Month: June 2012

The Youth Movement
We’re not totally unaware that we’ve just created a long series of lists that trumpet the power of America’s least sympathetic set of operators: rich, white men. But hey, let’s be honest about how our preppy town with a hippie heart works. The only thing more insulting than portraying the world as a male-dominated money game is pretending not to do that by peppering these kinds of assessments with token representatives of groups we wish had more say-so. Here’s the good news: Things are getting better. Take a look at this list of young movers and shakers who, if they’re not exactly a multi-ethnic rainbow, are plying their trades in different fields that are likely to make a lasting mark on our community.

Tony Bennett (Photo by Matt Riley)

1. Tony Bennett
UVA Men’s Basketball Coach, age 43
At 43, Tony Bennett is a bit older than the rest of the people on this list, but he bears a different weight of responsibility than his peers in the form of the $1.7 million a year he gets from UVA to revitalize its hoops program. Don’t hate him because he’s rich. Bennett is at the front of a new wave of college basketball coaches who do things the right way. What does that mean? It means, among other things, that he lives and breathes basketball without letting it break down his moral fiber on the recruiting trail. Bennett is still the NCAA’s all-time leader in three point field goal percentage and he spent three years in the NBA with the Charlotte Hornets, so his players can’t challenge his authority on those grounds. And it’s a safe bet he could still trash half of his guards in one-on-one.

He prioritizes teaching, discipline, and defense, and so far his teams have overachieved. The jury is still out on Bennett’s recruiting ability, and in his results-based world, he won’t have too much time to make his case. Have some patience.

UVA takes its hoops seriously and has seen its fair share of high-profile coaches, but with the exception of the Ralph Sampson years, the record book tells the story of a program firmly rooted in the ACC’s second tier. Bennett set school records for wins at Washington State (26) in back-to-back seasons before coming to Charlottesville, and our West Coast sources tell us we still don’t know what we got.

2. Collean Laney
General Manager at The Jefferson Theater, age 32
The acts that hit the stage of the Jefferson aren’t the only reason the historic theater has become the top draw in our community. Since 2011, Collean Laney has been the guiding force behind making sure that playing and attending shows there are a memorable experience. “It really does take a village,” said Laney, who currently leads 40-plus part-time and two full-time staffers.

Laney said hard work is the key to getting ahead in the dog-eat-dog world of the music industry. Sometimes the work involves less glamorous tasks, like changing toilet paper rolls or ousting unruly patrons, but the rewards comes in indelible moments, like bringing a cup of tea to Wanda Jackson and ending up talking about sweaters.

Laney “caught the bug” for the entertainment business after an internship with the New York Times Arts & Leisure event series, then moved up the ranks at LiveNation’s Broadway touring division, and upon her return to Charlottesville, rose quickly to an upper management position at Starr Hill Presents/Redlight Management. She is one of only a handful of female managers at the music company. The typical challenges of the entertainment business feel seamless to Laney, who presents an unassuming figure in her trademark concert tee and “granny” sweater. “This doesn’t feel like a job to me,” she stated with aplomb. “I came here to book weddings and stayed focused on my goals.”

Michael Allenby (Photo by Tom Daly)

3. Michael Allenby
Co-founder of The Artist Farm, age 36
Charlottesville is fast becoming a music industry town. The presence of Coran Capshaw and Redlight Management has meant that musicians will come here to play in the hopes of getting discovered at venues that wouldn’t exist without his influence. But the music industry abhors stasis, and it’s only a matter of time before the apprentice steps up to challenge the master. That ageless premise is playing out in many music business subplots in town, but few as remarkable as the rise of Michael Allenby and The Artist Farm. Having cut his teeth at Red Light at the bottom of the totem pole, Allenby has learned his lessons well and struck out on his own course, establishing himself and his company as a diversified music management firm with a story to tell.

If you’ve ever enjoyed the music of the Infamous Stringdusters, or folked-out hard at The Festy Experience, you’ve gotten yourself a taste of what Allenby has in store for our little big town. Guided by an aesthetic he calls “high country living,” Allenby is out to mix the no-nonsense professionalism he learned at Redlight with the motivational modus operandi he used to lure the Stringdusters from Nashville on his way to becoming a pied piper to a whole generation of people who don’t want to see the lines separating folk, Americana, bluegrass and jam band music.

Wes Bellamy (Photo by Nick Strocchia)

4. Wes Bellamy
Teacher at Albemarle High School, age 25
Wes Bellamy is a relative newcomer to Charlottesville, but in his few short years in town, he’s made his presence felt. Originally from a hard knocks neighborhood in Atlanta, Bellamy, a South Carolina State University graduate, came to the city in 2009 to participate in the African-American Teaching Fellows program, a local nonprofit that offers scholarship money to students in the field of education.

Bellamy arrived thinking he’d teach for a few years, go to law school and get into politics, but he quickly abandoned the goal of becoming a state senator for his new calling—teaching. After spending time working with local teens from low-income families through the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, he turned down admission to four different law schools to become a substitute teacher at Monticello High. Last year he took a full time teaching position at Albemarle High School and now he has plans to become a high school principal.

But his professional role doesn’t capture Bellamy’s impact. As a member of the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia, he has used his business acumen and street smarts to raise money to start a nonprofit after-school program called Helping Young People Evolve (H.Y.P.E.), which provides boxing instruction and mentoring to boys. The venture has been so successful that Bellamy is looking to expand its services, offering a tennis program to local girls. More importantly, Bellamy is an unapologetically ambitious black male role model in a city that often loses its best African-American talent.

5. Hebah Fisher
Program Director at Community Investment Collaborative, age 22
Hebah Fisher didn’t envision putting down roots here when she came to Charlottesville from the Middle East, where she’d lived since she was 12, to study at UVA. She graduated with a degree in Global Development Studies in 2011, but instead of heading off for distant horizons, she found her focus locally.

As the president of Student Entrepreneurs for Economic Development, she provided free consulting services to small businesses and NGOs, which launched her into a community-wide discussion about fostering startups in Charlottesville. She’s now the primary staff member at the Community Investment Collaborative, a new nonprofit that is training its first class of local entrepreneurs.

Fisher works with CIC’s startup clients on a weekly basis, facilitating discussions with established business owners who offer insights on various aspects of business management. And that’s just the beginning: CIC will soon offer small loans to help entrepreneurs make their business plans reality.

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IF I HAD THE POWER…

Grace Paine (Photo by John Robinson)

Grace Paine
Charlottesville High School senior and co-editor-in-chief of the Knight Time Review, age 16
“Although I’m tempted to rattle off a laundry list of acts that would immediately bring about global peace and security (provide every person with access to food, drinking water, and medical care, for example), I want to address this question as realistically as possible. So, taking a look at my own community, I would focus on one issue that every leader must grapple with: education.

Educationalist Ken Robinson once compared our school system to the fast food industry. We have adopted a model of standardization and conformity, he said, rather than customization to individual circumstances. This model does not serve individuals or society well.

If I had the power to change the system, I would focus on transforming our educational system so it both accepts and takes advantage of the diverse spectrum of human talent available to us. Our current system presumes that only one path brings happiness and success—do well in school, get into a ‘good’ college, get a high-paying job. Yet, I know far too many adults who have paid attention to those rules, secured a ‘respectable job,’ and still feel unsatisfied with their professional lives.

The relentless emphasis on standardized testing and standardized learning teaches students that only one type of intelligence is valuable in today’s world. Not only is this untrue, but it leaves many students disillusioned and unable to recognize their own strengths. Human development is not as linear as the system dictates, and our education system should not and cannot be one-size-fits-all.

If I had the power, I would liberate our school system from the pressure to turn out ‘high achieving’ students as defined by the College Board or SOLs. I would give teachers more room to creatively engage their students, and students more freedom to pursue their passions.”

Supporters of UVA President Teresa Sullivan gather at the third rally on the Lawn in less than a week. A rising tide of anger over the Board of Visitors’ decision to force Sullivan’s resignation has led to demands for her reinstatement and for more faculty input in University governance. (Photo by Cole Geddy/UVA Public Affairs)

In the two weeks of turmoil that have followed the surprise announcement that UVA President Teresa Sullivan would step down in August, the University community has tried to understand why the Board of Visitors decided to force a popular president out of office just two years after appointing her.

The closest they’ve gotten to an answer is a 10-point list released by Rector Helen Dragas last Thursday, detailing serious challenges the University faces. As Sullivan’s supporters rallied for her reinstatement, they criticized the rationale offered for her ouster for raising more questions than it answers—and for its long delay in coming.

Dragas’ list outlines the “very high hurdles” the University faces: declining state and federal funding, no existing plan for online learning, a medical center and financial aid program that are sucking up resources, a need to retain faculty and land big gifts, and a lack of accountability for academic quality.

The implication, of course, was that Sullivan wasn’t cutting it as a top administrator. “We deserve better—the rapid development of a plan that includes goals, costs, sources of funds, timelines and individual accountability,” Dragas wrote.

But in the months before she was forced to resign, Sullivan had offered her own explanations of the University’s challenges and detailed her plans to meet them. In a memo penned in early May and in recent interviews, she beat the Board to the punch on a number of issues, and supporters say her shrewd take undermines critics’ condemnation of her leadership.

On numerous occasions this spring, Sullivan addressed the difficulty of recruiting and retaining faculty—a key concern listed in Dragas’ statement. In her memo, Sullivan acknowledged that the University’s recruitment process is “less than adequate,” and in a Q&A with UVA Today in March, she said stagnating compensation was making it harder to hold on to professors.

“We’re asking a lot of loyalty from that faculty member to stay here when they’re leaving money on the table,” she said. “So that’s certainly a risk.”

As she later pointed out, Sullivan just oversaw the first faculty pay raise in four years, but she said the issue is about more than bigger paychecks. In May, she suggested that fellowships designed to help faculty improve their teaching, coupled with an emphasis on marketing the University’s best qualities, could make it a more attractive employer.

Dragas also implied Sullivan’s fundraising skills were lacking. There have been a few big donations to fund new squash courts and a center for the study of yoga and other contemplative sciences, she said, but there hasn’t been “a specific vision and plan” for going after major gifts to support “central institutional priorities.”

Sullivan seemed to anticipate that dig. In her own statement in the wake of her forced resignation, she reminded the Board that she had overseen a 15.6 percent increase in giving since her arrival in 2010. “Fundraising takes time,” she wrote. “A new President first has to meet donors and establish trust and rapport.”

Sullivan’s May memo also explained her budget reforms, which are already in motion: she implemented an “internal financial model” that pushed financial decisions from central administration down to the deans of the University’s schools, encouraging accountability, she said, and allowing leaders to put their heads together and collaborate on cost-cutting and shared projects.

In her statement last week, Sullivan unapologetically called those cost-saving measures “small bets,” doubling down on her commitment to incremental change. Dragas has insisted rapid, sweeping reforms are necessary at UVA, but Sullivan has stuck to her guns: a slow approach is the sensible way to trim waste and plan expansion at a great institution, because “no single initiative will do serious damage if it doesn’t work out.”

(photo by Dan Addison/UVA Public Affairs)

As for concerns over having enough resources to support the medical center and AccessUVA, the school’s financial aid program—both of which divert a lot of resources from the rest of the University—Sullivan’s memo points out that separate strategic planning efforts to tackle both have been underway since 2010. And while Sullivan hasn’t publicly supported the kind of online learning initiatives Dragas has said will be important in the future, she did give reasons for her caution: “Online instruction is no panacea,” she said last week. “It is surprisingly expensive, has limited revenue potential, and unless carefully managed, can undermine the quality of instruction.”

The fact that the ousted president was already tackling many of the Board’s stated concerns—and, judging by her own surprise at being forced out, hadn’t been told to redirect her efforts—has led some Sullivan supporters see Dragas’ detailed statement as a brush-off at best.

It didn’t satisfy Darden professor Elizabeth Powell, who joined a number of faculty members in calling for Sullivan’s reinstatement at a Sunday rally on the Lawn. “What I’m concerned by is the generality of [Dragas’] analysis,” Powell said—they’re the same concerns every big state school is facing.

And Powell echoed a criticism shared by many of her colleagues in recent days: The explanation is incomplete. A list of concerns is one thing, but it doesn’t answer their key question—what was their president doing that was so wrong it called for her dismissal after only two years?

“My fear is that it’s a post-hoc rationale,” Powell said, a document drawn up to justify a decision already made by a handful of Board members behind closed doors. And if those who unseated Sullivan did have good plans for strengthening the University, the feeling is their top-down approach set them back severely.

“The behavior of the Board discredits any strategy that they’re putting forth,” said Powell.

The Investors
You know the saying, “Money makes the world go ’round.” A bit crass, but apt for the group we’re about to profile. Money, of course, plays its role, and the people behind the money can be kingmakers or kings in a town of this size. Why do we have so many successful investors in Charlottesville? Three reasons. First, money likes company and there’s been money here for a long time. Second, if you’re playing in a global marketplace, you can live anywhere as long as you can fly to New York—or Omaha, for that matter. Third, UVA’s got two business schools. Apparently people get attached to the place and decide to start private equity firms.

Ted Weschler (Photo by Jen Fariello)

1. Ted Weschler
Investment manager at Berkshire Hathaway
In 2010, Ted Weschler was a successful hedge fund manager with a mergers and acquisition background who happened to be a low-key owner of The Hook. Flash forward two years, and the Charlottesville resident is one of Warren Buffett’s key lieutenants at Berkshire Hathaway, potential heir to a large chuck of the company’s $100 billion investment portfolio alongside fellow hedge fund samurai Todd Combs. What happened? The Wharton graduate was fortunate enough (emphasis on fortune) to win a lunch with the legendary stock picker when he bid $2,626,311 at Buffett’s annual charity auction.

Often compared to Buffett, his role model, for their similar investment strategies, Weschler, 50, was already a star before Buffett tapped him for the job at BH on account of his remarkable record at Peninsula Capital Advisors, the hedge fund he founded in 1999 on Main Street. But the friendship he and the Oracle of Omaha forged over two charity lunches (yes, there were two) has changed his power footprint entirely.

Weschler maintains a low profile for a near billionaire, but he has a quiet yet strong influence in Charlottesville. He made a total of $48,500 in campaign contributions in 2011, over half of that sum going to Governor Bob McDonnell’s Opportunity Virginia PAC. He has also served on the boards of prominent local companies like Virginia National Bank. Weschler continues to live in Charlottesville and make weekly trips to Berkshire Hathaway headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. As his stock at Berkshire Hathaway continues to rise, Weschler’s power and influence in Charlottesville will likely follow suit, since both Weschler and Buffett claim they like to “buy what they know.” Ask the Daily Progress about that one.

2. Hunter Craig
Vice Chairman and co-founder of Virginia National Bank
2011 didn’t look like a year in which Hunter Craig’s star would rise. On the hook for close to $40 million along with his father-in-law, Wick McNeely, for the failure of Biscuit Run, Craig is embroiled in a state tax appeal that could have a significant impact on his net worth. On top of that, the highly publicized debacle dented his reputation as a solid gold developer with a list of investors that we could have published on its own for this issue. Fast forward to May, and Craig faced the prospect of something like a hostile takeover attempt from Mark Giles (No. 5 on this list) to retain his seat of power at Virginia National Bank, which he co-founded in 1998. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

Craig was one of the three members of the UVA Board of Visitors’ executive committee to accept President Teresa Sullivan’s resignation, and then a week later he was one of the three Board members to request a meeting to vote on her reinstatement. He is also the director of the UVA Foundation, which helps the University manage financial and real estate assets and use or administer gifts and grants. As one of two local members of the Board of Visitors, Craig’s back-and-forth on Sullivan shows how heavily the decision is weighing on him. A lifelong Charlottesvillian, Craig donated $25,000 to Governor McDonnell’s Opportunity Virginia PAC in 2010 and made $33,301 in contributions to McDonnell’s 2009 gubernatorial campaign. As of 2011, Craig holds 1,305 acres with an approximate assessed value of $126 million. If we were ranking power across categories, his range of influence, deep roots, and stiff chin would make him an easy top five pick.

3. Jaffray Woodriff and Michael Geismar
Founders of Quantitative Investment Management
Jaffray Woodriff is only 42 years old and he’s easily the most Googled name in the C-VILLE archives. Oh, and he also started Quantitative Investment Management, one of the world’s biggest managed futures firms with more than $4 billion at its disposal.

Woodriff grew up on a farm in Virginia and graduated from UVA’s McIntire School of Commerce in 1991. A self-taught trader, he started Blue Ridge Trading the same year in a rented apartment. After a decade of making bets with other people’s money, Woodriff began trading with his own coin. In 2003, he and Michael Geismar, his college roommate, started QIM on Market Street, and began taking in outside money. The company has earned nearly $2 billion for its investors using its method of “quantitative behavioral finance,” and Forbes estimated Woodriff’s personal earnings alone at $90 million.

Geismar made headlines recently for a $710,000 blackjack run at a weekend conference in Las Vegas, during which he applied the math theory (he has a B.S. in math from UVA) and the gambler’s mentality QIM employs to beat the house. He later announced his intention to donate his winnings to his charities, the MLG Foundation and the PB&J Fund.

4. Robert Hardie
Managing director of Level One Partners
Robert Hardie is something of a Renaissance man. The managing director of investment firm Level One Partners, Hardie also chairs Intrinergy LLC, a Richmond-based company that develops renewable energy technology, and serves as director of The Riverstone Group, a company owned by his father-in-law that’s been snapping up luxury hotel properties in Virginia, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Most recently, Riverstone acquired Keswick Hall, a storied playground for Central Virginia’s money crowd.

Hardie also serves on St. Anne’s Belfield School’s Board of Trustees and, oh, by the way, he’s on the UVA Board of Visitors. He was appointed to the board back in 2008 by Tim Kaine (Hardie was a big-ticket supporter of the former governor), but he’s been a Wahoo for years. Hardie got his B.A. in 1987, and in 1999, he earned a Ph.D. in management from Darden. He even worked as an adjunct professor at Darden from 1999 to 2007.

As the Sullivan saga unfolds, Hardie has been thrust into the local limelight as one of two notable abstentions on the vote to install Carl Zeithaml as interim president of the University. When Hardie’s term on the Board comes to an end in July, it will be Governor Bob McDonnell’s call whether he’s appointed for four more years, but before that happens he’ll cast an important vote on Sullivan’s future. Regardless of whether he’s reappointed to the Board, Hardie will continue to punch his weight in Charlottesville, on and off Grounds.

5. Mark Giles
Managing director of Panda Holdings, LLC
Mark Giles was chairman and CEO of Virginia National Bank before he stepped down last December, in part to protest the influence of Vice Chairman Hunter Craig and VNB co-founder Wick McNeely, whom he felt dragged VNB through the mud during the Biscuit Run fiasco. Giles tried unsuccessfully to climb his way back onto the board earlier this year, but ultimately came up way short on the votes he needed to move his agenda. Still, Giles is a respected figure in the local finance community and serves on a number of boards, including the Thomas Jefferson Area United Way, Computers4Kids Program, Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, Diffusion Pharmaceuticals, and Martha Jefferson Hospital. The managing member of Panda Holdings, LLC, which invests and manages private capital, Giles received a B.S. from the McIntire School of Commerce at UVA in 1977, and a JD from the UVA School of Law in 1980. When the Paramount Theater was facing a budget crisis, its board looked to Giles to bring stability, and he took over the position of Chairman of the Board, which governs the theater in terms of staffing, programming, and finances.

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IF I HAD THE POWER…

Lynn Wiber (Photo by John Robinson)

Lynn Wiber
Homeless advocate, age 55
“In high school, I had this impossible dream to run the world behind the scenes. Some 35 years later, I’d still like to be the power behind the throne, even for a day, to bring about social change. These are some of the things I would do:

Everyone would pay their fair share of taxes. Everyone. Corporations, small businesses, and every economic class. The key word here is fair. Parents who stay home with their kids would be paid a salary, and would have to take child-rearing classes to become eligible. Day care would be part of the education system. Health care would be for everyone, not just for those who can afford it. Hospitals would be in the business of taking care of sick people and not just making profits at the expense of patient care. Those who offer essential services—like firefighters, RNs, paramedics, EMTs—would be well compensated. I believe that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Locally, public transportation should be extended north to Hollymead Town Center and south to the regional jail. Instead of the local business association opposing The Haven, they would build a partnership to provide job training to the poor and homeless so they can get back to work.

Rather than a new hotel at the corner of Main and McIntire, let’s erect a building that would offer housing to all income levels. I do know this: I’d have already made the nine units at The Crossings available to the county residents they were promised to—our citizens should not be sleeping on the streets.

Basically, it comes down to this: People should be considered more important than profit. Only if the Federal, state, and local governments team up with private citizens, nonprofits, and charities can this kind of sea change come about. If I were in charge, it would have already happened.”

Rector Helen Dragas and the rest of the Board of Visitors drew ire over the last week for their handling of the ouster of Teresa Sullivan. But while the forcing out of a president is unprecedented here at UVA, that’s not the case nationwide. (Photo by Cole Geddy/UVA Public Affairs)

While the University continues to grapple with the aftermath of the Board of Visitors’ decision to push out President Sullivan, a peer institution on the West Coast is experiencing the end of a similar saga—and whatever the outcome of the ongoing battle over governance on Grounds, UVA can learn from the experiences of the University of Oregon.

Michael Gottfredson was named the new president of Oregon, a public research institution with an undergraduate population similar to UVA’s, on Friday, June 15, six months after the state’s Board of Higher Education voted on something that’s familiar here in Charlottesville: the decision to force the school’s president out after just two years on the job.

According to news reports, Richard Lariviere was an unconventional president well-liked by faculty and students. But he ran afoul of the state officials who act as the university’s governors when he proposed to fill the gap in state funding independently through bonds and matched donations. He also defied the governor by insisting on raising salaries higher than requested. The state Board unanimously voted him out last November and told him to pack his bags before Christmas.

It didn’t go over well. University leaders immediately jumped into action, with the first emergency Faculty Senate meeting in more than two years, followed by protests and petitions.

As at UVA, much of the anger was centered around the process by which the president was forced out. Robert Kyr, a music professor and president of Oregon’s Faculty Senate, said he and his colleagues were kept in the dark about the decision to dump Lariviere, and “felt very betrayed” that the state Board made such a decision without their input.

“We felt strongly that we should have been part of the process of evaluating the president before the firing,” he said.

Protests and anger persisted on campus until the semester’s end. Ultimately, Oregon faculty and students seeking reinstatement of their president didn’t get what they were asking for, but the way they dealt with the aftermath might offer insight into the process of rebuilding trust in the wake of an unpopular ousting.

The faculty at Oregon demanded closer involvement in their university’s governance, and they got it. Faculty, students, administrative employees, researchers, and general staff were formally included in the committee that searched for a new full-time president in a process Kyr said was “a very fair one based on collaboration and consultation.”

The chancellor and the Board accepted the recommendation, which Kyr said was a sign that the relationship has already improved.

“We’re working hard to maintain that as we move forward with our new president,” he said.
The upheaval in Oregon isn’t the only precedent for what’s happening at UVA. Penn State and Louisiana State University have seen presidents fired in the last year, and there have been two high-profile resignations at the University of Illinois.

Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council for Education, said public universities have always experienced tension and turnover, and it’s increasingly common as they face serious financial challenges. But conflict doesn’t have to spell doom for schools.

“Great organizations can move beyond turmoil, no matter how significant it may seem when they’re in the middle of it,” he said.

John Conover of the Legal Aid Justice Center is representing overcharged low-income residents in a class action lawsuit against the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority. (Photo by John Robinson)

The Legal Aid Justice Center has filed a class action lawsuit against the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority claiming the CRHA’s mismanagement has led to unfair and unlawful utility overcharges for the majority of the city’s approximately 2,000 public housing residents.

“We’re just trying to enforce the law,” said the LAJC’s John Conover, who is representing the plaintiffs. “We’re not trying to change policy or get special treatment for anybody.”

According to the Federal United States Housing Act, public housing tenants—including those here in Charlottesville—cannot be charged more than 30 percent of their annual income for rent, which includes the basic utilities of electricity, water, and heat. But the LAJC claims at least three quarters of Charlottesville’s public housing tenants have been overcharged for utility usage for nearly a decade.

Federal law requires the CRHA and other public housing authorities to set adequate allowances to cover reasonable utility use. Conover said the government requires that professional staff analyze and evaluate the allowance periodically, but the CRHA has not done so since 2003. The agency has gone on a “permanent vacation,” said Conover.

He said because the allowance is set so low, about 75 percent of residents living in CRHA units are paying, or have paid, extra charges for utilities.

“Being overcharged by any amount is difficult for any human being, but when you have extremely low income, that burden is even harder,” said Brandon Collins of the Public Housing Association of Residents.

Collins said almost every public housing resident he knows has, at some point, paid these extra charges, and he has seen firsthand the effect it has on families. It forces them to borrow money, go to payday lenders, and he said he has even seen incidents of eviction as a result of these overcharges. Some have to forgo necessities like food and medicine, he said. 

“That’s not right,” said Collins, “and we’re going to stand up for our tenants.”
According to the LAJC, plaintiffs and their attorneys have spent almost a year attempting to negotiate a resolution, but the CRHA has been unwilling to meet with them.

Conover and Collins said they’re asking the CRHA for three things. They want the Housing Authority to reevaluate its utility allowance and establish a new policy that will better accommodate the needs of its tenants, and they want each tenant to be reimbursed for all overcharges since 2003, to the tune of about $400,000.

Finally, Conover said the CRHA promised an incentive of a $50 U.S. savings bond for residents who keep their utility usage within the allowance. The CRHA has not followed through, Conover said, so the suit also demands the CRHA acknowledge and honor its promise to award the bonds.

The CRHA has remained silent on the matter. Housing Authority Chairman Hosea Mitchell and Executive Director Connie Dunn both said the city attorney handling the case advised them against commenting.

Conover said the CRHA is covered by insurance for situations such as this, and he predicted that “they will just deny everything and then it will go off into the lawyer world.”
Though he said he’s trying not to get his hopes up, Conover said Virginia judges “tend to move things along quickly,” and he remains optimistic that the case will be resolved in favor of his clients.