how about housing in WV?

Jennifer Raitt, Daniel Eades, Britt Ludwig, Ryan Barber, & Breanna Shell

Learn about the unique challenges and successes of Housing in WV alongside National, State, and Local tools that help you take the next step to advance your communities’ housing goals.

This session will lead a conversation on how housing is and is not working for residents in West Virginia. In leading a discussion on our state’s unique housing struggles we will also hear about national resources around this conversation led by the work of the American Planning Association’s Housing Accelerator Playbook. Next panelists will detail the WV Housing Needs Assessment and two local examples of communities making changes around their housing needs. First Greenbriar County’s partnership with Smart Growth America’s Housing Accelerator Program as they rewrite their Zoning Ordinance to increase density and refine Planned Unit Development (PUD) standards. Then the City of Parkersburg will share their Neighborhood Infill Supported Development Initiative, which include tools such as pre-approved housing plans, streamlined review processes and flexible zoning requirements led by the data from their local housing needs assessment. Finally participants will workshop with each other to begin to create your own personalized Housing Accelerator Playbook to create a tailored toolkit of what works and how to apply it to bring back to your community while connecting with other communities in WV confronting and solving similar problems.

Heirs Property in west virginia: challenges for planning and land reuse

Jesse Richardson and John David Johnson

Heirs property – land held by multiple family members who usually acquire the property through inheritance – remains a significant but often overlooked barrier to land use planning, redevelopment, and community revitalization in West Virginia. Faculty at West Virginia State University and West Virginia University are involved in projects to address heirs property in the state and will discuss those projects and how participants can get involved in the process. This session intends to be a discussion where participants can alert the speakers about their concerns and experiences. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how heirs property affects land reuse and community development, as well as practical insights for navigating these challenges in planning and redevelopment projects. Strategies to move West Virginia forward on collecting data and adopting policies to address heirs property will also be discussed.

Property Acquisition, the Tax Sale, & Land Recycling

John Butterworth, Khrista Messinger

Even without a formal land banking program, communities can work to acquire dilapidated and troubled properties and take an active role in community improvement.  This process can be long and complex especially if it involves the Delinquent Tax Sale process.  Join staff from the Charleston Land Reuse Agency to learn the nitty gritty details of how they have used a variety of different tactics to get property out of cycles of abandonment and disuse. This discussion will begin with prioritizing properties for acquisition, reuse strategy buckets that fit your community's needs, and quick wins and long-range site assembly.  We will dive into the tax sale process and the strengths and drawbacks of engaging with tax deeds.  Finally, we will discuss how resolving abandonment and disuse impacts residents and neighborhoods and why the work, while long, hard, and not always politically expedient, is an essential tool in your community's toolkit.

Brightfields and resilience hubs

Cory Chase, Leah Turgeon, & Autumn Long

Development and redevelopment are great opportunities to transition into energy savings and resiliency by incorporating solar power. Our session will focus on laying out a vision for how communities and municipalities in WV can take control of their energy future via innovative projects like resilience hubs and brightfields. We will focus mainly on a community-led successful project in Puerto Rico, whose grid was decimated by a hurricane. We will also have a guest speaker to speak directly about solar financing.

Our future forward focus for this session is on resilience hubs, which are homes, municipal buildings, churches, community buildings, etc. that serve as a hub with solar + battery storage that the community can rely on for power in times of disaster or emergency. We will also lightly touch on emerging technology around distributed power plants (DPPs) and microgrids, and why that should be considered for most redevelopment projects. DPPs are networks of dispersed energy systems like solar and batteries (and more) combined with things like smart appliances/thermostats, etc, that can help stabilize the local grid, save money, and in some cases even earn money.

Building Statewide Strength for Local Revitalization

Shawn Carvin, Brian Larkin, Natalie Boydston

State land bank associations serve as the bridge between local practice and broader policy outcomes. By coordinating advocacy, facilitating peer learning, and providing technical support, statewide organizations strengthen individual land banks while advancing a unified voice at the state and federal levels. As land banking continues to mature, formal statewide infrastructure has become increasingly important to ensure that legislation, funding programs, and regulatory frameworks align with on-the-ground realities.

This session will explore the practical considerations behind forming, structuring, and sustaining a state land bank association. It will examine the strategic role these organizations play in shaping policy and expanding opportunity. Whether established or emerging, statewide networks can significantly influence how local land banks operate, collaborate, and grow their impact.

recovery, restoration, and reintroduction: reenvisioning West Virginia

Jim Christie & Brady Gutta

West Virginia’s mining legacy has influenced the development of Appalachian communities and culture, shaping scenic landscapes found across the mountain state.  This session highlights West Virginia University’s leadership and Civil & Environmental Consultant’s planning team for the “Former Mine Lands to Sustainable Lands” initiative, a key component of the Appalachian Climate Technology Now (ACT Now) project, funded through a federal Build Back Better grant. Today, communities of the region face obstacles that are often a detriment to residents. Seen as liabilities by the public, former mine lands are viewed as assets in the Reenvisioning West Virginia Masterplan. Through strategic restoration and redevelopment approaches, ecosystems are reintroduced and communities are provided with resources to recover from decades of decline and underinvestment. This plan establishes a framework to site assessment and planning and applies it to 10 former mine lands across the WV Coalfield region, a model for sustainable mine land reuse across Appalachia.

Brownfields Bootcamp: Starting on the Right Foot

Carrie Staton, Katie See, Sam Wilkes, & Amy Petry

Brownfield redevelopment is complex and multi-faceted and can be difficult to navigate when you’re just getting started. Coming to a major event where everyone seems to know all the jardon and shorthand can be overwhelming and disorienting. Brownfields Bootcamp is a basic training on brownfield topics, where participants will learn a brief history and background of brownfields, a crash course in key acronyms and programs, an overview of all appropriate inquiry, and a quick look at key state and federal resources. Mid-Atlantic TAB will share resources and opportunities for new recruits and arm them with a plan of attack for understanding the environmental, economic, and human aspects of brownfield redevelopment. Brownfields veterans from the Kanawha County Commission will share stories from their work to implement EPA Brownfields funding as part of a plan of attack for long-term, place-based community development and economic revitalization.

Gathering with Purpose: Community & Stakeholder Engagement Workshop

Carly O’Dell Jones, Breanna Shell, Becca Phillips, Anna Leisher, & Lydia Work

During this interactive session, participants will work together in small groups on a scenario of a real project in Fairmont, West Virginia — a proposed recreational development on a site with legacy brownfield issues. After an overview of community and stakeholder engagement and some new tools of the trade, each group will create a community and stakeholder engagement plan for the project using the content presented and creativity from their individual experiences. Participants will then brainstorm and discuss ways to incorporate lessons learned into their own project challenges in real life.

Reclaiming Minelands Through Permaculture Design

Kaleb Hanshaw & Rick Landenberger

This session explores regenerative approaches to reclaiming strip-mine lands in Central Appalachia through permaculture design and ecological restoration. The work presented in this session demonstrates that degraded postmining landscapes, often dismissed as economically useless, can become productive, resilient ecosystems when guided by intentional design and land-based livelihoods.

Kaleb Hanshaw of Coalfield Development will describe their model of mine lands regeneration: Using techniques such as water harvesting, swale construction, rotational grazing, compost production, and contour-aligned earthworks, Coalfield Development rebuilds soil health, restore hydrology, and create conditions for ecological succession.

Central to this model is the integration of human and ecological regeneration. We employ and train individuals facing barriers to employment, including people in recovery, formerly incarcerated individuals, and laid-off coal miners seeking new career pathways. Participants earn certifications, develop practical land-stewardship skills, and contribute directly to the healing of damaged lands. As post-mine sites transition into working farms, educational hubs, and small regenerative enterprises, we see measurable economic benefits for landowners and communities alike.

Rick Landenberger with the West Virginia Land Trust (WVLT) will discuss the reclamation of the Mammoth Preserve, a 5,003-acre parcel of former surface mine land in eastern Kanawha County. The WVLT took ownership of the property through a civil settlement with a coal company over a Clean Water Act violation that the WVLT was not party to. The resulting settlement and 2018 consent decree outlined the long-term goals associated with land transfer, including forest ‘restoration’, public recreational use, and perpetual cooperation between the WVLT and Appalachian Headwaters, a non-profit that focuses on environmental education and ecological restoration. Since then, significant restoration work has occurred, including treating invasive species, ripping of the valley-filled areas, contour strips, and high-wall benches, and planting native tree species. In 2023 the WVLT was awarded a federal grant to plan and develop the public recreational infrastructure. This work is now underway, along with follow-up restoration efforts. Rick will talk about both the restoration and the recreational development process to date, and will describe the longer-term goals associated with meeting the requirement of the consent decree.

This presentation challenges the perceived divide between economic development and environmental stewardship. By aligning permaculture principles with regional needs, we demonstrate that restoring ecosystems can simultaneously restore livelihoods, forming a triple bottom line of healing the earth, healing people, and strengthening rural economies.

[Mobile Session] little by little: Incremental Change to Build up Neighborhoods

John Butterworth & Khrista Messinger

The Charleston Land Reuse Agency has been working since 2019 to recycle land in residential neighborhoods, especially the West Side. While the work of land banking is often dispersed across a community, each lot we put back into productive reuse has a tangible, positive impact on neighbors.

Modest by themselves, new construction, home rehabilitation, side lot, and food access projects are each small steps toward a more livable community. Come along with us as we see why many small changes are having an impact larger than the sum of their parts.

This mobile tour will introduce participants to project ideas that can work in most any community and show how collaboration with partners is the most effective way to bring projects across the finish line.

Space is limited. Additional registration required.

A New Lesson Plan for Vacant Schools

Andrew Davis, Catherine Gooding, Jennifer Liddle

School districts across West Virginia face declining enrollment and increasing costs, forcing the closure and consolidation of dozens of schools throughout the state. Over the last ten years, 74 public schools were closed, and 24 more are slated for closure by 2028. As a result, towns are left with large, often centrally located vacant properties which can be great community assets or major health and safety risks. In this session, we aim to collaboratively re-envision the futures of these buildings and map the path to redevelopment. Participants will learn about the work of the Abandoned Properties Coalition’s Vacant Schools Team and take part in a workshop to analyze the barriers to vacant school redevelopment. With examples of successfully redeveloped school buildings as a jumping-off point, participants will be invited to imagine the highest and best uses of schools in their own communities. Finally, schools will be placed in context with other civic spaces such as churches which experience similar challenges. Data collected from this session will inform future work of the Vacant Schools Team.

Land Use & Reuse Case Law Round Up

Jesse Richardson, Leif Olsen

This session provides a timely and practical update on recent case law shaping land use regulation and brownfields redevelopment, with a primary focus on decisions from West Virginia state and federal courts, supplemented by influential rulings from jurisdictions across the country. Designed for planners, local government officials, attorneys, land bank professionals, and redevelopment practitioners, the presentation distills complex judicial developments into clear, actionable insights.

Beyond Buyouts: Planning Productive

Cally Lange, Kim Reed, & Ray Moeller

Across rural America, communities are grappling with the aftermath of repetitive flooding and federally funded property buyouts that permanently restrict development. Under FEMA’s Model Deed Restrictions, acquired properties must remain as open space in perpetuity, limiting future uses to parks, wetlands, or agriculture. While these rules reduce flood risk, they often remove parcels from the tax base and leave rural governments managing fragmented, underutilized land with few clear pathways forward.

This presentation examines how FEMA-restricted and floodplain properties can be repositioned as community assets through informed planning, regulatory literacy, and local initiative. The session sis anchored by two West Virginia case examples. In Nitro, City Planner and Land Bank Director Kim Reed led the successful transformation of a FEMA buyout parcel into a community-serving apiary, demonstrating how low-impact agricultural uses can comply with deed restrictions while generating economic and ecological value. In Marlinton, Ray Moeller of WV Brownfields will share his experience navigating history registry status to secure variances that enabled the preservation and restoration of a landmark structure located within the floodplain, highlighting the nuanced interplay between historic preservation, local ordinances, and hazard mitigation requirements.

Drawing on comparative case study research by the Brownfields Assistance Center at WVU, including policy analysis, GIS mapping, and practitioner interviews, the presentation reframes post-flood landscapes not as permanent losses, but as places where planning judgment, flexibility, and stewardship can unlock resilience and opportunity.

Legislative Round Up

Leif Olsen, Jesse Richardson

Take a guided tour through the land use–related legislation from the West Virginia Legislature’s 2026 session. This session will highlight what made it across the finish line and what it means for you and your community, while also providing context on the policy debates and competing priorities that shaped those outcomes. Topics will range from new demolition funding and vape regulations to by-right ADUs and county commissioner roles on CVBs. Along the way, we’ll touch on why certain proposals advanced, why others stalled, and what those dynamics may signal for future sessions.

Are your working forests working for you? Forest Carbon, Land, and Labor

Dylan M. Harris

As the ‘new’ carbon economy — the production and selling of carbon as an abstracted commodity — emerges in the presence of the ‘old carbon economy (e.g., fossil capitalism), what insights may be relevant regarding the role of labor power in determining the contours, trajectory, and potential outcomes for the Just Transition away from fossil fuels towards a more equitable society? What are specific practices — or chokepoints — where ‘new’ carbon is susceptible to labor power, and how might these be engaged to create better conditions for workers and their communities rather than retreading the inequalities of the old carbon economy? This presentation addresses these questions by identifying the labor power of small landowners involved in the forest carbon projects, that is then bundled with other parcels and monitored by third parties to produce additionalities, that are then sold as carbon credits to corporate buyers. What is landowners agglomerated their parcels to demand a higher price, rather than having their carbon aggregated and monitored by a third party? By conceptualizing landowners as workers, and their forest carbon management practices as labor, this presentation argues that landowners can organize the demand better contract conditions. Combining insights from forest site visits and semi-structured interviews with landowners, this presentation makes the case for seizing the means of forest carbon production to shift the ‘new’ carbon economy away from historical patterns of resource dispossession toward a more equitable Just Transition.