Tag: affordable housing

Categories
News

Future code: How will a tech boom change the city?

Photo: Skyclad Aerial

By Sydney Halleman

It’s 10am on the Downtown Mall, and already the sounds of demolition flood the area. Pedestrians stream past Mudhouse Coffee and The Whiskey Jar, and a few glance at the tall fence erected recently across the walkway, and the signs that read, “Do not trespass. Construction site.” Machinery looms over the area and a loud boom echoes across the mall, making a few restaurant patrons jump in their seats. If you look closely, through a crack between the fence posts, you’ll see a giant dirt pit, 10 feet away from the bustling crowd of people, on a plot of land that used to hold the downtown ice rink.

The construction is literally remaking the west end of the Downtown Mall, displacing not only the ice rink (a new one is being built up Route 29 North), but also adjacent small businesses like The Ante Room, a beloved music venue, and Escafé, a longtime center of the local LGBTQ scene. What will rise in their place is the Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, a 167,000-square-foot office building dreamed up by millionaire hedge fund manager Jaffray Woodriff, that aims to be ”the nexus of entrepreneurial activity in central Virginia,” according to the building’s website.

The multi-million dollar project, which will include a green roof, podcast recording space, electric car charging, and ample bike parking, will bring a decidedly new look (and more than 600 tech workers) to the low-rise, red brick pedestrian mall. And it’s a not-so-subtle metaphor for the way a rising tech boom may reshape Charlottesville—for better or worse.

The CODE building, which will include a green roof, podcast recording space, electric car charging, and ample bike parking, will bring a decidedly new look (and more than 600 tech workers) to the Downtown Mall. (Rendering courtesy developer).

Tech businesses have flourished in Charlottesville since at least 2008, when companies like WillowTree, the mobile app development start-up, and ChartIQ, a “fintech” start-up that provides software solutions to financial institutions, were founded. An extensive network of “angel investors” and various initiatives at UVA aimed at nurturing entrepreneurship have helped other local start-ups get off the ground.

In recent years, however, what began as a gradual shift has gained momentum. In 2016, the National Venture Capital Association named Charlottesville the fastest-growing venture capital ecosystem in the United States. That same year, UVA launched its Seed Fund, a $10 million investment in UVA-based tech ventures. Start-ups, especially in biotech, have proliferated. WillowTree is reportedly one of the fastest-growing digital companies in the nation, and is expanding into a new, 85,000-square-foot headquarters currently being built at the site of the old Woolen Mills, just outside the city limits. (The company, for which former mayor and current City Council member Mike Signer serves as vice president and general counsel, did not reply to requests for comment.)

The city’s small-town vibe, pipeline of talent and resources from the university, and access to capital make it attractive to start-up businesses. “If you had a company, you’d bet that Charlottesville is the place to grow it,” says Paul Beyer, who founded the now-annual Tom Tom Festival in 2012 to celebrate and encourage innovation.

Woodriff (who declined to be interviewed for this story) is the latest tech leader who wants to see Charlottesville become a center for digital innovation. He’s offering a subsidized rate to start-up companies that rent space in the CODE building, and wants it to become a collision of creative minds. “You need to be able to get up from your desk and randomly bump into a wide variety of people who are bright and motivated,” Jaffray told Bloomberg’s Joe Nocera earlier this year. “Palo Alto has that. Bell Labs had that. And I’m trying to facilitate that in Charlottesville.”

In addition to CODE, Woodriff, a UVA alum, has given $120 million to establish a School of Data Science at his alma mater. He hopes that graduates will see the appeal of Charlottesville, and build their companies here. “I want people to come here and say, ‘I aspire to this,’ and not interviewing with Google,” he told Nocera.

Boosters say growing the tech industry will transform the economy, bringing in new jobs and revenue that could translate to better infrastructure and a higher quality of life.

But cities like Austin, Texas; Boulder, Colorado; and Palo Alto, California, all home to explosions in tech, tell a more complicated story. In those communities, tech has brought new jobs, new revenue, and new facilities, but it’s also come with increased traffic, gentrifying neighborhoods, and a loss of longtime residents and culture.  Austin, for example, repeatedly makes lists for the worst traffic in America and has massive shortages of affordable housing. These new tech cities, while bringing in wealthy residents and vibrant cultures, have struggled to provide the same opportunities for their working classes.

”I think in the last 10 years, it’s been a real struggle for Austin to keep its identity and keep its soul, as downtown is being razed and converted into condos and high-rises, and you have people like Google and Facebook and Apple taking over the town with these buildings,” Austin reporter Omar Gallaga told The New York Times. “If you have all the artists and the creative people that make it interesting move away because they can’t afford to live there, then it becomes a different place.”

 

Jeyon Falsini’s Ante Room provided a space for little-booked music genres like hip-hop, metal, and garage rock. Photo: Eze Amos

Jeyon Falsini, former owner of alternative music venue The Ante Room, is sitting at The Southern Café & Music Hall on a Tuesday morning. He leans back in his creaking bar chair, running a hand through his floppy hair. “This town has a way of making the news a lot,” he says, tapping the counter. “Charlottesville on the outside is all sunshine, sandals, and daydreams, but on the inside it’s as red in tooth and claw as the Amazon itself.” He laughs. “It’s cutthroat.”

Falsini has experienced the downside of the tech boom first-hand. As owner of The Ante Room for almost six years, he oversaw the most diverse range of music bookings in Charlottesville’s modern history. The venue was known for up-and-coming artists as well as genres—metal, garage rock, and hip-hop—that weren’t catered to at other area venues. Falsini likened the wide variety of artists to his own passion for music. “If you’re open-minded enough,” he says, “You can work with any genre of music.”

The dark, low-ceilinged space, with its trademark bathroom doors painted to resemble playing cards, quickly became a favorite community hang out. Since The Ante Room closed its doors in 2018 for the CODE building’s construction, music fans have felt the loss.

The demolition of Escafé, the similarly beloved restaurant/bar next door, has also hit hard. “The obvious thing Escafé added to Charlottesville was an openly gay bar, though that liberality spread to include a range of people who felt more at home there than anywhere else,” says songwriter Brady Earnhart, who hosted a monthly showcase and open mic there, and talked to C-VILLE shortly before the bar closed for good. “It was a broadly and effortlessly diverse crowd.” Owner Todd Howard said he’d initially hoped to move Escafé to a new location, but couldn’t find the right spot.   

Falsini, who is now the assistant manager at the Southern, says he, too, has been unable to find a new space for a sequel to The Ante Room. “How am I going to stop it?” he says, referring to the influx of tech companies. “I’m just trying to swim above water. You can’t stop them, they’re already here.”

The closing of these two venues is one example of the kind of culture shift that can accompany the arrival of a tech boom in a small city like Charlottesville. At only 10.5 square miles, we have a fundamentally limited infrastructure, with many businesses fighting for a coveted spot on the historic Downtown Mall. The price of commercial real estate has been rapidly increasing over the last few years, and developers have expressed concerns over inventory shortages in the city. This won’t stop when the tech industry moves in—rather, it’s likely to get worse, says housing advocate and Democratic City Council candidate Michael Payne.

“If the tech industry moves in and you see land speculation, and rents and land prices start to skyrocket, soon you can’t afford your rent,” says Payne, talking about commercial real estate on the Downtown Mall. “Then you’re going to have a business that can afford [it], which is oftentimes an expensive chain, or a business owned by a wealthy entrepreneur. It’s a risk to our small businesses, too. It’s not just an affordable housing thing, it’s a small business thing.”

And it’s more than a physical space or cost issue. Wealthy individuals want businesses and buildings that cater to their interests, and that can change the culture of a neighborhood. “Think about restaurants like Mel’s or Riverside,” Payne says. “You know, these are staples of the local community that had been here for decades, that people love, but I can perfectly envision people in the tech industry moving here, and being like, ‘What is this? We want something where we can get an $8 coffee.’”

In a contentious thread on Twitter last August, some locals complained about a new luxury apartment building, Six Hundred West Main, whose “neighborhood guide” for future residents included gourmet food store Feast! and the cycling studio Purvelo, but left out local black-owned businesses, including Mel’s. “That map is basically the cheat code for gentrification 2.0,” wrote Niya Bates, director of African American history at Monticello.

 

“The danger is that Charlottesville itself just sort of becomes this playground for rich people working in the tech industry,” says City Council candidate Michael Payne. Photo: Eze Amos.

Charlottesville is bracing for a population boom. By 2040, the area is projected to add an additional 6,000 people in the city and 33,500 in the county, according to the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, bringing our total population to more than 196,000. That poses a challenge for housing and other infrastructure, like transportation.

At the same time, the city is also grappling with an affordable housing crisis that’s been building for years. Since 2011, rents in Charlottesville have risen from an average of $931 per month for a two-bedroom apartment to $1,325 per month. In August, The Daily Progress reported that of 895 full-time city employees, 338 cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment without being cost-burdened.

A number of luxury housing developments, like C&O Row, 550 Water, and Six Hundred West Main, have sprung up near downtown, as the city grows increasingly wealthier. According to the Orange Dot Report released last year, the number of Charlottesville families earning more than $150,000 jumped by 96 percent between 2011 and 2018.

An influx of highly-paid tech workers could exacerbate the problem. “Wealthy people and people graduating from college in the tech industry, they will want to live on a Charlottesville property. They will want to live as close to the Downtown Mall as possible,” says Payne. “The danger is that Charlottesville itself just sort of becomes this playground for rich people working in the tech industry.”

That could push middle-class and low-income residents into surrounding counties to find housing. It’s a phenomenon that’s happened in cities like Austin, where the majority of the city’s working class has been priced out to the edges of the city.

In Charlottesville, says Payne, “This is already happening, where there’s a lot of people living in Buckingham and Greene and Nelson, who commute into the city because nothing else is affordable.”

Elaine Poon has noticed this housing change intimately. The managing attorney for the Legal Aid Justice Center, she says that residents, especially in traditionally black neighborhoods, have been noticing changes for the past 10-15 years. “There is an uproar, but it’s coming from a historically silenced community,” she says.

“Provision of affordable housing and protection for existing housing most of all, if it’s affordable, is the most powerful weapon against gentrification,” she says. “But it can take a long time and we’re so behind the curve already. It’s going to be really hard”

 

UVA alum Jaffray Woodriff wants to help make Charlottesville an innovation hub. Photo: Eze Amos

With all the fears that an impending tech boom comes with, there’s no denying some of the obvious benefits: New, well-paying jobs and a healthy boost to the economy would bring revenue to the city and could improve residents’ quality of life across the board. WillowTree alone is expected to generate 1,412 area jobs between 2019 and 2025, according to a study by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, and spur $70.5 million of value-added economic activity for the Charlottesville metro area in 2019.

Julia Farill, director of human resources and brand strategy at the data science company CCRi, points out that growth involves jobs beyond those in tech itself. “As a tech company grows, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re hiring all really wealthy people…you’re opening up positions that are providing jobs not just for external tech-type people but also other people in the community,” she says.

Charlottesville Vice Mayor Heather Hill believes that developing and hiring local talent for these industries could also curtail some fears. She stresses education, like an emphasis on STEM in public schools, and programs at CATEC and Piedmont Virginia Community College that train community members for tech jobs. “We need our local job-seekers to be able to earn their ways to these jobs to afford to live here,” Hill says. “I don’t think we’re valuing our local resources enough.”

Hill says growth, if properly managed, could be good for the city. “I see that there could be a lot of benefits about this. There’s an opportunity for this type of growth to be a big success if we work together.”

In addition, she points to groups like Smart Cville, a newly formed nonprofit that seeks to use technology to improve local communities. In 2016, Smart Cville launched Civic Innovation Day, an annual event focused on gathering community members to brainstorm how technology can improve Charlottesville and address its current challenges. And just last month, the organization opened its Center for Civic Innovation, a space on Fourth Street that focuses on bringing people together to focus on common community problems, like transportation development and localized flooding.

“We need to be open to the fact that the community will change,” says Tom Tom founder Paul Beyer. Photo: Ryan Jones

The growth of the tech industry remains a polarizing topic, especially in Charlottesville. “Cities are really complicated,” says Tom Tom’s Beyer on a recent afternoon in his downtown office. “You have legacies of discrimination, lack of affordable housing, and criminal injustices. Those are the cities that we live in as Americans.”

Tom Tom’s offices are located in the Pink Warehouse, a local landmark on Water Street that has been home to dozens of artists over the years (Dave Matthews Band famously played its first official gig on the rooftop there in 1991). Posters of Tom Tom festival events line the walls of his office.

Beyer was born and raised in Charlottesville, and he recognizes the problems of growth in a city that has a history of displacing its African American residents. But he sees the construction of new buildings and commercial real estate as a benefit for a city that needs to expand, and argues that tech companies will bring the revenue and means to make it happen. He and others seeking to make the city an innovation hub also believe that the influx of tech companies could improve upon the city’s existing culture. “We need to be open to the fact that the community will change,” he says. “Creativity, architecture, and the population could flourish with growth.”

Chip Ransler, the executive director of HackCville, also sees the CODE building and new companies moving into Charlottesville as an opportunity for the city to change. If you love the city that you live in, he says, you’re going to want it to evolve. “It’s a transformative gift.” Ransler says. ”We like this area, there’s good and bad, it’s a great place to be. Anybody who is somewhat invested in this town is going to want to see this town fleshed out.”

But what that looks like on the ground, and how welcome it is, depends a lot on who you talk to. It could mean upheaval for residents of neighborhoods like 10th and Page, Starr Hill, Fifeville, Belmont, and Woolen Mills, all of which are within walking distance of either the CODE building or the new WillowTree headquarters, and have seen the effects of rapid gentrification over the past 15 years.

In historically black neighborhoods in particular, “If you walk around some of these neighborhoods, a lot of them do not look the same way that they looked three to five years ago,” says Legal Aid’s Poon.

Walking around 10th and Page, it’s clear that black residents are being forced out of one of the city’s largest continuous African American neighborhoods. More affluent white families have been tearing down houses and adding expensive additions, driving up property values (and taxes) and driving residents out. The community feels in flux—modest houses with lawn decorations and rocking chairs next to new, modern homes with fenced-in yards.

Advocates like Poon are not optimistic about the impact of an incoming tech population on these neighborhoods.

“When I ask the activists that I work with,” she says, “I think a lot of them think that it’s too late.”

Tech companies are not a monolith, and the potentially negative consequences of becoming an innovation hub are not inevitable. CCRi, which started out with just three employees in 1989, and now has 140, has tried to grow mindfully and sustainably, Farill says. The company was co-founded by her father, a longtime professor at UVA, and its leadership is committed to staying in the community.

But individual tech companies may not be thinking about the big picture impact of their industry on the city, she says. “The incentives of a company change, depending on what’s happening for that company.”

That may be where local government needs to step in, to protect whatever we don’t want to lose. As Farill puts it, “The doomsday scenario for having a lot of wealthy people only becomes that if you let it.”

   

Categories
News

Ground-ed: UVA considers requiring second-years to live on campus

Rick Jones, a local property manager, believes it’s a myth that there’s pressure for students to sign leases early. (Photo: Eze Amos)

Every college student knows it’s coming. Do it right, and you’re securing an enjoyable experience for two semesters of your college career. Mess it up, and you may be looking at a 12-month sentence of living with that guy who never learned how to do the dishes.

Signing that first lease, even if it’s only to rent a shoebox apartment a few blocks away from campus, is a momentous decision. It’s one most UVA students start fretting about not long after they arrive at the university, hoping to secure a spot off Grounds for their second year. But now, as part of President Jim Ryan’s 2030 Strategic Plan, the Board of Visitors is considering a proposal to require students to live on Grounds for their first two years. It’s already getting some pushback.

The goal would be to alleviate the pressure that students—first-years in particular—feel to sign a lease before fully settling on a group of friends or potential roommates. It’s also part of a larger effort to create a residential community that students can stay connected with throughout their college careers.

One property manager estimates that 2,700 second-years currently choose to live off Grounds, and he believes this plan is a way of hand-holding an already over-protected generation.

Rick Jones is the vice chairman of the board for Management Services Corporation, a property management firm that owns dozens of student-housing complexes around Charlottesville, including Ash Tree Apartments and The Fred.

He wrote a letter to Ryan on June 18, calling the perceived pressure to sign a lease in September a “myth,” noting that even in June, Jones was able to find 29 units owned by his company alone that were within walking distance of the university and still available for the upcoming school year.

“I have been in the rental housing business for almost 50 years,” writes Jones, a ’70 alumnus. “I am very concerned about what I see as a great deal of misinformation about the availability of housing for students, as well as non-students…I can assure you that no one is forcing anyone to make a housing decision any earlier than they need or want to.”

While Jones admits the apartments and houses in higher demand do go quickly, he stresses that a large percentage of housing is still available well into the year. He sees this initiative as an effort by the university to coddle its students, many of whom are “just not as mature and able to handle life on their own,” he says.

Ryan has mailed a letter in response to Jones, but he hadn’t received it at press time.

Rising third-year Emily Hamilton, who moved off Grounds for her second year, says there’s a “social pressure” for students to finalize their living arrangements early so that they’re not left on the outside of a group of people trying to live together. The longer first-years wait to discuss with fellow classmates where they want to live and who they want to live with, the less likely they believe their chances are of securing a favorable housing situation.

“I think it’s more listening to what your peers are doing than feeling pressured to get on it before other things run out,” Hamilton says. “It’s created by the students and I know that you can find housing later in the year, like May or June for the next year.”

Hamilton also thinks most students would oppose being required to live on Grounds their second year.

Yet a residual benefit could be an increase in the availability of affordable housing. Michael Payne, one of the Democratic candidates for City Council, is a vocal proponent of taking an active approach to solving the local affordable housing crisis. He believes UVA’s decision would be a step in the right direction to opening up more opportunities for low-income residents to secure homes.

“You have a dynamic where a lot of students who are living off Grounds are purchasing homes and using them as rental properties that otherwise would be properties rented by residents of the Charlottesville community,” Payne says. “You just see the available housing stock restricted because it’s taken up by students.”

There are still several kinks to be ironed out before the university takes any sort of action. Jones notes that he’s open to starting a dialogue with UVA to work out an alternative solution. The Board of Visitors won’t cast any votes on the proposal until August at the earliest.

Categories
News

Eviction outrage: Landlord says he’s committed to affordable housing

More than 100 affordable housing activists marched in support of Belmont Apartment residents. Eze Amos

More than 100 people representing a dozen organizations rallied and marched in support of residents of Belmont Apartments May 5, the same day tenants whose leases have expired were told to vacate their apartments at 1000 Monticello Rd.

The Charlottesville Low-Income Housing Coalition gathered representatives from activist and faith groups to march from Belmont to the Free Speech Wall and call for owner Drew Holzwarth to keep the 23 units in the complex affordable and to allow the residents, may of whom are elderly, disabled, or low-income, to stay in their apartments.

In a May 6 statement, Holzwarth says that ultimately, if he can build another 11 micro-apartments at the site, 23 units will remain affordable at the 46-year-old complex.

The property was sold by its longtime owners in January 2018 for $2 million to Core Real Estate, which then sold it to Holzwarth’s Piedmont Realty Holdings a year later for $2.75 million.

Elaine Poon with Legal Aid Justice Center and other members of the housing coalition met with Holzwarth and “suggested he consider selling to a nonprofit,” she says. “He did not take the bait.”

Antoine Parker has lived in Belmont Apartments for six years, and says when the complex sold for the second time in a year, “my antenna went up.” Parker has not found a new place to live, and he notes that most of the tenants are older and are being uprooted from their homes.

He says he understands that the evictions are a “business decision,” but he asks, “At what point do you have a moral obligation to give [tenants] some help?”

Thomas Holden is legally blind from early onset macular degeneration. He says he’s found a new place “across town,” and it costs more than the $600 he’s currently paying for his one-bedroom apartment.

Holzwarth, who built Piedmont Place in Crozet and is president of Stanley Martin Homes Piedmont region, seems astounded that he’s been cast as the bad guy in this scenario. He says he’s a local philanthropist who’s done quite a bit for affordable housing. Of the rally, he says, “I’m a little disillusioned.”

After closing on the apartments, “we learned that the project has been the victim of significant neglect, and the tenants were living in conditions which were and should be unacceptable to them,” he says in a statement.

It was not possible to do the major renovation, including re-plumbing, replacing the HVAC systems, and fumigating the building, while the residents were still there, he says. His company and BMC Property Management will work with tenants to make sure no one became homeless, and he insists that no one’s lease was terminated that was still in effect. “Tenants will not be required to vacate without a safe place to go,” he says.

In meeting with the housing coalition, Holzwarth says he realized he could get a special use permit to add 11 micro-apartments. He’s pledged to keep those units affordable for people earning 70 percent of the area median income, “an ambitious challenge with new construction.”

With 68 percent of the apartments affordable, Holzwarth says that could be a model for other developers. “[W]e are making a significant personal and financial commitment to helping address the affordable housing crisis in the City of Charlottesville.”

Building the additional units “was actually our idea,” Poon says, and she offered to help Holzwarth get affordable housing credits.

And while she appreciates his goal to keep units affordable, “at the moment, disabled individuals are struggling to find a place to live.” She’d like Holzwarth to come back to the table and says, “It’s not a huge ask to let a handful of residents stay at the rent they’re at now.”

Correction May 8: If he’s allowed to build the 11 micro-apartments, Holzwarth plans to make those affordable for people earning 70 percent of the area median income, not 23 units as originally reported. Twelve units in the renovated complex will be affordable under HUD guidelines of 80 percent area median income.

Categories
News

No room to grow: In a tight real estate market, a family of seven makes do with 860 square feet

Sheria and Sylvan Kassondwa in the living room of their Fifeville home, with (from left) Syvlie, 12; Cherubine, 9; Cecile, 7; Charline, 3; and Seloe, 1. Photo: Eze Amos

Sylvan and Sheria Kassondwa’s 860-square foot, three-bedroom apartment would be fine, they say, if they had one or two kids.

As it happens, they have five.

“In my country, time is not money like here, you can spend more time with your family,” says Sylvan, who is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “And then here you find that you spend more time with work. So when you have more kids, you find that you have a big problem here.”

He laughs—what can one do? On a rainy afternoon in early March, his children, ranging in age from 1 to 12, pop in and out of the tiny living room to greet their guest, then disappear upstairs. They are charming and well-behaved, but their parents lament how cramped they are at home.

“The kids, they don’t have space,” Sheria says. “They have nowhere to keep their shoes, it’s a mess.” She indicates an overflowing shoe rack on the stair landing and waves her hands dismissively. “This does not really look like a place where you can breathe, feel fresh air.”

When the Kassondwas moved to this apartment in Fifeville, in November of 2017, they’d hoped it would be a step up.

Sylvan and Sheria had fled their home in the Congo more than a decade earlier, seeking refuge from the war and violence there. They landed in Uganda and applied for refugee status in the United States. It took 12 years.

“We were struggling to live,” says Sheria. “But we had this hope, that one day we would be fine.”

They were thrilled to finally get to the United States, and the family (by then, the Kassondwas had four kids) came to Charlottesville in September of 2016. The International Rescue Committee helped them settle into an apartment off Hydraulic Road, and paid their rent for the first three months while they found work.

“Then, thank God, we met International Neighbors,” says Sheria.

Founded by local educator Kari Miller, International Neighbors helps support refugee families once the IRC is no longer involved in their cases. The organization connects new arrivals to local “family friends” and helps them navigate the complexities of American life, from school forms to local events.

“She helped us a lot,” Sheria says, “but she can only do so much.” The two-bedroom apartment was a tight fit for their family of six, with another baby on the way. So the couple took it upon themselves to try to find a bigger place, searching apartment listings online.

With their limited budget (Sylvan was working as a tailor, while Sheria cleaned houses and took classes to improve her English), there were few affordable options.

Eventually, they found a three-bedroom for $830 a month, only $100 a month more than their two-bedroom, in a complex aimed at low-income renters called Greenstone on 5th.

“It’s cheap for the area, that’s why we are here,” Sylvan says. 

They applied online, but after moving in, they realized how small each of the rooms was (the bedrooms fit little more than a bed and a dresser, with only a foot or two of space in between), and that there was no washing machine in the apartment.

Doing laundry in the complex costs $3.75 per load, Sheria says, and, “I have this many kids. It’s going to be five loads.”

As the children get older, having only one bathroom for all seven of them is also a problem, but apartments with two bathrooms and washing machines cost $1,200 a month, Sylvan says—out of reach for now.

The apartment has a roach problem, and maintenance is slow to respond to calls, Sylvan adds. But his number-one concern is the neighbors. He says people are often hanging around the complex smoking marijuana.

“This day, it’s good,” Sylvan says with a smile, indicating the gloomy weather outside the window.

“Cause it’s cold outside, everybody’s doing it in the house,” his wife explains. In summer, they say, it’s terrible.

“It’s not a good environment for my kids,” Sheria says. “But we don’t have a choice for now.”

She’d prefer to rent a duplex, but she doesn’t think it’s possible. “In Charlottesville, it’s very expensive,” she says. “We’d never afford that.”

“Every family here is squeezed,” Sylvan adds.

After taking English classes, Sheria trained to become a certified nursing assistant, and now works full-time at UVA. Sylvan hopes that, before his children become teenagers, they’ll be able to afford another place.

“I’m trying to plan, but I don’t know if I can afford to move,” he says. “Maybe next year, or two years.” He’s thinking about getting a second job. “But also, when you have a second job, you have little time with your kids,” he notes.

Still, the couple does not want to complain too much—their home is an improvement over what they left behind in Africa, and Sylvan takes a philosophical view. “If you can’t afford the house that is fitting your family, you need to [be] content with the one you have,” he says.

His wife, who would also prefer a roomier kitchen, interjects: “But you are not happy about it.”

 

Categories
News

Budget busters: Finding the funding for affordable housing, schools

Councilors Wes Bellamy, Kathy Galvin, Heather Hill, and Nikuyah Walker have to figure out how to fund the city’s affordable housing goals. Staff photo

By Melissa Moody

This is a story about numbers.

The number of families currently served by public housing and rental assistance vouchers: 826. The number of people on the waitlist for public housing or assistance: 1,866. The number of units Charlottesville needs to serve low-income residents: 3,975—or 20 percent of the city’s housing supply—in a city where 54 percent of the households qualify as low-income, very low-income, or extremely low-income.

And now there is a new number—$50 million.

That’s the amount of a bond the Charlottesville Low-Income Housing Coalition requested for affordable housing redevelopment and improvement that was discussed at a City Council capital improvement program budget work session September 6.

“At this point, housing for low-income residents within the city, outside of subsidized units, is pretty much non-existent,” said neighborhood planner Brian Haluska. “The rental vacancy rate in the city is 1.7 percent, while a healthy vacancy rate is around 5 percent.

“It’s hard to see a path forward using just market forces to provide additional housing for low-income residents.”

City Manager Mike Murphy and city staff briefed councilors on existing projects, unfunded improvements and new projects, and deferred maintenance for the city to be included in the CIP plan for the next five years. Increased funding for new affordable housing initiatives was a major focus of the session, as was expansion and modernization of city schools, both of which would cause substantial increases in the city’s budget over the next five years.

City staff briefed councilors on the current budget, including $131 million of debt that is paid by taxes and utility revenue, and the city’s policy of maintaining a 9 percent debt service to operating expense ratio, with a ceiling of 10 percent. According to staff, an increase in the city’s debt to fund new affordable housing initiatives would increase the debt service ratio or need to be backed by an increase in revenue streams.

But the issue also is a story about people and the repercussions of a history that echo across generations—from the work of enslaved people at the University of Virginia 200 years ago to the displacement and destruction of Vinegar Hill just 50 years in the past.

“Affordable housing is an issue of our city’s values,” said Elaine Poon, managing attorney of the Charlottesville office of the Legal Aid and Justice Center. “The city—the residents, the developers and those who need affordable housing—know that the history of systemic and institutional racism in Charlottesville and the country are directly linked to affordable housing needs today.”

The low-income housing coalition’s goals, aligned with those of the Public Housing Association of Residents, are that the city: prioritize extremely low-income housing; increase funding for the Redevelopment and Housing Authority, including issuing the first $50-million bond; earmark revenue for CRHA so that it has a stable source of income; increase funding for the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund to support nonprofit developers of affordable housing by at least four-fold; upzone areas of high opportunity for affordable housing; purchase and dedicate land for CRHA and nonprofit developers; and collaborate with major players in the area to develop workforce housing.

Murphy emphasized the need for council to prioritize projects to meet its goals—particularly in light of the fact that some of the goals exceed the current budget. Mayor Nikuyah Walker and councilors Wes Bellamy, Kathy Galvin, and Heather Hill agreed on the need to plan the budget strategically, to specifically address major projects like affordable housing and school modernization and expansion through more work sessions devoted to those topics in particular, and to bring in internal and external partners for input.

The cost to meaningfully address affordable housing redevelopment and maintenance and school expansion and modernization each exceed the current five-year CIP budget, Hill said. “Working with CRHA, Charlottesville City Schools, and other stakeholders to flesh out the actual costs and required timelines is critical to setting priorities.”

Community contributions to these conversations are also vital, according to council members.

Bellamy noted the importance of continuing discussions about how to fund affordable housing redevelopment and maintenance. “I think we at the very minimum, because of the history of our community and things that have transpired, we owe that much to our public housing residents.”

Council is planning to meet with housing representatives by late November. The budget discussions will continue across departments and come back to City Council in March 2019.

To watch a video of the September 6 budget work session, visit Charlottesville TV10.

Supply and demand

  • Public housing units: 376
  • City rental assistance vouchers: 450
  • People on the waitlist for public housing or assistance: 1,866
  • Years many of those people have been on waitlist: often more than eight
  • Units the city needs to serve low-income residents: 3,975—or 20 percent of the city’s housing supply
  • Percentage of Charlottesville households that qualify as low-income, very low-income, or extremely low-income: 54 percent
Categories
News

West2nd smackdown: Council rejects permit despite meeting city requirements

Now we’ll never see more than a rendering of West2nd, the $50 million development of luxury condos and retail space that had been proposed at the current site of a Water Street parking lot since 2014. Rendering Keith Woodard

When Mayor Nikuyah Walker chaired her first City Council meeting February 5, citizens got to see how previously out-of-control meetings would be run under a new regime—and learned that  the heckling continues both for councilors and for the West2nd developer seeking a special use permit that was rejected for reasons that had little to do with city code.

When Keith Woodard won a bid in 2014 to build a mixed-use building on a city-owned Water Street parking lot that would house the City Market, parking, retail and residential, he had the blessings of City Council for his innovative design. Four years later, costs soared and he retooled the project, adding 28 luxury units and another floor, which required the special use permit. He also offered to build affordable housing units on Harris Street.

Of all developers in town, Woodard has the best track record on affordable housing. When he bought Dogwood Housing in 2007 from local mixed-income housing icon Eugene Williams, he promised to maintain the affordability of most of the units—and has done so.

So it was odd that Woodard would be the one to be asked to jump through higher hoops by Councilor Wes Bellamy and receive jeers from the Greek chorus in attendance as he sought approval to increase density for West2nd.

That Woodard offered to build affordable units on Harris Street instead of contributing to the Affordable Housing Fund, as most developers do, is unusual. And he said he’d exceed the city’s requirement of 16 units kept below market rate for 4.7 years. When councilors said they wanted a longer term, he said he’d make eight units affordable for 10 years.

Bellamy badgered him to up the number of affordable units. “Why couldn’t all 16 units be affordable for 20 years?” asked Bellamy.

“The project still has to be financially feasible,” explained Woodard, eliciting a big sigh from Bellamy.

Woodard pointed out that he could have put the amount required—$316,000—into the Affordable Housing Fund, “which maybe we should have stuck with that,” and that keeping eight units affordable for 10 years was already challenging at an estimated cost of $474,000.

Bellamy said he was perplexed that Woodard said it wouldn’t be financially feasible “when some would say you’ve made a lot of money in this city and because you’ve already made so much money maybe you can give some back.” That was greeted by whoops from some attendees.

And when Bellamy asked Woodard how much money he was going to make from West2nd, Deputy City Attorney Lisa Robertson advised councilors to “focus on the land use issues” for a zoning application and said that enabling legislation didn’t give council the ability to require more.

“That was a silly question,” says Eugene Williams. “[Bellamy] doesn’t have the facts and he doesn’t know how much [Woodard] had to spend.”

When councilors voted 3-2 to deny the permit, the hecklers applauded. “Those young people know nothing about investing,” says Williams. “That just bothers me to know we had three councilors who wanted to accommodate the audience more than actually trying to make this feasible for both sides.”

Bellamy, Walker and Heather Hill voted against the special use permit. ”It’s not all right to vote against it without explaining specifically what the developer needs to do,” says Williams. He opines that it would have been wiser to say what they wanted and table the vote.

Williams also criticizes Kathy Galvin and Mike Signer’s yes votes and says they seemed more concerned about downtown businesses than low-income residents.

However, Signer spent a fair amount of time during the meeting discussing whether revenue from the project could be directed exclusively to the affordable housing fund. He says he voted for the permit because it would allow the city to increase its current $3.5 million affordable housing annual budget by about 30 percent.

Others have concerns about the Monday night performance, and the word “extortion” has been bandied about.

“If I’m a developer and read those [news] accounts, a red flare has gone up,” says attorney Fred Payne, who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against City Council for its vote to remove Confederate statues. “Why would I want to invest in this town?”

With the vote to deny the permit, “You can see the degree to which City Council is out of control,” says Payne. “I have a feeling if this were litigated, the city would probably lose.”

He adds, “I don’t think this City Council understands there are limits on what they can do.”

Part of the problem Woodard faces is that four councilors were not around when the city bid out the project in 2014. Galvin was, and at the meeting she said—after a five-minute recess to calm the interruptions from the crowd—“The demand was that the City Market be downtown on that city parking lot. It was not affordable housing.” The project has moved along “based on criteria the city gave this developer.”

Galvin also said the special use permit meets the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance, and the project would add 80 people living on the mall and 100 jobs in the face of increasing competition to downtown businesses, as well as increase city revenue from the parking lot from $6,500 a year to $945,000 a year. “That’s huge,” she said.

For Bellamy, the message to developers is, “This council will prioritize affordable housing.” He says he appreciates Woodard’s efforts and understands that he met city requirements. “We still have discretion,” says Bellamy. “I hope we can still work together.”

Hill was more concerned about the City Market. “I’m not convinced the market will thrive there,” she said.

She says she’s not “anti development” and suggests looking at the project through a “new lens” and “recognize we ultimately may not be able to accommodate the market on this specific site if we are to meet the needs of the vendors while also competing with other community priorities.”

Woodard says he doesn’t think City Council’s vote to deny the permit was about increased density. “I think this project should be part of [affordable housing] but not all of it,” he says.

Litigation is not an option at this point, he says. “We’re looking at alternate paths to go forward.”

He says he does need a decision soon because people have reserved condos in West2nd. And he’s put $2 million into underground utilities, as well as four years of effort.

“We’re trying to work things out,” he says. “I’m trying to be positive.”

Updated 3:53pm to clarify Mike Signer’s reasons for his vote for the special use permit.

 

 

Categories
News

Taking action: Hate rally fuels momentum for new affordable housing coalition

Friendship Court faces redevelopment, but with pledges to keep its low-income housing. File photo

Neo-Nazis and affordable housing may not seem directly connected, but in the wake of the white supremacist rally on August 12, a new coalition of grassroots activists and nonprofit groups is linking the two in a push for more homes for poorer Charlottesville residents.

The Charlottesville Coalition for Low-Income Housing, formed earlier this year, has gathered significant momentum since the alt-right rally, as key members tie the city’s lack of affordable housing to racism and local white supremacist policies.

“Opposing racism means real action, such as acknowledging that the rapid demographic change in Charlottesville is linked to high rents, inadequate affordable housing stock and limited economic and educational opportunity for low-income communities,” says Mary Bauer, the executive director of the Legal Aid Justice Center in an August 22 letter to City Manager Maurice Jones, Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas and members of City Council.

Bauer wrote the five-page letter on behalf of the Public Housing Association of Residents, which Legal Aid Justice Center represents, and she demanded answers from the city about why it failed to protect its low-income housing residents, citing a group of armed alt-righters who marched near Friendship Court August 12 and left residents shaken.

The new coalition consists of PHAR, Legal Aid Justice Center, Showing Up for Racial Justice and Together C’Ville. Attorney Jeff Fogel, former planning commission chair William Harris and former NAACP chapter president Rick Turner have also attended meetings.

The group is focusing efforts on educating the public about form-based code, a different type of zoning the city is in the process of adopting within the Strategic Investment Area, a large section of land south of downtown. Form-based code focuses on a building’s size and style, rather than its use. Critics fear the new code could accelerate development, while dramatically changing the appearance, function and occupancy of buildings.

The community affected by form-based code is typically given an opportunity to share its ideas and desires through a public input process, called charettes, which then form the backbone and underlying guidelines for the code.

Elaine Poon, the managing attorney at Legal Aid, says the city has scheduled the charettes for the week of September 11-14, and she worries that if low-income residents are not engaged in the charette process, the eventual form-based code may not have key elements in place that would guarantee the construction of more affordable housing.

“This is a boom time for Charlottesville, property values are going through the roof,” says Poon. Unless steps are taken now by community members, the city’s lowest-income residents may no longer be able to afford to live in Charlottesville in the future, she says.

More than 470 people have signed a Change.org coalition letter to councilors, petitioning them to “stop displacement and expand affordable housing for extremely low-income people,” and noting that the population of African-Americans within the SIA from 2000-2012 has decreased 12 percent—a sign of gentrification.

To help energize residents in demanding their voices be heard, the coalition is bringing an experienced voice from Chicago. Willie “J.R” Fleming is the executive director for the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign and the vice president of Black Chicago Development Coalition. For the past eight years, he’s fought against the displacement of Chicago’s low-income communities.

Fleming is coming courtesy of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which coalition member Laura Goldblatt, a post-doctoral fellow at UVA, recently received.

Categories
News

Affordable housing remedies include land purchasing and city-funded rental assistance

Between The Flats at West Village, The Uncommon and The Standard (pictured), which is currently under construction, a total of 861 units on West Main Street will have been created. None of them has been priced as affordable for lower-income families. Courtesy rendering

City Council is forging ahead with a multi-pronged attempt to stymie the affordable housing crisis in Charlottesville. The moves call for building new affordable housing, while also creating incentives for existing landlords to rent at rates affordable for lower-income families, and developing a city-funded rental assistance program for residents who are most in need.

“The affordable housing problem in Charlottesville is not going to be solved by simply building new housing, so I’m trying to find different ways to attack the issue,” says Stacy Pethia, the city’s housing program coordinator, who presented the recommendations from the Housing Advisory Committee last week to Council. “We’re looking at every tool that we have. What can we do to build new units while preserving the affordable housing we already have? And then, find ways to encourage existing landlords to help out. I’m trying to attack it on every front.” 

In 2010, the city set a goal to have 15 percent of its housing by 2025 be affordable, which for two-person families means earning at least $52,650 a year. In Charlottesville, 1,800 families—25 percent—make less than $35,000 a year, according to the Orange Dot report released in 2015. City Councilor Kathy Galvin said recently that only 20 percent of the 944 people who work for the city actually lives in Charlottesville.

Over the last seven years, the percentage of affordable units in Charlottesville has declined from 10.5 percent six years ago to 10.06 percent. During that time, 1,530 new housing units were created, but only 73 of those—fewer than 5 percent—were priced as affordable. And of the roughly 1,200 future units that have either been approved or are seeking approval from the city for construction, only 40 of them—fewer than 4 percent—are slated to be affordable.

Last week, councilors voted to move forward with several steps to combat the waning amount of affordable housing, beginning with creating a list of vacant city-owned pieces of land in residential areas. Because Charlottesville is landlocked and just 10 square miles, land is scarce. City Manager Maurice Jones has been tasked with identifying what city-owned land could be sold or leased to developers on which to build affordable housing. Jones was also asked to look into other possible land purchases for affordable housing sites.

Last week Council also approved the creation of a $900,000 rental assistance program. Under the current federal housing assistance program, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority is authorized to fund 533 rental vouchers. But because rental rates are so expensive in Charlottesville, the CRHA can only afford to fund about 400 of those. Funding for this new rental assistance program would come out of the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund, which Pethia oversees, and which received an additional $800,000 in the city’s budget for the next fiscal year, for a total of $2.3 million. (Over the next four fiscal years the CAHF budget will increase to $3.4 million per year, for a total of $16 million over the next five years, which is more than double the amount the city has funded in the past five years.)

This new city-funded rental assistance program is expected to pay for the monthly rent of about 120 people—at a rental rate of about $600 per month, per person. Still at question, however, is who would be prioritized to receive the funds—people who are homeless, living with disabilities, on the CRHA wait list, etc. Also, would housing in Albemarle County be possible if city rentals proved too expensive? How long would the funding last? And does CRHA have the capacity to run such a program? Council delayed the actual implementation of the program until September 16, when the HAC is expected to report back with a set of guidelines and a structure.

The third measure Council approved was the creation of a Landlord Risk Reduction Fund. A significant hurdle to creating affordable housing, says Pethia, is convincing landlords they won’t lose money by renting to people who earn low incomes. This new fund would be used to reimburse landlords for repairs if a rental unit is damaged, with the agreement that they continue to rent the unit at an affordable rate. The fund would also serve as a security deposit for some lower-income residents who can afford to pay the monthly rent on a new unit, but can’t afford the security deposit.

The final component included in the approved proposals was aimed at incentivizing developers to build more affordable units. The proposal would waive preliminary and final site-plan review fees, as well as building permit fees, for projects that constructed at least 15 percent of their total units as affordable. It’s expected to save developers approximately $5,000 per unit, which would in theory allow landlords to price their rents lower for those units.

Categories
News

Unaffordable housing: Developers pay to not build affordable units

Stacy Pethia, hired as the city’s housing program coordinator in August, says she thinks the money—$2.3 million—in the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund could be “used more effectively.” The developer of The Uncommon paid $331,450 into the fund. Photo by Martyn Kyle

Sharonda Poindexter-Rose is a 24-year-old single mother who works as a server at a local restaurant. She lives in a one-bedroom home, and as she’s looked for a two-bedroom place over the last several months, she’s discovered a harsh reality. “It is so expensive out here, it’s ridiculous,” says Poindexter-Rose.

In the last six years, 1,530 new housing units have been created in the city, but only 73 of these—fewer than 5 percent—are priced to be affordable. “Affordable” means that a two-person family making $52,650 a year or less could afford to rent it. In Charlottesville, 1,800 families—25 percent—make less than $35,000 a year, according to the Orange Dot report released last year.

The city has set a goal to have 15 percent of its housing be affordable by 2025. Overall, the percentage of affordable units in Charlottesville has declined from 10.5 percent six years ago to 10.06 percent.

In large part that’s because so many new high-priced units have entered the market. More than half of these are coming from three apartment buildings on West Main Street. Between The Flats at West Village, The Uncommon and The Standard, which is currently under construction, a total of 861 units will have been created. None of them has been priced as affordable for lower-income families. Instead, with rents ranging from $1,500-$3,200, the target tenant has been students.

“Everywhere you go in Charlottesville, it’s always about UVA students,” says Poindexter-Rose. “Look at all the people who work at UVA, look at all the people who work at hotels. Where do you want us to live? It comes across as if they don’t care about us. That’s what the message comes across as.”

Instead of lowering rental rates, each of these out-of-state developers has paid into the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund. If a developer seeks a special use permit to increase the number of allowable units in a development, a local ordinance lets companies pay the city a lump sum rather than designate “affordable” rents for a small percentage of units in the building.

But since the CAHF’s creation in 2007, every developer required by the ordinance to contribute to affordable housing has paid into the fund instead of providing affordable units. The Flats paid $487,491; The Uncommon paid $331,450; and, most recently, The Standard paid $664,777. None of those developers responded to a request for comment.

“Obviously we would have preferred to have the units,” says Stacy Pethia, the city’s housing program coordinator. “But we’ll take the money. We will find a way to spend it.” Coming from Pittsburgh’s housing authority, Pethia was hired by the city in August to oversee the CAHF. “I think it can be used more effectively, we just need to find a way to do that,” says Pethia. The fund currently has a $2.3 million balance.

Pethia says it does a great job of preserving and rehabilitating existing affordable housing—by funding projects with nonprofits such as Habitat for Humanity, Piedmont Housing Alliance and Albemarle Housing Improvement Program—but she thinks the fund needs to do more to add affordable housing to the marketplace.

Acreage in the 10.2-square-mile city is scarce and expensive, which is why Dan Rosensweig, president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville, says the city should use the CAHF to strategically buy land for affordable housing. Habitat for Humanity has used CAHF money for nearly all of the more than 160 homes it’s helped families build.

Rosensweig says the current affordable housing system is “broken.” For starters, he argues that the city should ease its density restrictions.

“There’s no substitute for an increase in inventory,” says Rosensweig, adding that since the West Main Street developments, he’s heard that rents elsewhere in the city are falling “ever so slightly”  for the first time in years.

Pethia is also making a push for increasing residential density levels in some areas of the city. If a developer is permitted to build two additional stories on a building in exchange for making 15 percent of the units affordable to lower-income families, that would go a long way, she says.

But increasing density is not always popular. The local Great Eastern Management Company is vying to be the first to include affordable units—at least four—in its proposed 126-unit apartment building on East Jefferson Street, but has received pushback from some area residents who say it’s too large.

In November, increased density was one of 35 recommendations Pethia and the Housing Advisory Committee delivered to City Council. They also recommended doubling the amount of money developers pay into the CAHF if they opt not to build affordable units, while calling on the city to increase its own funding of the CAHF, about $1.3 million annually.

“That’s simply not enough,” says Brandon Collins, an organizer with the Public Housing Association of Residents. Providing more affordable housing, Collins says, is key to preserving the fabric of neighborhoods by helping ensure existing residents don’t get priced out.

Pethia is hopeful the city will reach its affordable housing goal in eight years. “If we look at different ways to use the housing fund and to approach affordable housing development and preservation in the city, we’ll get there. The affordable housing fund has done a lot of good and has grown, but I think it’s now time to really grow.”