More housing and good regional planning are the keys to ensuring healthy communities and protecting our natural environment.

MountainTrue works with community members, planners, decision-makers, and partner organizations in cities and towns across the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains to secure a greater abundance and more diverse housing options and to discourage sprawl and the destruction of our natural environment.

Housing Security

We can help keep long-time residents in their homes by adopting policies and funding streams to preserve existing homes and stop displacement.

Our Housing Priorities

Small scale, multi-family housing permitted by right

Affordable housing does not have to take the form of huge apartment complexes. By reintroducing missing-middle housing (duplexes, cottage clusters, townhouses, and the like), we can create more affordable units for the service workers, teachers, and civil servants that currently struggle to find housing near where they work. Multi-family housing is also more energy efficient and better for our changing climate.

Building on existing corridors

We can add housing to our communities while preserving the forests and farmlands that surround us by building in areas that already have roads, grocery stores, and sewer systems. It is also a better use of taxpayer dollars to rely on and maintain existing infrastructure instead of building more.

Enhanced multimodal transportation networks

By limiting the need to rely on personal vehicles, we can better accommodate more people living in and near our town centers. If we build smart, more housing does not have to mean more traffic! With people able to walk, bike, or bus, we also mitigate the impacts of climate change by reducing the need to drive further from home to get to schools, jobs, and appointments.

Preservation of naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) & NOAH Loan Funds

The more we can support people staying in their homes, the less we need to build new ones. Funding, programs, and zoning changes that prevent displacement and support people as they age in place is a more cost-effective way to house our community than destroying existing homes and building new ones.

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