Author: chiara-canzi

When reports of the death of a homeless man at the Coal Tower last Saturday night began circulating in the homeless community, the blame game started. As the story was told, the man was allegedly turned away from PACEM, a seasonal night shelter, for being drunk and later died of exposure, alone. Reports of his death made the rounds and before long a vigil was planned on Facebook to commemorate his life. As it turned out, the man who allegedly froze to death was alive and well.

Although there have been no deaths related to exposure in the last year, the fear of freezing is ever present for Charlottesville’s homeless.

“It’s something you worry about every night,” said Michael Sloan, who has been homeless for several years and has never spent the night at PACEM because of his dog, Jeda.

PACEM, a seasonal night shelter, was founded as a last resort option for men and women without a place to sleep at night. Local congregations, like this church on Rugby Road photographed in 2007, take turns offering shelter, a meal and in some cases showers and clean clothes. (Photo by Eric Kelley)

In a parallel story, however, Linda Doig, an Occupy Charlottesville symphatizer, passed away early this month of what Lieutenant Ronnie Roberts called natural causes. She was found unresponsive in a hotel room on Emmet Street. The Hook reports that she died of complications of alcoholism.

Mayor Dave Norris, former executive director of PACEM, said the homeless are a close-knit community that operates a swift, informal information network.

“You can tell something to one homeless person at one end of town and you can almost guarantee that by the end of the day, a homeless person at the other end of town heard it,” he said.

Although PACEM could do some outreach throughout the community, Colleen Keller, PACEM’s executive director, said the shelter has no requirements for intake.

“There is a big requirement,” said Keller ironically. “You have to come through the door at intake between 5:30pm and 6pm.”

Contrary to public perception, PACEM welcomes those who have been drinking. If a person is intoxicated to the point of not being able to walk, the staff at PACEM sends him to the Mohr Center, a sobering up shelter for men. For women, the very drunk will either end up in jail or the hospital, said Keller.

“We never put someone who is intoxicated back out in the streets because they will freeze,” she said.

There are a few people who are banned because of violence and non-service pets are also not accepted. Sloan said that if a YMCA would charge even $2 or $3 a night, a lot of the homeless would take advantage of the opportunity to have a warm bed, a good meal and a place for clean clothes.

The tight-knit community allows the homeless to notify each other of where services are and how to access them, but it doesn’t mean they’ll use them.

“It’s up to them whether or not they want to utilize the resources that they have available to them,” said Norris. “We can’t force them to go into a shelter, or go to a soup kitchen, but that does not necessarily mean that they are not aware of the services.”

Keller said that on Saturday night, the night of the alleged death due to exposure, 34 men took advantages of the shelter’s services, although the capacity is 45.

“On a given night, we can be full, but we have a partnership with the Salvation Army and we have an overflow location in place,” she said.

Anecdotally, misconception and misinformation about the intake requirements of PACEM, the only night shelter in Charlottesville, are rampant.

Keller said that PACEM was founded as a last resort option and she believes that people are not reluctant to come in, but have other sleeping arrangements provided to them.

“We don’t want everybody to become chronic and spend every winter at PACEM,” she said. “We walk a fine line, but the first place I heard that people were reluctant to come to PACEM was at Occupy [Charlottesville] and I was stunned.”

As members of Occupy Charlottesville settled in Lee Park, so did the homeless. Occupiers began seeing the homeless struggle as part of their local message and some of the homeless advocated for the need of a new, year-round night shelter. Keller somewhat disagrees.

“There are a lot of other places that they have to build shelters and I don’t think we are there,” she said. “So far, so good.”

According to the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless (TJACH) count for 2011, the number of unsheltered individuals decreased to 18 from 27 from the year before. Yet Keller said she has seen a recent increase in the number of homeless individuals in the community; some are “the permanent travelers,” while others come from different cities and counties. “It’s been very difficult,” she said. “It has increased and it’s troubling.”

PACEM does not ask people where they are from, but what sleeping options they have, and prioritizes the people who need shelter the most.

“We take everyone but not without thought. We are a safety net,” she said. “I think for years and years, which I think it’s great, there was always room. The world has changed, now we think more on how to help you.”

Norris believes that part of the increase in the number of homeless in Charlottesville is due to the economy, but he believes that people are not flocking to the city as he has heard around town.

“There is a myth out there, and it’s been out there for year and it’s hard to dispel, which is that Charlottesville is a magnet for the homeless,” he said. “It’s just simply not true.”
He said that the homeless population in Charlottesville is “more native” to the area than the rest of the population. Although he said there will always be evidence that people are attracted to Charlottesville, “you can’t allow anecdotal evidence to override the data.”

TJACH will hold its annual Homeless Memorial Service, an event that takes place in communities across the country, on Wednesday, December 21 from 3 to 4pm at The Haven. 

In March, a team from the City of Charlottesville and the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority (CRHA) began to look for the most effective way to overhaul the city’s public housing stock.

The group, made up of housing and grant specialists for the city and the director of redevelopment for the Housing Authority, found that a partnership between private and public entities was the best way to make the redevelopment of the 376 units, as highlighted in the existing master plan, become a reality. Since both scenarios of the plan are pricey and federal funding is limited, could a local developer become the missing link?

“It would take a pretty radical approach from where they are now,” said Dean Wenger, president and COO of Management Services Corporation (MSC) in Charlottesville.
“A private developer looks at it as, ‘What does it cost to redevelop? What is the end result?’”

MSC began managing student housing around the University in 1972, but also offers affordable housing to those in need. Wenger said that the company, founded by Douglas Caton, has had experienced working with the Housing Authority.

“Some of this housing is really in bad shape,” he said. “We have repaired some of these units and we know what it takes. We have a lot of experience actually rehabbing occupied housing while people still live there, and it is absolutely not for the faint of heart. If you do it wrong, you are affecting the people’s day-to-day life.”

According to the master plan created by Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT), a Philadelphia consulting firm, the first redevelopment scenario would cost $116 million and calls for a total of 558 units. As part of the Residents’ Bill of Rights, a document approved by City Council in 2008, residents are guaranteed one-to-one replacement of the number of public housing units and will spend no more than 12 months in temporary housing.

The second scenario is much more expensive, $151 million, and denser at 719 units. In its estimates, the master plan also heavily relied on Hope IV funding, which is currently being replaced by a different U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program known as Choice Neighborhoods. The program criteria have changed also, and CRHA will not qualify for Choice Neighborhoods.

“Accordingly, neither program can be relied upon as a viable source of funding,” reads a report by the team that was presented to City Council.

To open the redevelopment process to the possibility of partnership, city and CRHA staff recommended using the Charlottesville Development Corporation, a nonprofit established by the Housing Authority, as the public entity.

“As to a redevelopment partner, we will be looking for an entity with strong financial capacity which is interested in developing mixed income, and in some cases, mixed use developments,” said Kathy McHugh, housing specialist with the city, in an e-mail. “Ultimately, we want a development partner with experience leveraging funds and completing quality projects.”

Although MSC is interested in participating in the redevelopment, Wenger is cautious.
“We have been around long enough to see that nothing comes easily in this area with housing, and we would need a very, very strong advocate on the part of the city to say, ‘We are going to clear the roadway in front of you,’” he said.
McHugh said that although the city and Housing Authority “would love” to work with local developers, it is still too early to release incentives for those developers to be part of the redevelopment process.

For the deal to be appealing, Wenger said money and a sense of autonomy should be included.

“Neither of those is something that the city is quite ready to do,” he said. “I can absolutely appreciate that because they don’t have the same approach that we do.”

C-VILLE reached out to several local developers, but only Wenger returned our calls. 

Construction of the Meadow Creek Parkway (MCP) has receded like a mirage for decades, as lawsuits held up the road that cuts through McIntire Park. While it may still take years for construction to begin on the city’s two portions, the Albemarle County section of the two-mile road was completed on October 13, one day ahead of schedule, and could open in less than a month.

The County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution last Wednesday requesting that its portion be opened by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) as soon as possible and, this time, City Council did not object.

The county portion of the Meadow Creek Parkway, which runs from Rio Road to Melbourne Road, was completed on October 13 and may open in less than a month, said the Virginia Department of Transportation. (Photo by John Robinson)

Councilor Kristin Szakos said that she felt that even if Council were to object to the opening of the Meadow Creek Parkway, the county would go ahead anyway.
“I feel like we are sort of exercising our non-power here,” she said. “It’s not really like the city has dragged its feet in the last couple of years. It’s been a lawsuit, it’s been regulatory things at the state and federal level that have slowed down this portion of it.”
In fact, the city portions of the MCP have been caught up in a string of lawsuits filed by the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park.

However, in June 2008, City Council approved both temporary and permanent easements for the construction of a portion of the road with five conditions, one of which stated that no part of MCP would open until all three portions are completed.
Coalition member John Cruickshank told C-VILLE that while he is not surprised by the county board’s vote, he said the conditions attached to the 2008 ordinance were added to protect the safety of students at Charlottesville High School.

“I would hope that the City Council would not make a decision allowing that to be open until they have carefully investigated it and gotten the opinions of the school administrations, the police force that supervises that area and certainly the School Board,” he said.
Jim Tolbert, director of the city’s Neighborhood Development Services told Council last Monday that when the 2008 ordinance passed, it was expected that the sec-
tions of the parkway would “fall into place one behind the other” and that within a year the entire project would be completed. “We know now that it is going to be late 2013, early 2014 before the city portion is done and the interchange is looking like a 2014 scenario,” he said.

The construction of the MCP has been divided into three pieces: the county’s Meadow Creek Parkway, which runs from Rio Road to Melbourne Road in the city; and two city projects, McIntire Road Extended, which runs through McIntire Park, and the Interchange at the 250 Bypass.

When the county’s portion of the road was opened for two weeks last year, city staff observed “pretty significant traffic increases,” said Tolbert. He added that traffic and safety improvements are needed before opening the road. The afternoon after the county board’s vote, VDOT said it was ready to begin the work necessary to open the road, which includes lane striping and the installation of traffic signals.
“VDOT will evaluate concerns recently identified by the city and coordinate with the city staff on appropriate action,” the press release said. VDOT estimates the road could open in less than a month.

According to a county staff report, failure to open the county road now could delay it for another four years. “VDOT has also indicated that the lack of use of the road for this period of time would likely result in surface deterioration” that, in turn, would cost the county funds originally dedicated to secondary road projects, reads the report.
City Council will pick up the discussion later this month.

 

West Main Street links the University of Virginia to the city’s Downtown Mall and surrounding businesses, and it can be argued that it also connects the city’s past with its future. While the underutilized commercial corridor bridges two of the city’s more prosperous areas, it divides two of its historical and low-income neighborhoods.

Now, however, West Main is undergoing a sort of renaissance with new businesses sprouting along the corridor and a concerned push from city residents to make the streets more pedestrian and bike friendly.

The moment when West Main is transformed into a bustling hub for its neighborhoods is the moment the city leaves behind the separation between the University and Downtown.
Local developer Gabe Silverman is critical of the role the city has played in helping revive the corridor.

Tobey Bouch opened a pawn shop, Tobey’s, on West Main Street on October 10. Although he said business has been steady and is thankful for foot traffic throughout the day, Bouch sees parking as a possible concern. “There is this nice and big lot across the street, but it’s all paid parking,” he said referring to the Amtrak parking lot. “Is there were any more public parking, that would be good.” (Photo by John Robinson)

“That’s the job of the city, of the University and the population to decide what they want to do,” he said. “In order to have more life, you need more direction, you need businesses, you need people. And in order to have that, you have to have a strengthened vision, you have to have good leadership and I have to say that this city lacks in all of it.”

Silverman and Allan Cadgene bought the property formerly occupied by C&R Auto Service on West Main, directly opposite the Blue Moon Diner, for $1.8 million from Wade Crawford in September of 2010. They had a vision of turning the old buildings, three in total, into a central hub for the surrounding neighborhoods with stand alone businesses and offices for family practitioners, “things that a neighborhood can take pride in having,” he told C-VILLE last October.

Since the corridor is dotted by restaurants—the duo owns the Main Street Market where Orzo is located—it was Silverman’s desire to create “anchors” for the adjacent communities.
Silverman now tells C-VILLE that the center will be home to “a couple” of new restaurants, one of which will be a pho bar, and a few retail stores including Downtown boutique Eloise, currently located on Water Street, which he said could open next year.

Business owner Tobey Bouch sees the opportunity in the mix of residential foot traffic and high volume street traffic. In early October Bouch opened Tobey’s, a pawn shop located at 801 W. Main St.
“I have been here 25 years and I have seen the growth on West Main and the kind of upscale growth as well,” he said. “It used to be a place that was kind of dingy and dark. The City has done a lot to improve this area and the businesses that opened up are the kind of businesses that I have to be associated with and that’s why I chose West Main.”

The 37-year-old UVA alumnus was working in corporate sales locally when his company was acquired and he found himself without a job.

“I decided that there was enough demand in Charlottesville, considering there are only two other pawn shops, that it could be a really good opportunity,” he said. “It’s bearing its fruits now.” In fact, business has been so “incredibly steady” that Bouch had to hire extra help.

According to the Associated Press, net incomes for three publicly traded pawn shop operators were up 25 percent from last year. Bouch said that he can already see that the short-term loan business is picking up.
“A lot of people have discovered me and have sold me things,” he said. “A lot of people, especially this time of year, need some extra cash for the holidays.”

Bouch credits his success to foot traffic—Tobey’s is next to popular eatery Continental Divide—but believes parking is one aspect the city could help with.
“There is this nice and big lot across the street, but it’s all paid parking,” he said referring to the Amtrak parking lot. “If there were any more public parking, that would be good.”

Parking is also a concern for Eric Gertner, owner of Feast! in the Main Street Market complex and one of the most successful anchor businesses on the corridor. He said he has worked for the past four years to get 11 more parking spots for the complex, at big expense.
“I hear a lot of people asking for more parking and they are disappointed when the city ‘takes away’ parking by making bike lanes, which I think it’s the right direction,” he said. “I think that most business owners think that parking is king, and it is, but I think you could accommodate more customers on bikes than you can in cars.”

Gertner, who used to work in Portland, Oregon, said he received free bus passes from his old company, which was in turn compensated by the city.

Creating a corridor from UVA to the Downtown Mall is an important part of the future of the city, but Gertner sees pedestrian access as a big issue.

“Having better public transportation options would be good,” he said. “It doesn’t mean more bus lines, it means perimeter parking, town access by rail and have the city subsidize that for businesses.”

On the opposite side of the tracks, the newest addition to the corridor is Habitat for Humanity. The nonprofit is going to take over the building on the corner of West Main Street and 10th Street, rent-free for a few years, thanks to a donation by the Marshall family, who owns the building.

The new location, said Habitat’s Executive Director Dan Rosensweig, is “both an asset for Habitat and I think it’s an asset for the city to have us there. It doesn’t do anybody any good to have a building on such a vital corner sitting empty for as long as it has.” The three-story building will house nine full-time staff members and a slew of volunteers.

“Obviously, we will patronize the restaurants that are close to it and it is my hope that not only as the executive director, but as a resident and citizen of his community, that us being there will help stimulate reinvestment along the West Main Street corridor,” he said.

The city has a plan for the West Main Street corridor with more trees and more bike lanes, but Chris Engel, the city’s Assistant Director of the Office of Economic Development, said it is going to take some time and cites the current financial climate as the main culprit.

Last week, police moved to break up Occupy encampments in Los Angeles and Philadelphia and arrested and charged hundreds of occupiers. On a smaller scale, Occupy Charlottesville protesters shared the same fate. At 11pm last Wednesday, the exact time when the curfew for Lee Park kicked in, Charlottesville police descended on the public park and gave occupiers their first warning to vacate the premises.

A small group of protesters sat on the ground, locked arms and waited for police to physically remove them. Ultimately, police arrested 18 protesters and charged them with trespassing. Although their act of civil disobedience garnered a sliver of national media attention (it was even featured on “The Countdown with Keith Olbermann”), the future and well being of Occupy Charlottesville is all but certain.

Protester Bailee Hampton sits in a circle locked arms with fellow occupiers and waited for police to remove her from Lee Park. While most of the arrestees said they were treated fairly by Charlottesville police, Hampton filed an official complaint.  (Photo by Chiara Canzi)

Some occupiers believe that the time for physical occupation has come to an end and have encouraged the group to rethink its protest strategy. Others are unmoved from the original model of dissent and believe that even a small form of physical occupation is vital for the survival of the movement.

Of the 18 people arrested, 16 were released and charged with trespassing and two were given summonses. Of them, eight are men and 10 are women; several live in and around Belmont and only one is listed as homeless. One protester was also charged with indecent exposure for stripping naked as she recited the declaration of the national Occupy movement. They all will appear in court on December 16.

The day after the arrests, occupiers gathered at the Free Speech Wall on the Downtown Mall to share experiences. While most of the arrestees felt treated fairly by police, a few reported being roughed up.

The next day, Shelly Stern and Bailee Hampton filed official complaints against Charlottesville police officers for the way they were treated during the arrest.
“There were four people who carried me away from my spot in the circle,” Stern told C-VILLE. “I did not feel threatened, they were not physically harming me, the cuffs were a little tight, not a big deal. I did notice that I was being taken in a different direction than my prior arrestees.” As soon as she was out of public sight, Stern said she was “assaulted by a Charlottesville police officer who said, ‘You will walk’ and he rammed a metal rod up under my right ear, which was very intentional, a pressure point, and he put his other hand around my neck forcing me into the metal rod.”
Stern said she wants city police to recognize the abuse of power.
“I was not a safety risk,” she said. “It was because I was an inconvenience that I was harmed.”

Lieutenant Ronnie Roberts told C-VILLE that when such a complaint is filed, it becomes a personnel matter investigated and handled by the Office of Professional Conduct.
“As for this incident, I was not familiar with it,” he said.

Roberts said the eviction of Lee Park went as expected.
“I think overall for the operation itself and the activities of Lee Park, we did not find what we call aggressive behavior toward law enforcement in a physical way,” he said. He added that officers heard “a lot of shouting” from the protesters against law enforcement, but said that each officer is trained to deal with “people shouting obscenities and things of that sort.”

Now that Lee Park is cleared and city officials have said they have no intention of issuing another permit for the space, the group is faced with the painstaking task of choosing a new location. Prior to the eviction, occupiers planned to relocate to the George Rogers Clark Park near the University of Virginia campus, but UVA officials warned occupiers that any encampment on University property would not be permitted and that the University would “take enforcement action to prevent the attempted establishment of an encampment on University property,” including issuing notices for trespassing, according to a letter signed by the school’s new Chief Operating Officer Michael Strine.

“Quite simply, the University is not a campground and is not set up to support an indefinite encampment,” the letter said.

City Councilor Kristin Szakos, who was among the crowd that gathered on the sidewalk on the night of the eviction, believes the group needs to go back to discussing the issues that brought them together in the first place.
“The kind of logistics of just setting up camp, what’s allowed and all of that, have sort of taken up a lot of the dialogue time, or the action time,” Szakos said. “It may be that at this point, there can be more discussion of some of the issues that brought some of the folks there. That would certainly be something that I think would be a positive thing that could come out of it.”

While occupiers analyzed other options, including the grassy area next to Friendship Court and the grounds of Monticello, considered by some a great way “to go out,” a few believe the time has come to focus on political action.

“I want to continue this process,” said Hampton, who was the only occupier arrested to identify herself as “homeless.” Referring to pursuing the core values of the Occupy movement, she acknowledged that physical occupation has taken its toll on members who actually camped out. Hampton even suggested choosing a new name.
“It’s a joke to call ourselves Occupy Charlottesville because we are not occupying shit,” she said.

In the meantime, the group agreed to appear before City Council on Monday night to express their disappointment for how, they say, the city handled the eviction from Lee Park.