Charlottesville City Council to get further updates on low-barrier shelter

Since becoming City Manager in August 2023, Sam Sanders has organized government activities through a work plan with many different categories. As you can see in the latest update, the top item under “housing” is to “explore and initiate a series of consistent homeless intervention strategies.” 

Two months into office, Sanders briefed Council on an overall vision for helping people who have found themselves without a place to live. That included finding a year-round permanent overnight shelter without stringent requirements for entry. 

“I’m not running to do that at this moment because I don’t know how big that facility needs to be, and I don’t know if it’s one, two, or three facilities because in the population, there are differences amongst what the issues are and we need to address them,” Sanders said in October 2023. 

Two years later, City Council agreed last October to spend $6.2 million to buy an office building on about four acres on Holiday Drive to be the site of a low-barrier shelter. On March 25, several nonprofit groups who would provide services gave an update on their work toward creating an operations plan as I reported at the time.

“We really wanted to focus on transformational impact at 2000 Holiday Drive,” said Shayla Washington, the executive director of the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless. “We want to increase our safety net and improve it, ideally just creating pathways to stability housing.” 

At 4 p.m. on May 4, City Council will get another update on progress toward coming up with an operations plan as well as more refined cost estimates. This information is not available in advance but Sanders gave a small preview to Council on April 20. 

“In that moment we look to be able to start asking additional questions and start to move towards figuring out what the operations of that facility could look like,” Sanders said.

Charlottesville City Council meets in City Council Chambers at 4 p.m. The meeting is televised across multiple platforms. (meeting overview)

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