Northampton County’s plan to build workforce housing for teachers and school staff just hit a zoning wall — and that stumble is worth pausing on, not just as a bureaucratic hiccup, but as a moment to ask a bigger question: should the county be in the housing development business at all?
The project, dubbed Northampton Nook, was meant to sit on roughly 10 acres of county-owned land behind the school board office and the old middle school. County Administrator Matt Spuck told the Board of Supervisors this week that the land is zoned Agricultural, which doesn’t allow the multi-family residential development the county had in mind. To his credit, Spuck has said he wants the county’s project judged by the same zoning process any private developer would face, rather than rezoning public land to smooth its own way — a fairness instinct that deserves recognition. But the fact that a government-led housing project is now scrambling for a new site, after running into problems that private developers navigate as a matter of course, is exactly the kind of friction that should make taxpayers ask why their county government is acting as a real estate developer in the first place.
The Core Problem: Governments Aren’t Built for This
Local governments are good at zoning, permitting, roads, schools, and public safety. They are not, as a rule, good at construction timelines, housing finance, or absorbing the risk that comes with a multi-year development project. When a private developer hits a zoning snag, they eat the delay and the cost themselves. When a county government hits the same snag, the meter is still running — staff time, administrative overhead, and the opportunity cost of land that could have been put to another public use — and taxpayers are the ones footing the bill regardless of whether the project ever breaks ground.
That’s the quiet risk with Northampton Nook. Even a well-intentioned project, aimed at a real problem — the difficulty schools have recruiting teachers when local housing is scarce or expensive — can become an open-ended financial commitment once the county owns the outcome rather than just enabling it.
Supporters of the county-led approach counter that private developers have little financial incentive to build housing specifically reserved for teachers at below-market rates, and that direct county involvement may be the only way to guarantee units are actually built and reserved for school employees rather than relying on market forces or voluntary partnerships that may never materialize. They may also argue that using existing county-owned land avoids the added cost of acquiring or leasing property elsewhere, and that a rocky zoning process is a normal part of any development, public or private.
If the goal is genuinely to help teachers and school staff find affordable housing, there are approaches that keep the public sector out of the developer’s chair while still moving the needle:
Housing stipends or rental assistance. A direct stipend or housing allowance for teachers and staff, funded through the school system’s existing budget, gets money to the people who need it without the county assuming construction risk, maintenance liability, or long-term ownership costs.
Partnering with private or nonprofit developers. Instead of building and owning the project itself, the county could offer incentives — density bonuses, expedited permitting, or a land lease — to a private or nonprofit developer who takes on the zoning, financing, and construction risk in exchange for reserving units for county employees. This is a common model in other localities and shifts the financial exposure away from taxpayers.
Selling or leasing the county land to a developer with deed restrictions. Rather than the county building housing on its own land, it could sell or long-term lease the parcel to a developer with a legal requirement that a share of units go to teachers and staff at below-market rates. The county gets the housing outcome without carrying the debt or delay.
Down payment assistance programs. A one-time, modest down payment assistance fund for teachers buying homes in the county can be far cheaper to administer than building and managing a rental property, and it builds long-term equity for the employee rather than a long-term asset for the government.
Working with existing landlords. The county could negotiate reserved-unit agreements with existing apartment complexes or rental properties, guaranteeing a certain number of units at reduced rents for school employees — again, without ever touching a shovel.
None of this means the underlying problem isn’t real. Teacher recruitment and retention genuinely suffer when housing is hard to find or afford, and Northampton County is right to take that seriously. But there’s a meaningful difference between a government solving a housing problem and a government becoming a housing developer. The former can be done through incentives, subsidies, and partnerships that put private capital and expertise to work. The latter puts taxpayers on the hook for risks — zoning delays, wetlands, cost overruns, vacancy — that private developers are simply better equipped to absorb.
Northampton’s zoning setback isn’t just a scheduling problem. It’s a preview of the kind of friction that comes with government-led development, and a good moment for the Board of Supervisors to ask whether there’s a version of this project that gets teachers into housing without the county itself becoming the landlord.
About the Author
It was just announced that James City County and Peninsula Habitat for Humanity are partnering to build affordable homes in a development being called The Moores. Habitat-built homes sell for less than $200k and are typically 3-4 bedrooms, 2 baths.