Charlottesville City Council voted Monday to allocate $100,000 to the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority in an effort to improve public housing within the city and $50,000 to create a housing planning position at City Hall. The entire $150,000 will come from the $1.4 million affordable housing fund Council authorized earlier this year as part of the 2008-09 city budget.
Of the money allocated to CRHS, $75,000 will be used to help fund a “very ambitious master planning process” that will begin with CRHS hiring a planning firm to create and design a redevelopment plan for Charlottesville’s public housing, Mayor Dave Norris said. The purpose of hiring the planning firm is to work with key stakeholders during the next year to ensure the needs and concerns of all parties involved in the process are taken into consideration, he added.
“Our public housing residents have the most to gain and the most to lose from the redevelopment process,” Norris said. “If it’s done well, they’ll have a better quality of life and housing.”
The city has the opportunity to change public housing neighborhoods for the better, Norris said, through the promotion of mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhoods, rather than neighborhoods segregated by class. Such redevelopment efforts could “really transform the dynamics of poverty in Charlottesville,” Norris added.
Council member Dave Brown said affordable housing is one of the biggest issues facing Charlottesville today and noted that redevelopment is a good way to maximize current available resources in a fiscally sound way.
The remaining $25,000 of funds allocated to CRHS will be funneled into the Public Housing Association of Residents, Norris said. PHAR, a city-wide organization, will use the money to ensure people living in public housing units “have a full and meaningful role in the redevelopment process,” Norris noted.
The housing planning position, meanwhile, has been approved in theory but will not be created until after the next budget is presented to Council, Brown said.
“We voted to keep money in the budget for it, but with the economy we can’t recommend it before January,” Brown said. “It will come back to us in the budget as something we can recommend or not.”
Brown noted that because of the current state of the national economy, the city has imposed a hiring freeze, but the planning position would be excepted. This decision caused some concern at Monday’s meeting. Council member Satyendra Huja, who was the sole Council member to vote against the resolution, noted that he was unsure about the city’s ability to afford an additional position, Brown said. Huja was unavailable for comment as of press time.
Norris said Council may either hire an outside planner or fill the position with an existing staff member whose job may be cut.
The role of the housing planner will be to work with local housing developers, manage the city’s affordable housing fund, gather data about housing needs and initiatives and work with other area housing planners to figure out a regional solution, Norris said. He noted that most areas in Albemarle County have housing planners.
The remainder of the city’s affordable housing fund will be allocated in the early part of next year, Norris said. Council will review various proposals and evaluate them before making any decisions, he said, adding that Council usually receives many more proposals than it can afford to fund.
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