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Certainly our Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission (and their predecessors) deserve credit and our thanks for developing and enforcing policies and ordinances that have helped prevent excessive subdivision and housing development.
But is this the end of the story? Is our scenic and rural future secure? Was I the only one who was surprised by the relatively modest population growth in light of the number of homes I have seen built since my arrival in the county in 1993?
A closer look at trends in building permits for new dwellings suggests that I might not be crazy or paranoid. From 1992 through 1999, the county building office issued 413 permits to build new dwellings. This amounts to 52 new houses per year.
If the 10-year average were similar, it would amount to over 500 houses between the 1990 and 2000 Censuses. At first blush, this seems a little odd when you consider that we gained only a total of 361 people, according to the Census. To be sure, some houses have replaced homes that were .abandoned or lost (e.g., to fires). However, I suspect that additions, barn conversions, renovations, and mobile homes — for which a new dwelling permit is generally not required — have more than replaced the housing that has been lost.
Closer inspection of the county real estate tax data sheds some light on the construction of 500 homes for fewer than 400 people. First, there appear to be about 2,974 bouses in Rappahannock County, or an average of 2.3 people per house. That means, we would expect those 500 new houses to provide homes for close to 1,200 people, not the mere 361 actually counted in the census.
One explanation for the 839 missing persons is that a very large portion of the houses built over the past 10 years are weekend or vacation homes. Are these “second homes” a threat to the? scenic
96.9%