By Katie Kenny
In the past few decades, rising housing costs have forced many families who have lived in Charlottesville for generations to move out of the city. They’ve left for Louisa, Fluvanna, and Greene counties and the City of Waynesboro, localities close enough to commute to Charlottesville but where the cost of living is more in line with the median incomes.
Rachel has lived in the Charlottesville area her whole life. Now 25, she works as a barista and supplements her income with freelance marketing, brand management, and digital content editing. Growing up, she says, her family could afford to live in Albemarle County, but when she was 15, they moved to Charlottesville.
“We were unable to afford to rent a home to live in, but we were able to find an apartment,” Rachel says. As an adult, she has found that one-bedroom and studio apartments in areas near bus lines are close to the same price her parents paid for a two-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of the city 10 years ago. According to the census, Charlottesville’s median gross rent from 2016-2020 was $1,188. For comparison, in Boston, among the most expensive housing markets in the country, the median gross rent those same years was $1,685. According to Rentdata.org, the Charlottesville fair market rent area is more expensive than 95 percent of the state of Virginia.
Owning is no easier for lower- and middle-income households. According to the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors, in the first quarter of 2022, the median sale price of homes in Charlottesville was $412,00 and the median home price is $75,000 higher than it was two years ago.
Affordability and equity are among the most pressing matters for City Council as it works to implement its new Comprehensive Plan. This document, required by the state for every Virginia locality every five years, for the first time addresses injustices in housing opportunities, and strives to tackle the affordable housing problem. Beyond housing, the city’s new Comprehensive Plan covers topics such as land use, transportation, communities, and housing as a vision for the next several years. In Charlottesville, the Planning Commission works to create the plan and then advises City Council on its implementation. In November 2021, City Council unanimously voted to adopt the 2021 Comprehensive Plan Update.
Affordable housing has emerged as the city’s key issue over the past five years, says Rory Stolzenberg, who has served on the Charlottesville Planning Commission since 2018. After the Unite the Right rally in August 2017, Stolzenberg says “we started to hear from a much broader set of voices in the community.”
In 2018, the Planning Commission completed a housing needs assessment and extended the Comprehensive Plan process. The assessment found that demand significantly exceeded supply. For households earning less than 60 percent of the area median income, the assessment found the market shortcomings are forcing those households to spend too much of their income for housing, live in overcrowded or substandard housing conditions, move outside the city to find less expensive housing, or face homelessness. In 2019, City Council brought on consultants to help create an Affordable Housing Plan, and assist in finishing the Comprehensive Plan.
In the Affordable Housing section, the completed 2021 Comprehensive Plan calls for a pledge of at least $10 million per year for the next 10 years for affordable housing. In 2022, City Council dedicated $10.6 million in subsidy and tax relief, meeting the goal outlined in the Comprehensive Plan. Direct subsidies are distributed among various nonprofits and divided between development projects to create more affordable housing and funding for homelessness services, down-payment assistance programs to allow families to buy homes, and home repairs and energy retrofits.
Beyond the goal of funding, Stolzenberg emphasizes the importance of land use and zoning to create change and increase affordability. In 1955, the city first hired Harland Bartholomew & Associates to clear out lower-income neighborhoods from the center of the city. The firm recommended street enlargement and made zoning more exclusive. It also directed Charlottesville’s first urban renewal project in Vinegar Hill, a working-class Black neighborhood. In 1965, the Housing and Redevelopment Authority razed the entire neighborhood. The destruction led to the displacement of over 500 residents and 40 businesses and churches. Seeking to reverse the damage wrought, the 2021 plan eases restrictions on housing density and expands accepted affordable housing types.
The Future Land Use Map is meant to be implemented into specific law through zoning districts. The map calls for triplexes to be legal on lots in the city, and for more housing in certain designated areas.
This new map has created controversy and prompted hundreds of public comments. The group Citizens for Responsible Planning argues that “the draft plan does not indicate how increased density will lead to affordable housing as opposed to more expensive development.” In December, several anonymous Charlottesville property owners filed a lawsuit against the city in response to the Comprehensive Plan and Future Land Use Map they claim fails to be “general in nature” and to supply adequate transportation infrastructure with increased density. The plaintiffs live in areas designated as medium and higher intensity residential and want to remain in lower density areas. The city responded in April, asking the court to reveal the identities of the plaintiffs, and releasing a formal objection to the legal basis of the case.
The plan focuses on adding significantly more housing in areas where housing is already expensive, so that if there is an increase in land prices, homeowners in those areas will be less likely to be displaced from a resulting tax increase. People will be incentivized to keep existing units, and can earn additional income through leasing accessory dwelling units in their backyards. The map designates sensitive areas that are more at risk of displacement in higher minority and lower-income areas. Stolzenberg hopes council will implement more inclusionary zoning requirements regulating a minimum number of affordable units in any future developments.
Increased awareness of discriminatory housing policy is reflected throughout the new Comprehensive Plan. The word equity was used just three times in the 2013 plan, but it was used 85 times in the new Comprehensive Plan. Stolzenberg says the role of equity is the foundation of the plan, and central to the instructions given to the consulting team.
The census cites an owner-occupied housing rate in Charlottesville of 40.1 percent, making homeowners a minority. “There are many more renters than homeowners, but they’re traditionally not part of the process, and their concerns aren’t as central to the decisions policymakers are making right now,” Stolzenberg says. In writing the current Comprehensive Plan, a great effort was made to receive input from residents who are at risk of being pushed out and cannot afford to live in a home in the city. According to citydata.com, in 2019, the median household income in Charlottesville was $61,261, which was 24.8 percent less than the state’s median annual income of $76,456.
Another player in the affordable housing plan is the Charlottesville Redevlopment and Housing Authority. Most of its funding comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and it received $3 million from City Council in 2022.
Betsy Roettger, the assistant dean of students and a lecturer in the urban and environmental planning department at UVA, served two terms as a commissioner on the CRHA. As a board member, Roettger advised the executive director, helped maintain financial stability, wrote grants, and made partnerships with other affordable housing providers. Though the board is supposed to be looking strategically to the future, Roettger says “because the state of housing is so unpredictable and chaotic and they are so underfunded, there ended up being a lot of emergency situations.” For instance, she remembers an air conditioner went down in a building, and the CRHA had to scramble to keep people cool.
Roettger describes affordable housing as a ladder, where “the median income a person makes translates into what type of housing they can apply for.” The CRHA serves about 1,000 families within 0-30 percent of the area median income, and Piedmont Housing serves those earning between 40 and 80 percent of area median income. Habitat for Humanity focuses on home ownership, requiring people to have higher and more stable incomes to quality.
There are 376 public housing units that are cleaned and maintained by the city, but the city cannot add more public housing units due to the Faircloth Amendment, a provision to the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998, which prevents housing authorities from constructing further public housing units than existed in 1999. The city can, however, implement more Section 8 vouchers.
Because HUD sets the standard market rate and provides subsidies, residents often struggle to locate affordable apartments. When they’re forced to leave the city to find a place they can afford with their voucher, it often means less access to transportation and other infrastructure for those who work in Charlottesville.
Roettger says organizations must not just focus on one piece of the affordable housing challenge, but work together to help residents move from public housing to Section 8 vouchers to market rate units.
“When I first came on, everyone was fighting for city funds,” Roettger says, “but it would be great if we all work together.” In Charlottesville, the Housing Authority is separate from City Council, so there has been some friction between the two groups, depending on leadership.
The CRHA, like the Planning Commission, has recently worked to better include residents’ voices in the conversation and decision-making process. Roettger explains that residents were not traditionally treated well, so recently, the Housing Authority has worked with the Public Housing Association of Residents, a neighborhood leadership group, to maintain the 376 units and prevent displacement during redevelopment.
The CRHA is focused on big redevelopment projects so residents can move into new housing while their units are being renovated or rebuilt. When it comes to density, from Roettger’s perspective, the more people you can fit, the more people you can serve. Though it does not always guarantee affordability, density helps with construction costs.
But density can have implications on pre-existing sites. On South First Street, a site with mostly two-story townhomes, the city opted for as much density as possible in the redevelopment project. But the CRHA pushed back and supported residents in a plan with more units, while also maintaining front and back yards.
Additionally, HUD suggests mixing income as much as possible, with the view that this will help lower-income people move up the ladder. Because the city can’t build more units, it can either add tax-credit units or market-rate units. But in Charlottesville, Roettger says communities are much smaller, and people have created “supportive, cooperative friendships and generational ties to these neighborhoods.” The Housing authority pushed back on HUD’s recommendations, and instead of adding market-rate units, there will be a mix of public housing units and tax-credit units for tenants with less than 60 percent of the area median income.
Perhaps the biggest player in Charlottesville’s affordable housing crisis is UVA. The health system is the largest employer in the city and the county, and along with the professors and support staff, thousands of students come to live here during the academic year.
UVA has traditionally provided enough housing for all first years, and only some housing for upperclassmen. Over the last several decades, the school’s student population has ballooned. Students have moved outward, beyond traditional off-Grounds housing, and have moved into places that have been occupied by families in the community. This process drives up rent in those areas and displaces families.
In the post-recession era, after UVA’s massive growth, many national student housing developers have redeveloped lots, such as The Standard and the Flats at West Village. Though some are billed as luxury, much of off-Grounds housing is cheaper than that on-Grounds. Stolzenberg says if UVA accommodates the students, they will not spread outward. However, Roettger explains that many Charlottesville residents fear further encroachment; The Standard looms over Westhaven, the city’s oldest public housing development.
The Standard contributes $500,000 to city coffers each year in real estate taxes. Because UVA is a nonprofit, it doesn’t pay taxes, so some City Council members propose requiring the university to pay into the city’s affordable housing funds. Further, UVA is not subject to zoning laws, and Stolzenberg fears it will continue to encroach further into the community for additional student housing rather than adding density to the current dorm locations. The university has recently bought property along Ivy Road west of Emmet Street, and if it builds housing in that area, that takes properties off the city tax roll.
UVA’s role in the affordable housing crisis has complex historical roots. The growth of its medical center has displaced many residents from Fifeville and 10th and Page. In a 2016 comprehensive housing analysis by Robert Charles Lesser and Co., it was found that “Charlottesville’s upper-income earners are buying houses at lower prices than they can afford.”
One of Rachel’s siblings, who works for UVA, moved to Fluvanna County to find an affordable house to raise a family. With two incomes, “it surprises me that they are unable to find a place to afford in the area,” Rachel says.
Through the President’s Council on UVA-Community Partnerships, the university has established a goal of developing 1,000-1,5000 affordable units over the next decade on university-owned land. Roettger does not think the university has done well in the past, but she’s hopeful that UVA President Jim Ryan could make positive change. He “has brought fresh hope and energy into generally working with the community and acknowledging a mutual arrangement: you have the university, the people working at the university, and everyone is connected,” she says.
Thinking about the future of affordable housing in Charlottesville, Stolzenberg says he’s “hopeful we’ll start to turn things around from the policy perspective. I think we have already started that process.” Ten million dollars will likely not be enough to address all families below 50 percent of the area median income, but he says the rest of households should not be left out in the cold.
The current voucher system has a multi-year waitlist and can only address a certain portion of the population below the area median income. If rent decreases, a higher percentage of people below the area median income won’t receive vouchers. Because the city will be paying a lower percentage, it will be able to assist more households.
Stolzenberg hopes the city can get to a place where there is no need to ration affordable housing. Charlottesville has started to give out more subsidies, but zoning law has not yet changed. Stolzenberg is hopeful the city can reverse the current housing market trend but does not see a solution where Charlottesville can make sure every family is securely housed in the near, linear future without significantly scaling up policy solutions beyond the present status.