One task in the near future will be come up with a quantify how much the City of Charlottesville and other local governments are spending to provide a place for people to say overnight if they don’t have their own home.
On August 17, City Council voted to spend $3 million of a $7 million appropriation from the Commonwealth of Virginia on the Salvation Army’s capital campaign to raise $28 million to expand their shelter on Ridge Street.
“The Salvation Army has as a project that they are hoping to get started on a plan for a four-story, approximately 47,000-square-foot building, which is an increase in capacity of 15,000 square feet,” said City Manager Sam Sanders. This will increase bed capacity from 55 to 114 beds, and an additional seven 2-bedroom suites will be included.”
The project will also double the capacity of the dining room to 120 seats.
Charlottesville has already provided $3 million to the project using a portion of its share from the American Rescue Plan Act. Sanders said the additional funds would help close the gap but not complete it.
The additional $4 million from the Commonwealth of Virginia will go to other transitional housing places. Sanders said the city has projects in mind and is in negotiations related to that fund. The city-owned lot at 405 Levy is also in play. The city manager explained what the purpose would be.
“The intent is that transitional housing is where individuals will go when they leave the shelter,” Sanders said. “So it is the next rung on the ladder. It may not be an opportunity that they are quite ready for full independence, but there will be wraparound services that can continue to be available to those individuals.”
None of the $4 million would be used at Holiday Drive which is intended as an emergency shelter with less-stringent rules for entry than the Salvation Army. City Councilor Michael Payne called the second tranche of city funding an investment.
“The Salvation Army is not the one only solution,” Payne said. “I think the Salvation Army themselves would acknowledge that. It’s a high-barrier shelter versus Holiday Drive, which will be a low-barrier shelter, but it is an important critical piece of one option that needs to be available both for the high-barrier shelter beds as well as this project will include transitional housing including units for families.”
Derek Alley, the Salvation Army’s counsel for the capital campaign, said the figure of over $28 million breaks down as $22.2 million in construction, a contingency fund of $1.8 million, $2.2 million to furnish the expansion, and another $2.2 million for an endowment to fund site operations.
Alley said the city’s full contribution would bring the total to $21.3 million, or about three-fourths of the way to complete the campaign.
“We are working very hard to wrap up the fundraising segment of this capital campaign by the end of August,” Alley said, saying work will begin as soon as all of the capital costs are in.
Council voted 5-0 to move forward with the funding and took a second vote to waive a second reading to allow the funding to go to the Salvation Army more quickly.
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