The Friendship Court redevelopment is scheduled to take place in four phases over the course of seven years. Phase one, indicated above, will begin in the fall.
PC: City of Charlottesville
Do-over
Multiple public housing developments in Charlottesville are one step closer to getting a badly needed makeover. At its Monday meeting, City Council unanimously approved two ordinances regarding the redevelopment of Crescent Halls, South First Street, and Friendship Court.
The Piedmont Housing Alliance will take the lead on the first phase of Friendship Court’s redevelopment, while the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority will head the work at Crescent Halls, as well as the first phase of South First Street.
In this year’s budget, council allocated over $3 million to CRHA for its projects. At its meeting this week, council needed to approve the funds again into a community development corporation operated by CRHA. Constructing and redeveloping Crescent Halls and South First Street will cost an estimated $34 million in total.
Once redeveloped, Crescent Halls—which houses mostly seniors and people with disabilities—will have 98 one-bedroom, and seven two-bedroom apartments, as well as improved accessibility and amenities. At South First Street, CRHA will renovate the existing 58 units, and build 142 new ones.
For Friendship Court, PHA plans to build 35 new multi-family homes and 71 new apartments off of Monticello Avenue. Forty-six will be set aside for current residents, while others will be available to people making between 80 percent to less than 30 percent of the area median income.
Construction on Friendship Court is expected to begin in the spring.
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Quote of the week
“The grass around here looks terrible. It’s up above our knees. If we have a mayor that’s sitting on the housing board, have y’all really looked at Westhaven?”
—local activist Rosia Parker, calling out the poor conditions in the city’s public housing at Monday’s City Council meeting
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In brief
Trump train strain
On Sunday, Richmond City Council candidate Mike Dickinson led a “Trump Train”—a caravan of supporters in their cars—from Henrico County into the city. That caused yet another altercation beneath the Monument Avenue Lee statue, where protesters stood in the roadway, preventing the caravan’s progress. Police responded to reports that a gunshot was fired and one woman was pepper sprayed. No other injuries were reported. The statue’s days seem numbered—last week, a judge said Governor Ralph Northam can remove the Lee statue by executive order, pending one last period for appeal.
Whine and dine
A disgruntled bride is suing Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards for $32,000 after the Albemarle winery refused to refund a deposit for a canceled wedding, reports NBC29. Heather Heldman and her fiancé pushed their May 2020 wedding back to October when COVID broke out, but even with the postponement, just 15 percent of guests said they were able to attend. Heldman asked for a full refund. Pippin offered to return $9,000, saying it will have hosted a dozen weddings by the end of the fall, and it’s not the vineyard’s fault the Heldmans’ guests couldn’t make the trip. The wedding is just the latest event that’s gone sour in 2020.
Wild times
The city continues to expand the Heyward Community Forest, a swathe of newly protected land near Ragged Mountain. Last year, the city used a $600,000 grant from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation to purchase 144 acres of land from a private owner, thus establishing the forest. At Monday’s council meeting, the city appropriated $65,000 in VOF grant money to purchase five additional acres.
The cameras were hung on telephone poles at the outskirts of Westhaven public housing neighborhood.
You wouldn’t notice the cameras if you didn’t know what to look for—but once you see the first one, the others are easy to spot: black balls hanging from telephone poles like sinister Christmas tree baubles.
Rosia Parker noticed the camera near her house in Westhaven when the city installed it over the summer. She can see it from her balcony, which means, of course, the camera can see her balcony. “They had the area blocked off like they were doing big work,” Parker says, “So that’s what made me look at them like, ‘what are they doing?’”
Parker’s search for answers hasn’t yet turned up the resolution she hoped for. The situation raises serious questions about the relationship between Charlottesville’s law enforcement and the residents of the city’s public housing neighborhoods.
Parker asked City Council about the cameras during the public comment session of the November 2 council meeting. At the next meeting, city manager Tarron Richardson explained the practice, saying “That was one of our cameras. We move those periodically throughout the city based on requests from different residents and different community groups.”
That comment elicited surprise from City Council—“Oh yeah we need to discuss that more,” said Mayor Nikuyah Walker—and a retraction from the city, which later said via social media that the city “does not have a program related to citizen-requested security cameras.” The cameras are placed at the discretion of law enforcement, not residents.
At the January 6 City Council meeting, Parker and local civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel brought up the cameras again. Walker revealed that four cameras had been installed, three near Westhaven and a fourth near the entrance to another public housing neighborhood on Prospect Avenue. When asked about the purpose of the cameras, Walker said, “I can’t answer that, I don’t have the information.”
A camera hung at the corner of 7th St NW and 8th St NW
The placement of the cameras rankled Fogel and Parker. Westhaven and Prospect are majority black neighborhoods. “They’re clearly targeting black communities,” Fogel says.
“There are white neighborhoods where still, you have meth labs,” Parker says. “Why were Prospect and Westhaven the only two chosen?”
“The problem here is that there is a misperception that crime doesn’t happen in predominantly white areas,” said local resident Angeline Conn at the January 6 council meeting. “I’m not for state surveillance at all, period—but if you’re not extending the same surveillance to those communities, you’re being biased.”
Parker and Fogel feel the camera dust-up reveals the police department’s lack of willingness to collaborate with the communities it’s policing. “If the city really wanted to be transparent with the community, and especially the black community, they should at least have had a town hall meeting or something,” Parker says. “I appreciate being safe, but I would also like to know that I’m under surveillance. That’s my privacy.”
Fogel says the surreptitious installation of the cameras suggests the police department is more focused on punitive measures—racking up arrests—than proactive problem-solving. “What was the purpose of these cameras? Are they to get people arrested? I’d rather see them prevent the crime,” Fogel says. “The way to do that is, if you have cameras, you announce the heck out of them.”
City spokesperson Brian Wheeler responded to questions about the cameras in a brief statement. “The Charlottesville Police Department will continue to deploy cameras in the community in response to crime trends, shots fired incidents, robberies, and larcenies,” read part of the statement. “The cameras are for investigative purposes only and there is no active monitoring of the camera feeds.”
According to Wheeler, the only other area where the city maintains similar cameras is a four-block radius around City Hall.
The city did not answer a question about how it decided where to place the cameras. Also not addressed: if evidence from the cameras has been used to make any arrests.
John Whitehead, a civil rights lawyer at the Rutherford Institute, says that surveillance like this treads on shaky constitutional ground. “The police should be notifying anyone when they’re watching them,” Whitehead says, “because it implicates the Fourth Amendment, which dictates that before any government agent is doing surveillance on American citizens they have to have probable cause.”
Whitehead says that surveillance like this is not an uncommon practice for police departments around the country, and that municipal governments have the ability to intervene. “It’s the job of the City Council members to reel this in and tell them to stop it,” Whitehead says.
For Fogel, the cameras are one more example of what he calls untrustworthy behavior by the Charlottesville Police Department. He cited the department’s reluctance to release stop-and-frisk data and its 2018 purchase of a Dodge Charger—the same make and model as the car used to kill Heather Heyer—as recent examples of actions that can be interpreted as egregiously tone-deaf at best.
Parker, meanwhile, is determined to keep looking for answers. “I’m going to stay on them,” she says, “until we figure out what’s going on and why these cameras are here.”
The Tenth Street Warehouses project encompasses Peloton Station restaurant and bike shop, a new outpost of the Mudhouse, and a handful of apartments, along with more commercial and residential space in the former Coke bottling factory. Photo: Stephen Barling
The concept of urban placemaking surfaced in the 1960s, when writer and activist Jane Jacobs successfully led the fight to block a planned highway through New York’s Greenwich Village, and urban planner William “Holly” Whyte began the Street Life Project, documenting how built environments shaped the way people behave and interact. Today, Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces are required reading for architects, landscape designers, and planners—and their pioneering work has established the baseline idea that development is more about people’s everyday lives than it is about simply putting up buildings.
Shannon Worrell’s Tenth Street Warehouses project, at the threshold of Charlottesville’s 10th and Page neighborhood, is an exercise in urban placemaking. The pocket of thoughtfully designed commercial and residential spaces is comprised of the historic Coca-Cola bottling facility, a handful of new apartments designed by Wolf Ackerman, Peloton Station restaurant and bicycle repair shop, and a thoroughly modern new Mudhouse coffee shop.
Shannon Worrell has used her new development to create a more open, walkable space between West Main and 10th Street. Here, she sits outside Mudhouse Coffee Roasters, a commercial tenant. Photo: Stephen Barling
If you’re headed west along Main Street and turn right onto 10th Street, you will immediately see the Coke warehouse—with its patinaed red brick and black metal casement windows—and after about 40 paces you will enter an open space that provides relief from the claustrophobic corridor between the monolithic façades of the Flats and Standard apartment complexes. You may also sense that you are in a deliberately composed setting, alive with pedestrians and cyclists, folks enjoying a sandwich and a beer on the patio at Peloton, and people coming and going at the shops, small businesses, and studio apartments of the Coke building.
As the local population continues to grow, Charlottesville is molting its big-town shell and emerging as a small city, creating an imperative for more spaces like the Tenth Street Warehouses. We must commend the developers of Six Hundred West Main Street for preserving the Blue Moon Diner and the building next door. Likewise, kudos to the Quirk hotel designers, at West Main and Fifth streets, for sparing two adjacent 1920s streetfront homes. As a whole, the streetscape between Tavern & Grocery restaurant and Seventh Street presents many pleasant places, including the street-facing dining area outside Public Fish & Oyster and Oakhart Social.
The view from Tenth Street shows anchor tenant Peloton Station, Mudhouse, and the low-rise that contains a handful of modern apartments by Wolf Ackerman architects. The taller building in the background is The Standard, which is not part of the Tenth Street Station development. Photo: Stephen Barling
The Tenth Street Warehouses represent an opportunity for more than commodious living. It is a connector between Main Street and the Westhaven public housing and 10th and Page neighborhoods, both of which absorbed African Americans displaced by the city’s shameful demolition of Vinegar Hill in the 1960s. Worrell is fully cognizant of this history, and also aware that the neighborhood is threatened with gentrification. It could be argued that Worrell’s project contributes to that. But by creating a cohesive, modestly scaled development, she is announcing her commitment not to wall off one of the city’s less affluent communities. On the contrary, she hopes that the Tenth Street Warehouses will act as “soft, connective tissue” between the neighborhood and West Main Street and the university.
We spoke with Worrell, a former poet and musician, about this and much more.—Joe Bargmann
Abode: How did the Tenth Street Warehouses project begin?
Shannon Worrell: You can trace it back to about 20 years ago, when I bought the Coke bottling factory building. That was the company’s original facility in Charlottesville, but they outgrew it and built another one, which is now Kardinal Hall, over on Preston Avenue. The first building became a shirt manufacturing place—maybe not what you’d call a “factory” but certainly bigger than a tailor shop. Since I’ve owned it, it’s been a commercial and residential space, with big lofts and a few smaller spaces tucked in on the ground floor.
How much work have you done to the building?
A lot of the original details were preserved in a renovation by the previous owner, and I’ve continued that idea to this day. The space has been updated—it has to be useful—but I’ve been adamant about keeping all of the amazing old materials intact. It was a large, industrial space, and I’ve stayed true to that spirit and aesthetic. If anything, I’ve opened it up more rather than breaking it up into a bunch of smaller spaces.
What other elements have you added over the years to make what is now the Tenth Street Warehouses?
I bought the building and some land adjacent to what most people remember as the old C’ville Classic Cars shop. It was built around 1930, and for many years it was a machine shop where car parts were made. But it’s always been industrial and automotive.
The transformation into the space that is now Peloton Station and the Mudhouse is night and day. What was your vision in the beginning?
The first thing was just to save the building. There had been a lot of deferred maintenance. There was literally water rushing through it and the roof was falling in, and there were environmental issues because of the industrial use. So, I addressed and mitigated those issues. I was attached to those big, slanted, sort of Art Deco windows and the shape of the building, so I decided to revive it.
What option did you have?
None that I was willing to consider. I could have done what’s going on all over the city, and especially up on Main Street, which is to knock down the old building, put in parking on the ground floor, and then build up as many stories as the city would allow. But I live in that neighborhood, and I’ve been watching the changes over the years, and there’s no way I was going big. I can’t say it was the greatest financial decision [laughs].
I’m sure! And I can appreciate the aesthetic choice, but why was preserving that building so important to you?
I remember when I was a kid, there were all these great old quirky buildings. There are just a few that remain, including a couple on Main Street, that remind me of my childhood. The big box housing developments on West Main Street change the whole scale and feeling of midtown. On the positive side, there are more pedestrians and The Corner is truly being connected to West Main and downtown. The downside is that some of these buildings look out of place in the original cityscape—more suburban and homogeneous in their design and material use. We saw an opportunity to make a project that was more architecturally unusual, while showcasing the old car dealership storefront. The Standard looms over us in a way that urges us to want to create something visually appealing in the shadow of its backside. We are working with them, Westhaven, and The Charlottesville Mural Project to create a park behind the apartment building.
How do you compensate for or counteract that?
We’re looking at our options right now. I’m working on getting a big mural painted that will break up some of that visual monotony of the back of the Standard.
Part of your goal is to improve the way the space looks, but there’s also a practical side to how you’re designing and programming it, right?
I like to describe the Tenth Street Warehouses property as connective tissue. When the classic car shop was in the Peloton building, there were a lot of fences in the space between it and the Coke building. I mean, a whole series of chain link fences were breaking up the space. I had them taken out. It’s important to my commercial tenants and the people from the neighborhood to be able to walk down from, or up to, Main Street.
Playing devil’s advocate, could someone call your project simple gentrification?
That’s fair, to an extent. I have been called a gentrifier. But at the same time, I’ve also deliberately sought out people’s point of view. I suppose I need to do more of that—have a stronger connection with my neighbors. But they’d have to admit that the space is now more walkable and open, a more pleasant place to engage with others. I like to think of it as kinder, gentler gentrification, if there is such a thing [laughs]. I want people to understand my point of view. I could have cleared the land and put up the biggest possible building, in order to make more money in the near term. I’m committed to a different approach. I have an open mind and an open heart. I have to run a business and make money, but I’m confident that if I do the right thing, that will happen in time. That sounds utopian and naïve, but time will tell and I’m just going to keep trying.
What’s going to happen with that lot on the other side of Tenth Street? It would be nice if you could have something there that continued in the vein of the warehouses.
Well, the university owns that land, and right now it’s used as parking for faculty and hospital staff. I think I’m like a lot of people from the neighborhood who have a love-hate relationship with the university. It obviously employs and educates and enlightens a lot of people, and it provides all of us with lots of wonderful diversions and resources. But people also see UVA as a gentrifier that’s encroaching on the city.
But the story isn’t so simple, is it?
No, of course not. And I think [UVA president] Jim Ryan is really interested in having more of a dialogue with the community and enhancing UVA’s relationship with the city. What happens with the land that’s now a parking lot? I don’t know. I guess it could end up being student housing.
Have you spoken with anyone at the university about that parcel?
No, I haven’t. But I hope to. And generally speaking, because of president Ryan and also the aftermath of August 12, I think the university is more sensitive to how it interacts with the city. It’s certainly more sensitive than an out-of-town developer who really has no community connection.
It seems to me that it would be beneficial for the city to leverage some of the talent from the School of Architecture—architects, landscape architects, planners…
That kind of integration would be really great. There are some amazing people in this community who are either at the university now or who have come out of it. I have had professors and students work up plans for sites in the past, but nothing ever seems to get off the page. There’s so much capital here—creative, intellectual, financial—that it would be great to be put it all together to solve some problems. The biggest problem now is affordable housing. It would be interesting to see what could happen if we all put our energy into addressing that.
What connection to the university do you see there?
There’s some student housing on grounds, but a lot of them need to live off campus. I think the relationship between student housing and affordable housing is contentious. We need to talk about that and make sure everyone has a seat at the table. I’m not saying I know how to make that happen. I’m sitting here in my utopian bubble! [laughs] But I am a developer, I have a stake in this, and I like to think I’m conscientious. I’m aware of the housing redevelopment process—I’m part of it in some small way. I do some volunteering for the public housing association president, and I’ve been talking to Habitat for Humanity about some housing initiatives. I’m trying to find a way forward and make a difference. I want to figure out the best way to do that.
What drives you to keep going along that path?
The creative part is what inspires me, and my desire to use that creativity for people in the community. There are a lot of things we could have done with the Tenth Street Warehouses space. We chose to create what you see now.
The apartments above Peloton Station and Mudhouse, designed by Wolf Ackerman, are very modern. How does that style mesh with the other buildings, which are industrial and from different eras?
The Coke building has very large, loft-style apartments. Their size and scale is dictated by the building itself—industrial space with really high ceilings, lots of windows, and wide-plank wood floors. I wanted the new apartments to be similar—with a warehouse-industrial feel and high ceilings—but the architects were like, “Man, there’s a lot of red brick in this town, and I don’t think we want to go there.” I agreed. We were looking at Scandinavian architecture, very spare, and also Japanese. So we coined the term Scandinese industrial. [laughs] It doesn’t mean anything on its face, but it became our shorthand way of talking about the style we were going for. It’s an extension of the industrial history of the site but also contemporary.
There’s a rawness to the whole site. Would you say that the Tenth Street Warehouses are still a work in progress?
Definitely. My tenants all understand that, too. We want to hear from people in the community —we welcome their opinions with open arms—about how the space can work for them and be meaningful to them. There will be changes. I think we’re really just getting started.
Charlottesville schools are closed for a second day while police investigate an anonymous online threat made for an ethnic cleansing at Charlottesville High School. Staff photo
By Samantha Baars and Lisa Provence
As thousands are celebrating literature at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville, a less-exalted missive from the nether regions of the internet, threatening ethnic cleansing at Charlottesville High, has closed all city schools for a second day Friday.
Around noon Friday, Charlottesville police announced they had arrested and charged a 17-year-old male with a Class 6 felony for threatening to commit serious bodily harm to people on school property, and harassment by computer, a misdemeanor.
At a following press conference, Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney told reporters and community members that the person they arrested identifies as Portuguese, was in Albemarle County at the time of the arrest, and is not a Charlottesville High School student. She said state laws prohibit police from publicly identifying the minor, unless he were to be tried as an adult.
Local, state, and federal partners located the suspect’s IP address with the help of internet providers, according to Brackney. She did not divulge whether he had any weapons.
Chief Brackney addresses media and community members.
“We want the community and the world to know that hate is not welcome in Charlottesville,” Brackney said at the press conference. “There are not very fine people on both sides of this issue.”
Charlottesville Superintendent Rosa Atkins also spoke, and said she found it “particularly troubling” that the person who made the threat is not enrolled in the city school system. School will resume as normal next week, and counselors will be available as usual.
“We will give [students] a warm welcome Monday morning,” Atkins said.
Mayor Nikuyah Walker said she hopes the way the threat was handled will lessen any fear of future threats, that Charlottesville is “leading the fight for justice globally,” and that “the world is aware that this will not be welcomed [here.]”
Thursday, Albemarle police arrested an Albemarle High teen for posting on social media a threat to shoot up the school. Police say that is unrelated to the Charlottesville High threat to kill black and Hispanic students.
Atkins says the decision to close city schools a second day and keep 4,300 students home is to make sure everyone in the community, including students and staff, feel safe returning to school.
The racial terrorism is a painful reminder to a community already traumatized from the August 2017 invasion of white supremacists.
UVA media studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan tweeted, “Today, as Charlottesville teachers and students sit home for a second day trying not to let fear overtake them, I’m reminded of those who told me after August 12, 2017, that white supremacists were not a threat to this country. If you think that, be glad you have that luxury.”
Another reaction came from UVA law professor Benjamin Spencer, who tweeted, “America: This is life as a black family in America. My children cannot go to school for a second day in a row because some rando person has threatened to murder all the “n*ggers” and “w*tbacks” at C’ville High School.#Charlottesville#ThisIsAmerica”
City School Board Chair Jennifer McKeever says, “It’s unfortunate and frankly it’s really frustrating that we live in this world where people can make these threats and feel comfortable making these threats.”
CHS senior and activist Zyahna Bryant, president of the Black Student Union, posted a screenshot of the threat from the message board 4chan, and says racism in city schools isn’t new. There will be no reconciliation without structural change and the redistribution of resources for black and brown students, she adds.
“In the past, when students of color have brought forth racial concerns, there has been no real change,” says Bryant. “The is the time to act and show black and brown students that they matter with lasting changes and reform. Now is not the time to pass another empty resolution. It is time to back the words up with action.”
Courtney Maupin’s daughter is a freshman at CHS. “It’s scary to know there are people out there who don’t like you for the color of your skin,” she says. “I had to explain to my two younger children who didn’t understand why they weren’t in school yesterday.”
When she heard Thursday schools would be closed again, “I cried last night because it’s heartbreaking,” says Maupin.
Kristin Clarens, a local anti-racist activist and mom of three, is one of several community members who says she’s working to dismantle white supremacy at a local, national, and international level. In the immediacy of the school closings, they’re making sure food insecure students who rely on school lunch are still getting fed.
Two of her children go to Burnley Moran Elementary, the city’s largest elementary school, where kids from two public housing projects—Westhaven and one near Riverview Park—are bused in everyday. Clarens, who’s watching four extra kids today, says these students can be particularly vulnerable, and their parents can’t always find childcare or transportation when school is cancelled abruptly.
During yesterday’s closing, she and other parents hosted an open invitation lunch at Westhaven, and they’re planning to have another one today from 12-2pm. It will be paid for by the Burnley Moran PTO, which is accepting donations of money and nonperishable food that can be delivered to the Westhaven Recreation Center during the community lunch hours.
Like most parents, Clarens says she’s glad the city made safety a priority.
“I’m grateful for the efforts that people are making to keep our kids safe on every level, but I also think we should be more forceful in calling this act of white supremacy and terrorism out for what it is,” she says. “I’m heartbroken that we live in a climate where this is allowed to get to this level.”
McKeever, too, is heartened by the outpouring of community support in the face of a situation that is “not something you want to have to explain to our children.”
Updated Friday, March 22 at 11:53am with the Charlottesville Police Department announcement that they’d made an arrest.
Updated Friday, March 22 at 1:50pm with information from the press conference.
New data concludes that children growing up in Westhaven have the least chance of escaping poverty when they become adults, while equally poor children who grow up in northern communities such as Locust Grove, Wildwood, Willow Heights, and Village Square have the most. Courtesy the New York Times
The neighborhoods where poor children grow up can have a huge impact on their future earnings, a new analysis of census data shows. Here in Charlottesville, children growing up in Westhaven, the public housing complex in the 10th and Page neighborhood, have the least chance of escaping poverty, while equally poor children who grow up in northern communities such as Locust Grove, Wildwood, Willow Heights, and Village Square have the greatest chance.
The data, which planning commissioner Lyle Solla-Yates calls “disappointing,” but “not surprising,” comes from a new interactive map called The Opportunity Atlas, which “traces the roots of outcomes such as poverty and incarceration back to the neighborhoods in which children grew up.” Released October 1, the national mapping tool is the result of years of work by researchers at Harvard and Brown, in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau, using anonymized data on 20 million Americans who are in their mid-30s today.
In Charlottesville, the data shows that kids from poor families in Westhaven are projected to earn only $19,000 per year as adults. South of Westhaven, in the areas surrounding Lee, Grove, Ridge and Avon streets, that number is between $20,000 and $22,000. By contrast, in the northern neighborhoods that offer the most potential, (Locust Grove, Wildwood, Willow Heights, and Village Square) kids who grow up poor can expect to make approximately $36,000 each year.
What’s the difference? Solla-Yates says there’s more access to opportunity—”people who can give them jobs, training, experiences”—in the northern neighborhoods.
“For about a century, there’s been an effort to slice up the city to make sure there’s more mansions, or wealth, in the north part of the city, and less in the lower parts,” says Solla-Yates, who also serves on Charlottesville’s housing advisory committee. But, he notes, affordable housing is essentially “banned” in the northern areas of the city, where neighborhoods are mostly zoned as single-family residential with very little industrial zoning. In fact, more than half of Charlottesville is zoned that way.
“If you want to do affordable development, you basically need industrial zoning because there are the least amount of barriers,” he says.
In single-family zoned areas, themain barrier is simply cost of construction, says neighborhood planner Brian Haluska. He adds that the average cost of building a single-family home in America is about $250,000 before land costs, which are usually about $100,000 in Charlottesville.
“If all you can build is one unit on that lot, it’ll be listed at $350,000 minimum and I’m probably undercutting the price,” says Haluska. “If the zoning only allows single-family housing, that’s all you can get.”
If the zoning permits multiple units per lot, he says, developers are able to spread the construction and land costs over several units.
The two most recently built affordable housing communities—The Crossings at Fourth and Preston and Carlton Views in Belmont—were in industrially zoned areas, where Solla-Yates says there’s also the least amount of neighborhood opposition because, “Well, it could have been a factory.”
In his analysis of the Opportunity Atlas data, Solla-Yates also pointed out a few gaps. In a recent tweet he said some areas, such as a chunk of real estate south of the U.S. 250 Bypass in the Carlton Avenue area, are “so perfectly segregated by income and race that there is no data to judge from. Yes, affordable housing is mainly banned there, too.”
The Atlas’ creators hope that their data will help policymakers recognize and be able to replicate the kinds of community features that help children succeed. “Using the Atlas,” they write, “you can see exactly where and for whom opportunity is lacking in your community and develop customized solutions to improve children’s outcomes.”
In Charlottesville, affordable housing is already high on the planning commission’s list of priorities, and they’re gearing up to start discussing the land use chapter of the comprehensive plan, Solla-Yates says. It’s also the core of the conversation that the housing advisory committee has been having for the past few years, he adds.
Fellow committee member Lisa Larson-Torres says that while everyone in the group understands and hears the need for more affordable housing, “unfortunately, it doesn’t happen overnight.”
Part of the challenge, she says, is that there’s so little land left to be developed in Charlottesville—and she suggests that all new construction should focus on increasing affordable units in all neighborhoods.
“Is that feasible? Probably not,” she says, but it should be on all city residents’ radars, and she hopes more engagement and education will lead to changes in zoning and affordable housing voucher programs.
Larson-Torres says the Opportunity Atlas data supports an ongoing national and local conversation on systemic racism. And addressing it starts with awareness.
“There are a lot of neighborhoods in Charlottesville who are struggling,” she says. “And so many people seem to be immune or unaware of the significant challenges and inequities of our neighbors, possibly on the same street or just a couple of streets down from where we live.”
Joyce Ivory, president of the Charlottesville chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. Photo by Eze Amos
Before Joyce Ivory was president of the Charlottesville chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, she was a girl growing up in the Fifth and Dice (Fifeville) neighborhood. A Charlottesville High School track team member, cellist and a singer in the choir, Ivory looked up to a group of young women a few years older than she. Denise Johnson, current program director of City of Promise, who grew up in Charlottesville’s Westhaven neighborhood and graduated from CHS in 1998, was among that group.
Ivory, who graduated from CHS in 2002, says that Johnson and her cohort “showed us what excellence was” in a number of ways—on the track, in the classroom and in church pews—and, especially, by talking to everyone they met.
Denise Johnson, program director of City of Promise. Courtesy subject
After leaving for college and spending a few years living and working in bigger cities (Ivory in South Carolina and Washington, D.C., Johnson in Richmond), both women have returned home to lead local organizations. As part of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence’s Paradigm Shifters series, they sat down to discuss leadership—which both women view as an act of service—in the Charlottesville community.
C-VILLE: What makes an effective leader?
Joyce Ivory: They’re forward-thinking, approachable, transformative. Leaders have to be able to pull themselves back for a second and ask, “Is this about me, or is this about our mission? Is it even bigger than that? What am I doing this for?” Transformative is a big one, though—I want to help people realize their passion and potential in life, help them find the resources to help them stand on their own two feet.
Denise Johnson: You have to be willing to build other leaders, to say, “I see these great things in you, this is where you can lead.” And when someone says to you, “I am strong here,” allow them to lead in that way. You can’t be a one-person show.
How has being from Charlottesville shaped you as a person, as a leader?
JI: Knowing Holly Edwards. She always asked, “What do you need? What can I do?” She was always among the people, so down-to-earth. She was authentic, transparent, willing to come down and level with anybody. Level up, level down, level linearly—she was one of the first people that I saw out there in the community, not looking for recognition, not looking for the notoriety or the power. She had a heart to help, to serve the community and its people.
DJ: The Edwards family impacted both of our lives. I remember seeing the Rev. Dr. Alvin Edwards have conversations with people that I thought, as a little black girl growing up in the projects, I would never be able to have those types of conversations. Seeing him stand toe to toe with certain people gave me the permission to believe that I could do it too. Additionally, the community, especially in Westhaven, allowed me to see what a real work ethic looked like. My parents and others worked hard for everything that they had; they worked many, many hours, but their paychecks didn’t reflect it. That’s where resilience comes into play. Growing up, I learned financial tips; I learned what it was like to struggle and not to be afraid of struggle, because even in the midst of struggle I was always taken care of, and I knew I could work myself through it because of the work ethic that I witnessed. I was able to see both great worlds—I saw what the world was in my own home, but I could also see what the world could be, through the exposure that I gained latching on to the Edwards family.
What are the issues you aim to address through leadership in your organization?
DJ: Westhaven is the oldest and largest [public] housing development in Charlottesville; that means that most of its residents live at or near the poverty level, under-resourced from a financial perspective. And a lack of finances often means a lack of exposure to other things, to different lifestyles that are available. City of Promise’s education-based mission was built to begin to plant seeds to say [to the kids in the Westhaven, 10th and Page and Starr Hill neighborhoods], “You are just as valuable as any other person in this community. You may not have the same resources, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be just as successful. And we will stand in the gap between, so that when you choose to be successful, we’ll be here to show you what you need.” We work to remove every obstacle that could stand in their way.
However, some people assume that, just because someone grows up poor that they are in some way lazy, or lacking in love, and it’s part of my quest to make sure that people know that being impoverished does not mean lacking in love or community or family. These are some of the strongest people I’ve ever met, and a lot of what I’ve learned, even with all the academic degrees that I have, the foundation started in Westhaven.
JI: Our group came together because a lot of black women, on all socioeconomic levels, feel invisible in our community—women who are floating that poverty line all the way up to women who have doctorates—we all felt somewhat alone, that there wasn’t a lot of community. And so we have this coalition of women going out to support one another as a community of black women. We’re looking to attack different issues from a political standpoint—talking with delegates; looking at issues such as suspension rates in schools; disparities between children of color being incarcerated, having to go to adult facilities and thus lacking an opportunity for education. We work with the Boys & Girls Clubs, the PB&J Fund…we have a mammogram mobile. …I advocate for mental health and self-care, too, because as much as it’s awesome for our ladies to be out there with superhero capes on, we need to empower ourselves and feed one another. We are trying to be that village in this community for black women.
What is the work that is left to be done?
DJ: With City of Promise, we’re in charge of educating two different groups [the neighborhoods themselves, plus other, more affluent people in the city]. Part of coming into this position was to challenge people and empower people on both sides of the field. Let’s really address whatever stereotypes we are bringing to this table and have an honest racial conversation, especially at a time such as now. We’re always thankful for people who want to help, but we are trying to get away from the savior mentality. We want to make sure that people are helping from an authentic space, so while we appreciate all that the community is doing for us, when you are trying to help people from a savior mentality, you’re treating people like they have a deficit or that they are lower than, or beneath them. We’re challenging that perspective.
JI: As many programs as we have to empower people, we’re also here to educate the community about these things and how people need to continuously educate themselves. Systemically, as a society, we need to stop acting like we are more progressed than we are; we need to lean into the discomfort and be honest [with each other and ourselves]. We have to stop saying “I’m colorblind” and “I don’t see race.” Let’s have a dialogue, let’s talk about it, put it on the table. …I think in light of things that happened in August, people [are realizing they] are not as progressive as they think they are; they’re living in this little rosy bubble, and it got popped. Sometimes it takes a tragedy for people to really see that we haven’t come as far as we thought we have. But I think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
DJ: I think there is a group that is willing to come to the table and say, “Let’s have these conversations, let’s do what we have to do.” You can’t help how you grew up; you can’t help the things that you were fed growing up, or the assumptions that you made on either side. But you can decide what you will do from that point on. [And you can decide] to fight the systemic issues that we know exist in Charlottesville. In Charlottesville like in a few other places, certain people assume that being black equates to being poor, and being poor equates to being black. And if you [as a person of color] are articulate, if you are a different from the stereotype, then you are perceived to be an exception to the rule, and that’s not okay. We need to address the issues of affordable housing; intergenerational poverty; systemic oppression…everything that has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, way before any of us. We need to continue to break those systems down. That’s very important work that will always continue to be done.
Charlottesville’s complicated, uncomfortable history plays a role in these challenges surely. What’s the importance of educating people—particularly young folks—on this history?
DJ: There are certain stories that need to be told and re-told, so that we know our history. Not just Charlottesville history, but all history, all black history, all local history and how it impacts us. When you have that knowledge, you conduct yourself in a different way. With knowledge definitely comes power, internal power, self-love power. And power to want to better yourself and the community and your family.
What are some of the things the Charlottesville community is doing well?
DJ: There is a love and care in Charlottesville that sometimes gets swept under the rug, but it truly exists. Especially now, we’re just not in a good, positive space overall, but, in my account with the partners that have come to City of Promise to say, “What can I do?,” or, “I believe in your mission, I believe in your work. What can I give?” That willingness to do whatever it takes to make right the wrongs that have happened.
JI: People are a little more cognizant than they have been in the past. They recognize that some things have been idle and that there is work to be done in trying to figure these things out. People are stepping up, understanding that there’s no one here to save us; we have to do it for ourselves….wanting to address the affordable housing issue, wanting to go out and figure out what we can do, asking, How can we pump the breaks on this and figure something out to bring resources to our community, and retain our residents?
DJ: And retain the diversity that comes along with it.
JI: It’s still a warm community, despite some ugliness.
What could the community improve on?
DJ: A continued dialogue, a continued investment. Don’t let the situation in August fizzle out. Because, for a lot of people that were on the negative side of racial oppression, it wasn’t something that just surfaced in August. And so, we need to continue the dialogue, continue the fight, to make sure that injustices are made right.
JI: Absolutely. It’s important for stuff like that to not continue to repeat itself, that we not continue to keep coming back to this point, but we grow moving forward and kind of understanding and learning from that experience. I think that’s something that…it has some opportunity. We’ll say it that way. [laughs] There’s opportunity there.
Both of your organizations have a mission focused on young people and the community around them. Why is that?
JI: You’ve got to look at the whole person—the young person, their parents, their household. We have to dive into the mindset of everyone involved, so that [young] person can continue to cultivate on what you’re putting into the community, at home.
DJ: You have to plant those seeds; [young] minds are very fertile ground. Because they will be the group that’s charged with breaking certain barriers for all of us, we have to build them up in such a way that they are able to sustain that and fight that fight. Growing up, there were certain seeds that were planted in me that didn’t blossom until much later. But they were planted, they were in and they were ready [when the time came]. We have to make sure that these young people are always a garden.
This Q&A was conducted by C-VILLE as part of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence’s ParadigmShifters series, which takes a look at how different people are making an impact locally.
