also an economic component to business and the community. If we can't provide basic housing for our people, companies won't want to come here. We have to think outside the box. We need to start thinking about different kinds of developments. Modular homes. Tiny homes. Differences in the mobile home and manufactured housing community. Developments that inspire home ownership instead of just leasing. Creating more starter homes and smaller homes that we used to do when home ownership was more accessible. The cost of these homes would not be such a barrier. We also have to work with developers to make sure the ordinances and the processes are much easier and more streamlined to cut down construction costs.

Question 2

What are your thoughts on education and what have you done in that arena? Why is education important and what's next for it in Virginia in your opinion?

Accepted Answer

When you think about housing, you can't help but also think about education. Education is one of the great equalizers, and nobody can take your education away. I like to say, 'When you learn something, you can't unlearn it.' Both my parents were educators, my grandparents were educators, and my father was a math teacher. My grandmother was the first Black teacher and Black principal in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and my grandfather was an instructor for the Tuskegee Airmen. I mentioned how if we don't have good housing, companies won't come because their employees won't have places to live. The same is true about our school systems. In Virginia, we are fast holding on to the idea that the public school system is a wonderful system, but it has its problems and needs investment. We've had challenges with polarization in our communities and our nation about defining proper history standards. What is it that we tell and teach our children in age-appropriate ways? What are the choices we have around using public school systems as the primary way to teach our children, or having vouchers and other opportunities? We also want to make sure that we continue working hard to also educate parents, not just the children. Importantly, we want to make a space where parents' voices feel heard as part of the process. One of the things we hadn't done so well is that parents hadn't felt that their voices were heard because they weren't aware of what the processes were. That's on the folks who need to make sure that parents have the information they need.

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Breaking Barriers