Farm to Table

Increasingly, conversations around affordable housing have included the constellation of needs beyond the physical structure of the house. Proximity to amenities, transportation, and job centers are considered assets to developments. Agrihoods are ways of linking housing explicitly to amenities and food access, by placing them on the same site and fostering small communities with opportunities for recreation and food production. 

While these are often luxury developments, a new agrihood in Chesterfield, Virginia has a vision of opening access to food and land justice to underserved communities in Central Virginia. Three nonprofit organizations are at the table of this partnership:  Happily Natural Day  (HND),  Girls For A Change  (GFAC), and the  Maggie Walker Community Land Trust  (MWCLT). The homeownership component of the Agrihood will consist of 10 permanently affordable homes, sold through MWCLT’s program. The agricultural component will be spearheaded by Duron Chavis of HND, and will include job training coordination with GFAC and a community event space for offerings such as regular farmer’s markets. 

Though it is sometimes overlooked, housing costs are directly impacted by issues of food security, employment opportunities, the urban heat island effect, and stormwater management. This project will tie community, ecological and agricultural amenities to affordable homeownership in perpetuity.

Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are becoming increasingly popular as tools to preserve affordability for generations, as well as ways for localities and developers to meet affordability requirements in new housing developments. CLTs achieve their goal of  permanent affordability  through a structure of dual-ownership: a homeowner purchases the home itself, while the CLT retains the land beneath, entering into a ground lease with the homeowner that restricts the resale value. Homeowners are still able to build wealth and equity through the sale of CLT homes, though they amount they can sell for is restricted by the ground lease.

With over  225 CLT s in the country, the model is increasingly used in fast-growing urban markets. However, the original Community Land Trust model has roots in the civil rights era, when Shirley and Charles Sherrod secured over 5,000 acres of farmland for Black farmers in rural Georgia, with the goal to create a self-sufficient model for accessible, community-controlled land. This farm collective eventually became  New Communities, Inc. , an organization that is still in operation to this day, with the same goal of empowering Black households in Georgia's rural South. Unfortunately, the original tract of land was embroiled in a  protracted battle  of both institutional discrimination and crop-destroying drought, which resulted in the property's foreclosure. In 2011, New Communities, Inc. was able to purchase a nearly 1,700 acre property, which became the new headquarters for their vision.

The largely racist legal struggles that New Communities, Inc. endured is testament to the importance of projects with explicit goals to create land access and ownership opportunities for Black households.

The Route 1 Corridor and the semi-industrial areas in South Richmond and Chesterfield are key areas of focus for this work. Neighborhoods around Route 1 have not experienced the same levels of investment and demand that other areas of the Central Virginia Region have. As a result, it remains relatively affordable to many immigrants and families of color, especially in the  dozens of mobile home parks along the corridor. 

The seven-acre, undeveloped parcel at 2600 Swineford Road is just west of Route 1 in the Bensley community of Chesterfield. 

Along with the creation of homeownership opportunities, creating affordable and attainable access to healthy and fresh food is fundamental to the vision for the agrihood. There will be a commercial kitchen where farm-grown produce can be turned into prepared food, like jams or soups. In lieu of a Home Owners Association (HOA) fee, agrihood residents will pay a monthly fee into a  Community Supported Agriculture  program (CSA), which will ensure that they have fresh, ultra-local produce and food products year round, grown right in their backyards.

“Housing affordability and food sufficiency are inseparable to families’ balance sheets," according to a  recent report  by the National Association of Realtors. If households are struggling to afford housing costs, usually other spending areas -- such as medical care and groceries -- are affected as well. Neighborhoods with lower per-capita incomes often have  less access to nearby grocery stores , creating a burden on residents to travel further distances for groceries. Above all, the salient fact remains that  healthy food is more expensive  than processed or junk foods.

Broader programming on-site at the agrihood will be centered around the goal of empowering the Black girls and women served by Girls For A Change -- through wealth building opportunities, training and apprenticeship programs, and social entrepreneurship. From home construction to urban agriculture to ancillary programming such as food markets, and outdoor events, there will be job training and employment opportunities interwoven throughout the site.

In this way, the agrihood will function on multiple levels to support job training and career development as long-term pathways for wealthbuilding, while also acknowledging the link between housing stability and healthy food access.

For low-income households, the burden of high housing costs is a chronic issue that reduces housing stability and increases the risk of food insecurity, which is defined as the inability to provide all household members at all times with enough food for active, healthy lives."

--  "Food Insecurity Rates [...] in HUD Federal Housing Assistance Programs,"  USDA ERS

The farm will be an asset to the wider neighborhood by increasing the range of walkable access to food products. The map below shows grocery stores within 10 minute walking distance throughout the region. The agrihood site is at the very edge of the "walkability radius" for a nearby grocery store.