With Charlottesville’s new Development Code set to become effective in just a few days, the pieces of how it will be implemented are coming together. On February 5, City Council adopted two manuals that will help staff and members of the public figure out how to navigate the new landscape.
One of them is the Affordable Dwelling Unit Manual as explained by the person who will be responsible for monitoring and enforcing the new rules that will require units to be rented or sold below certain income levels. (view the draft manual as there’s no official version published online yet)
“It clarifies requirements and processes related to affordable dwelling units and offers guidance to internal staff and external stakeholders,” said Antoine Williams, the city’s housing program manager.
Council’s discussion and vote were split between a 4 p.m. work session and a regular agenda item several hours later.
In brief, any project outside of the three residential-only zones that has more than ten dwelling units must guarantee that ten percent be designated as affordable. Depending on the zoning district, property owners can get additional height if bonus levels of affordability are met.
To try to halt displacement, the Office of Community Solutions will employ a suite of programs called the Housing Equity and Anti-Displacement Toolkit, or HEAT. This is separate from the manual. (view the HEAT presentation)
“The emphasis with that is to concentrate several measures to be effective in areas of our communities, zones that have been identified as sensitive, or have unique vulnerabilities,” Williams said.
There are seven measures in all including creation of a land bank program and waiving various fees. Another is the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund’s grant program as well as the Charlottesville Supplemental Rental Assistance Program. Funding for the latter has recently been used by the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority to purchase several properties across the city.
“This is a list of various program level conceptual items that the housing team is working on and what I asked them to do was to identify what are we already doing, what is currently in play, what could be expanded, what could be enhanced, what could with some attention being paid to it could we consider something else to,” said City Manager Sam Sanders.
Sanders said there is interest in a tax increment rebate program.
“We already do that but in a very small way so part of the work is to figure out how to bring back some sense of how to expand that, how to broaden that for use beyond just beyond the limited way that we’re doing it,” Sanders said.
According to the presentation, the land bank program will be targeted first in the Rose Hill neighborhood and the 10th and Page neighborhood. CAHF Grants will be prioritized for the Meadows neighborhood. The supplemental voucher program will be used in the Fifeville neighborhood, the Ridge Street neighborhood, and the Starr Hill neighborhood.
Meanwhile, the market moves on. On February 2, a four bedroom house in the 200 block of 10th Street NW built in 2006 sold for $625,000. The Piedmont Housing Alliance bought the property on August 14, 2000 for $55,750 and demolished the existing house as part of an initiative to build new housing in that neighborhood. The newly built unit sold for the first time in June 2006 for $345,000.
The manual was put together with significant input from the Housing Advisory Committee, which includes the directors of CRHA, the Piedmont Housing Alliance, and Habitat for Humanity. Each organization receives affordable housing funds from the city. City Councilor Michael Payne attended the two and a half hour meeting at which HAC members gave their final suggestions to the ADU manual.
“I think most of their recommendations have been incorporated into this and part of my approach to this document is that it is very much a living document,” Payne said. “It’s been amended to say that the numbers will be revisited at least annually and I think it’s just inevitable to see how the market responds as well as to what our staff capacity needs are.”
Some questions. Will the public be able to expect a report on whether public investments are having the desired effect? The Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund has been in existence since 2007 but has only been audited a few times.
- Housing Specialist Kathy McHugh told City Council in January 2016 that the city was not on track to meet the Comprehensive Plan goal of having 15 percent of the city’s total housing stock supported by subsidies. She presented data as I wrote about for Charlottesville Tomorrow at the time.
- In April 2022, Sam Sanders presented Council with the results of an audit of the CAHF that broke down how $46.7 million in funding had been spent between 2010 and 2021. I wrote about that in this newsletter at the time.
McHugh left city government to pursue a different career. She was replaced by Stacy Pethia, who left the city to become Albemarle County’s housing coordinator and now assistant director of housing. Pethia was replaced by John Sales, who left in the summer of 2020 to become director of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority. The city was without a housing coordinator for nearly three years until Williams was hired.
But how will the manual be updated? The resolution to adopt the Affordable Dwelling Unit manual states that it is to be “subject to amendment” every two years. However, the city manager can make changes at any time in consultation with the city attorney. These are to be posted on the city’s website ten days before the changes take effect.
“We can remove extensive amounts of time spent on revisions,” said Alex Ikefuna, the director of the Office of Community Solutions. “However, if in the wisdom of the city manager and perhaps the city attorney they think that the proposed revision rises up to the consideration of the City Council, I think they have the option to make that decision.”
The Charlottesville Planning Commission did not review the document.
The adoption of the Affordable Dwelling Unit manual came after some further discussion later in the meeting.
City Councilor Michael Payne said he still had some concerns about some details.
“But I will say there’s time pressure to adopt this to align with the new code,” Payne said. “I think the things that have been brought up are very legitimate and I would like further discussion of them but recognizing that this is a living document, I feel comfortable passing this tonight.”
City Councilor Natalie Oschrin said she thought the Planning Commission should have reviewed the document. Ikefuna said they were not the correct venue.
“We channel everything that deals with housing to [the Housing Advisory Committee] and [the Housing Advisory Committee] makes a recommendation that goes to the City Council,” Ikefuna said.
The Development Code could not be implemented unless the manual was in place, which is why there was a need to approve it on February 5. Williams said reviews of projects are already underway, but at least one item will come back for review and that’s Figure 3 which lists the maximum monthly rents per income level.
During both the work session and the regular session, Councilor Lloyd Snook took issue with calculations that come up with the payment that would have to be paid by developers who choose to not build affordable units onsite.
“Intellectually it’s wrong,” Snook said. “Intellectually, this would be rejected by any scientific study committee, any thesis review committee. They’d tell you go back and run the experiment again. They would tell you that doesn’t make any sense or reconfigure what your criteria are to get something that fits, that makes a pattern. But under the circumstances if its going to lead to more… I hope that at some point maybe next year, somebody will redo the calculations and come up with something that is more intellectually defensible but if the practical effect is that its going to create more rental units, more affordable units being built on site, more power to ‘em.”
Council voted unanimously to adopt the manual but asked it expeditiously be revisited in the near future, meaning within two months.
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