Cava, who said his portfolio caters to Housing Choice Voucher holders (formerly known as Section 8), described the pint-sized houses as an affordable, efficient way to grow his rental portfolio and boost housing supply in the city.
How we reported this story
After the General Assembly voted to legalize accessory dwelling units statewide, we got curious how (or whether) property owners in Richmond were taking advantage of a 2023 decision by the City Council allowing the structures locally.
Because the city’s online repository of building permits doesn’t support searching documents in a way that would turn up ADUs, we used an AI tool to scrape the data, which we then manually verified.
The resulting dataset revealed a spike in interest in the structures recently and that one property owner in particular — developer Frank Cava — was responsible for most of those plans. We contacted Cava, interviewed him about his plans and toured of one of the ADUs he has under construction. We also talked to neighbors of ADUs that were being built or had already been constructed how they feel about the units.