Henry County officials broke ground this week on a new housing project that will build new homes on a formerly blighted site.
Supervisors, county staff and others converged Tuesday at Villa Heights, the name of the upcoming 13-house subdivision in Collinsville.
“This project was a long time coming,” said Joe Bryant, the vice chair of the county board of supervisors and its Collinsville representative, who went on to talk about the county’s need for housing. “We have to have houses to bring in affordable housing, to bring in new people to different parts of the community. If you want people to work, you have to have houses for people to stay in.”
Bryant, a Collinsville native who grew up near the site, described it as it was decades prior.
“I can tell you when I was young, my grandmother lived about four houses [down] for most of her life,” Bryant said. “They made this place beautiful, they policed this place all the time. For me Villa Heights was a great place to live and a great place to raise [families].” 
This is in contrast to what the site would eventually become. The area is in the middle of a residential area with other single-family homes. The abandoned structures were heavily damaged, some with collapsed roofs. Officials also expressed concern that the area served as a hub for criminal activity.
Last year, the county took legal action to seize ownership of the site after categorizing it as blighted. Removing the dilapidated houses and prepping the area for construction came with a $228,000 price tag.
“We’re looking for a transformative change for this community,” said Lee Clark, the county’s director of planning, zoning and inspections.
The county partnered with organizations, including The Harvest Foundation, to demolish the existing blighted structures in favor of new housing.
[Disclosure: The Harvest Foundation is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
“This is a great day … to address an issue not only in Henry County but across the country,” Harvest Foundation Vice President DeWitt House said about affordable housing. “This is the first of many we hope will address the critical issue of housing in our community.”
The groundbreaking kicks off the project’s construction phase, according to Clark. Current plans are to construct the initial three homes, with additional homes to follow. While construction is set to start within the next few weeks, Clark said it’s still too early to designate an end date for the project as a whole.
Last year, supervisors awarded the contract to construct the first three homes to Taylor Enterprises, a Bassett-based firm.
When completed, Villa Heights will be a community of 13 single-family homes.
Clark and others emphasized the importance of making the homes affordable. Clark said the county is not seeking to turn a profit from this project; when homes are completed and go up for sale, the county intends to sell them at cost. That means around the amount to construct each home, he said, which is anticipated to be in the neighborhood of around $200,000.
“Henry County is not in this to make money,” Clark said. “With the help of the Harvest Foundation, we hope to make these things even more affordable than they were to begin with.”
Officials have yet to determine if there will be income requirements for prospective buyers, he said.
“Henry County isn’t doing this because we want to be in the housing business,” he said. “Henry County is doing this because we feel that we need to be in the housing business. Just for a short period of time we want to create an environment where other developers can see the potential and take off with it.”
