CHARLESTON, W.Va. — More Middle-income families should be attracted to the area following the construction of more new homes coming to Charleston’s West Side.
Those from the Charleston Land Reuse Agency’s New Construction Incentive Program held an open house event Thursday afternoon for their first newly-constructed home under the initiative. It’s the first of eight to come to the West Side through the program.
Charleston’s Land Reuse Agency member John Butterworth said it’s a collaboration between the agency and private developers based on a current need in the area. 
“We needed to find ways to bring new single-family construction to the City of Charleston, and the Land Reuse Agency board with the support from city council and Mayor Goodwin were able to develop the New Construction Incentive Program to basically help developers overcome the barriers to building,” said Butterworth.
He said the incentive program is a tiered approach. New single-family homes that the developer bring to the table receives a cash incentive of $35,000, while such as in this instance with their first home, Butterworth said lots that are already owned by the agency and get used as a way to recycle it back into redevelopment, the incentive is $50,000.
The developer for the West Side project is LX3 Reality and Scott Barnette with the company said the fully-constructed home they opened up to be viewed Thursday, located at 401 Ohio Avenue, is a three bedroom, two bath 1,350 square foot home.
He said the eight homes they are currently developing on the West Side are similar in nature intended for mid-income families.
“They’re all manufactured homes and put on a permanent foundation that allows us to do things in an affordable way that still enables people to be eligible for conventional financing for these houses,” Barnette said.
Barnette said as home developers, LX3 was ready to jump on this new opportunity to come to the City of Charleston.
“When we found out that the city was offering this program, we got together with a group of investors who had an interest in seeing affordable housing brought to the West Side and we felt like this was a great opportunity to do that,” Barnette said.
Butterworth said the lot had previously had a home on it but it burned down four years prior and then it fell delinquent for taxes. He said it’s a similar story for all of the homes they are developing through the program.
“The Land Reuse Agency’s role here is to try to take lots like that that are being abandoned either because the owner has moved off or they have gone tax delinquent, and try to get them back out there to the tax roles, to taxability to vitality to the neighborhood,” he said.
Butterworth said before the initiative, the lot would have probably sat vacant for many years. 
He said it’s a crucial need to bring more new housing development opportunities into the area, because with that, it will bring new jobs and population growth.
“Housing is a quality of life issue obviously for the individuals and families that come to live here, but at the end of the day, it’s also an economic development issue, we look at efforts from folks like Advantage Valley looking at regional economic development, housing is one of our barriers to really growing our economy here in the Kanawha Valley and in the City of Charleston,” said Butterworth.
Last year, the regional economic development nonprofit Advantage Valley conducted a housing survey showing that approximately 13,000 new households will come to the region as a result of the projected economic growth within the next five years.
So far, Charleston’s Land Reuse Incentive Program has stimulated the construction of more than two dozen homes this year.