Craigslist – C-VILLE Weekly

In brief: Drive-up dentist, neighborly love, and more

Open wide

Parking lots have become the scene of all kinds of new activity in our virus-crippled world. Students are sitting in their cars to access school Wi-Fi. Religious congregations are meeting without getting out of their vehicles. And here in town, the Charlottesville Free Clinic is offering parking lot dental services for its patients: Two days a week, as many as 15 patients drive up and say “ahhh.”

The Free Clinic provides care to those who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but don’t get health insurance from work. Parking lot dental checkups are just one way the clinic has adapted to life during the pandemic—they’re also doing curbside medication delivery and evaluating patients for financial eligibility over the phone.

“A lot of folks are losing their jobs, and therefore their insurance,” says Colleen Keller, the director of the clinic. “We anticipate having a lot of new patients by fall.”

The clinic has focused on maintaining its pharmacy services, and the most common medication it distributes is insulin. “We are seeing patients who aren’t always refilling on time coming in,” Keller says. “They know they are vulnerable, and they are working on their health. This is a silver lining.”

Like health care workers around the country, the free clinic’s staff is going full speed ahead. “As one staff member said, ‘It feels good that we can do something. It’s harder when I leave and go home,’” Keller says. “We have enormous gratitude for our jobs, and for the community who funds a free clinic.”

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Neighbors helping neighbors

Since March 13, the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation’s Community Emergency Response Fund has raised more than $4.4 million from more than 600 donations—including a gift of $1 million from the University of Virginia—to help those who need it most during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The fund has awarded $200,000 in grants to local nonprofits that provide critical services, including the Sexual Assault Resource Agency and Blue Ridge Area Food Bank.

And through the Community Foundation’s partnership with Cville Community Cares and United Way of Greater Charlottesville, along with city and county governments, it runs a Community Resource Helpline to provide direct support to local residents in need of money for rent, groceries, and other essential expenses. The helpline has already assisted more than 7,200 people, and with the recent addition of an online form to make the process easier, the foundation expects that number to drastically increase.

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Quote of the Week

“I am committed to an in-person fall semester in which we are back together in our classrooms, laboratories, studios, and clinics.”

—Virginia Commonwealth University president Michael Rao, as UVA and other schools are staying mum on fall plans

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In Brief

A welcome site

The City of Charlottesville has a new digital home, upgrading its website this week from charlottesville.org to charlottesville.gov. The new website is sleeker and slimmer, with 500 pages compared to the previous site’s 2,000. At the City Council meeting last week, councilor Heather Hill promised a “new website, new domain, same commitment to service,” while communications chief Brian Wheeler acknowledged that “a lot of links are going to be broken.”

Hals monitor

Those who’ve long cherished Charlottesville’s (increasingly rare) quirks got a treat last week, when an alleged self-portrait of Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals showed up for sale on Charlottesville Craigslist. It’s going for $7.5 million (though the poster will consider “reasonable offers” and “partial trade for real estate”). Art historians consider Hals to be one of the best painters of his time, but local experts were hesitant to speculate on the painting’s authenticity. As for why the anonymous poster would want to part with such a treasure, the owner said only: “It is time for him to come under new stewardship.”

For sale by owner: Frans Hals self-portrait (for a mere $7.5 million). PC: Anonymous Craigslist user

Corner support

With COVID-19 keeping students off Grounds—possibly until next spring semester—businesses on the Corner have taken a huge hit. To help them survive, tech nonprofit HackCville has created savethecorner.com, which thousands of students have used to buy gift cards from their favorite Corner spots and donate to the Charlottesville Restaurant Community Fund. HackCville has also raised over $2,000 to buy meals from Corner restaurants for UVA’s contract workers laid off by Aramark.

Tragedy on the frontlines

Dr. Lorna Breen died at UVA Hospital on Sunday of self-inflicted injuries. While serving hundreds of coronavirus patients, Breen, emergency department medical director at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, contracted the virus, but tried to go back into work after staying home for about a week and a half. After the hospital sent her back home, her family brought her to Charlottesville. According to her father, Dr. Phillip Breen, the pandemic had taken an extreme toll on her mental health. “Make sure she’s praised as a hero, because she was,” Breen told The New York Times. “She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.”

Renters beware: Local property owners caught in the middle of Craigslist scams

Prospective renters using Craigslist to find temporary housing in Charlottesville have recently been the victims of scammers, paying thousands of dollars in rent up front before showing up on the doorstep of bewildered homeowners who already rented out their space.

Janice Kavanagh is a Charlottesville real estate agent who rents out the front half of her house, as well as her mother’s cottage next door, through Airbnb. But over the past year, scammers have grabbed photos of her property from Airbnb and posted them on Craigslist, advertising her property as available for rent. Since the start of June, she’s had five different people pull up to check out the house, some expecting to move in that day.

“I feel like I [can only] bang my head against the wall because no one really cares,” Kavanagh says. “Craigslist is too big to care, and the police have probably bigger fish to fry. And quite honestly, I am not a victim of anything, but the people are who are…trying to rent out my properties.”

When these scammers are contacted about a listing, they send the interested renter a photo of a driver’s license in order to “prove” their identity. They tell the victim they can’t go inside the house because other renters are currently staying there, then negotiate a monthly rate and ask for a certain amount to be paid up front by depositing it directly into a bank account.

As a real estate agent, Kavanagh has seen homes she’s listed for sale pop up on Craigslist as available for rent for years. Those houses always had “For Sale” signs out front, so interested renters who stopped by would call her asking whether or not the property was actually available to renters. While she was able to help those people avoid being scammed, Kavanagh has no idea how many victims never called.

Kavanagh has posted a warning on Craigslist with pictures of her cottage to inform prospective renters. But it’s not just her home that’s been exploited. One of her friends who also rents out her home had an older couple show up at her door who needed to stay in Charlottesville until December for chemotherapy treatments at the UVA Medical Center. They’d already paid several thousand dollars for the three months’ rent.

In an email to a woman from Virginia Beach who tried to rent Kavanagh’s property, one scammer impersonating a property manager at Perfect Home Letting—which doesn’t exist—wrote, “You’re getting things wrong. You can walk through or drive by the apartment to see the neighborhood and surroundings. There was an agreement between me and the current tenants that there won’t be any form of disturbance while they are in the apartment. This is legitimate. Not one of those scams on craigslist. Attached is a copy of my drivers license.”

The scammer also grew frustrated at the woman’s request to speak on the phone about the cottage. Sensing something was off about the property manager, she decided to stop by the property anyway. It was there she met Kavanagh, who has since gone to the Charlottesville Police Department to report the series of incidents.

“CPD has been made aware of this incident and it is under investigation,” Public Information Officer Tyler Hawn wrote in a statement. “CPD recommends Craigslist customers review advertisements thoroughly and take steps to contact the advertiser and verify the name of the company to ensure the listing is real.”