The University of Virginia’s Great and Good strategic plan helped guide the public institution to recently surpass a $5 billion fundraising goal. One item in the plan calls for the creation of a Good Neighbor program.
“Affordable housing is one of the six issues that was identified by the community as being important to work on with UVA, and, as I understand it, affordable housing was the very top critical issue,” says Pace Lochte, assistant vice president for economic development.
UVA has identified three locations where between 1,000 and 1,500 new units would be built on land the school or its foundation owns. The Piedmont Housing Alliance has been selected to partner on developing the Piedmont housing site off Fontaine Avenue, and an out-of-town group called Preservation of Affordable Housing will develop a site at the corner of 10th and Wertland streets.
“It’s a smaller site, about two acres, but a very strategic site,” Lochte says. “It’s on the border of town and gown and across the street from the UVA Medical Center.”
The third site is at the North Fork Discovery Park, recently rezoned by the Albemarle Board of Supervisors for residential use. A partner has not yet been identified. Timelines for each project depend on financing and the time it will take to get building permits.
“Our best guess based on our partners is early 2026 for moving dirt,” Lochte says.
As of March 1, Lochte says negotiations on agreements between UVA and the partners are still underway, and a lot of due diligence and community engagement still needs to occur.
“We’re really trying to identify how we can be complementary to the ongoing efforts of many in this community who have been doing affordable housing for a long time,” she says.
According to Lochte, financing will likely be dependent on low-income housing tax credits, a mechanism PHA will rely on for other affordable projects on the books, such as 501 Cherry, the Park Street Christian Church Apartments, and redevelopment of the Monticello Area Community Action Agency site on Park Street. Those projects will also be fueled by capital improvement program funds from Charlottesville.
The 10th and Wertland site will be steps away from Westhaven, a Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority site that City Council has agreed in principle to put $15 million towards.
UVA is not planning to put financial resources into the project.
“The University of Virginia is investing no taxpayer dollars, no tuition dollars, and we are leasing under long-term lease at a very low rate land that we otherwise do not have a use for,” says Jim Murray, a member of the Board of Visitors.
The two sites announced so far will be reserved for households who make less than 80 percent of area median income, which is $123,000 for a family of four. Lochte says that could mean nurses at UVA could be eligible to live in those units.
At the end of the lease, the buildings would revert to the University of Virginia’s ownership, according to Tim Rose, the UVA Foundation’s chief executive officer.
“That would be for a future board many decades from now to figure out whether you want to demolish them, use the land for UVA purposes, or fix them up and rent them for market rate,” Murray says. “There’s a lot of things you could do. Turn them into dormitories.”
But first, they have to be built.
Ed. note: A previous version of this story mistakenly attributed a Jim Murray quote to Tim Rose. C-VILLE regrets the error.