Yesterday, the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation (CACF) announced that it will give $75,000 to a Richmond-based nonprofit, Virginia Supportive Housing, to get the ball rolling on permanent housing for the local homeless.
As much as anything, Single Room Occupancy housing (SROs) have become hyped as the best solution to the chronic homeless problem here in Charlottesville. SROs are typically studio apartment buildings with on site support services geared toward the chronically homeless.
In May, Virginia Supportive Housing presented city leaders with an overview of their SRO facilities in Richmond and Virginia Beach. “We know how to end chronic homelessness,” said Dave Norris, executive director of the local rotating homeless shelter PACEM (as well as city mayor), at that meeting. In October, City Council included an SRO project in its strategic priorities for use of Charlottesville housing funds. According to a press release from CACF, UVA architecture students are helping Virginia Supportive Housing to review sites in the city. The group hopes to break ground in 2010.
Yet while $75,000 should get the ball rolling, it certainly isn’t enough to get a 60-unit apartment building built, much less staffed. The nonprofit will still need to line up hundreds of thousands of dollars from federal, state and local government.
The $75,000 grant from CACF is the second of three “catalyst” grants the group plans to give to address affordable housing. Last year, it gave $75,000 to the nonprofit Albemarle Housing Improvement Program for its Treesdale Park project.
Click here for C-VILLE’s latest cover story on the local homeless issue.