Sometime this month, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority will officially take the keys for more than six dozen homes across the city that since the 1980s have been rented to low-income households.
Woodard Properties is selling 74 units that collectively go by the name Dogwood Properties, the name of the entity founded by civil rights leader Eugene Williams in 1980.
“Woodard Properties is honored to be able to assist in CRHA’s mission of providing affordable quality homes now and in the future, and to be a partner in ensuring that Eugene Williams’ critical work is honored forever,” says Anthony Woodard, the company’s CEO.
The City of Charlottesville agreed in April to pay half of the $10 million purchase, and CRHA is using an interest-free loan from Riverbend Development for the rest. CRHA will get to keep all the revenues from rent.
Woodard estimates that the sale price is 30 percent below the market-rate approval for the properties.
As part of that deal, CRHA will agree to keep the properties rented to families and individuals with incomes below 60 percent of the area median income. This provision will be formally recorded in the deed.
The units will not technically be public housing, but will instead be managed as part of the CRHA’s growing collection of properties with rents subsidized by federal housing vouchers.
CRHA Executive Director John Sales says the purchase will allow the agency to accomplish its mission at a time when the landscape for federally funded affordable housing is changing.
“The acquisition of Dogwood will allow CRHA to better utilize the vouchers we administer through the Housing Choice Voucher program,” Sales says. “We have removed the barriers that many landlords have in place for families that are hard to house due to criminal history, credit score, or rental history.”
Last year, CRHA purchased two duplexes on Coleman Street as well as a single family home on Montrose Avenue. Earlier this month, City Council agreed to cover half the cost of the purchase of 100 Harris Rd., another single-family home.
Meanwhile, on the public housing side of CRHA, the first residents have begun to move back into Crescent Halls, a 105-unit structure built in 1976 that has now been fully refurbished as part of a $20 million project. New units are also open at South First Street, a $15 million development built on top of a former ball field.
Half of the units at Crescent Halls are public housing units. At South First Street, 13 are public housing units, 24 are funded through vouchers, and 25 have no subsidies at all.
As for Woodard Properties, it has spent the past several years acquiring properties in the Cherry Avenue corridor including the former IGA at 501 Cherry Ave. Woodard held a community meeting with the Fifeville Neighborhood Association on June 3.