It's a Great Place to Live, But...

When you're in the line of business I'm in (elected office), you occasionally wonder (1) why the hell you're doing what you're doing, and (2) are you really focusing on what needs to be focused on.

Then you read an article like this and you say, "Ah, yes."

In a nutshell: We live in a wonderful community, but high housing costs, poverty and sprawl are threatening our quality of life. So say two economists with much bigger brains than mine.

A good reminder as to (1) why I'm doing what I'm doing, and (2) where it is I/we need to keep focusing my/our energies.

My thanks to Messrs. Shobe and Rephann for not letting us lose sight of that which is staring us in the face.

"No Longer Homeless"

In case you missed it, Seth Rosen has an excellent piece in today's Progress about the merits and costs of providing supportive housing for the chronically homeless. Charlottesville has about 2-3 dozen residents who have been living on our streets for years and who are struggling with some sort of severe mental disorder. Over the past four winters, we at PACEM have gotten to know them all. In the bad old days, many if not most of them would be warehoused in state institutions by now, typically against their will. Starting in the 1960s, however, this country launched a broad "deinstitutionalization" campaign and pledged to invest in community-based care for the mentally ill. Well, no surprise: we never fulfilled that pledge. As a result, many people fell through the cracks and ended up right out on the streets. Many others continue to do so today. A critical component -- nay, THE critical component -- of a successful strategy of community-based care is supportive housing. It's heartening to see that Charlottesville is finally coming to understand that supportive housing for the chronically homeless not only improves their quality of life (and ours), it also saves us money. Ironically enough, you see, in many cases it costs more to keep people out on the streets than it does to provide them with stable housing and support services. For more info., read Seth's article here.

Affordable Housing Ordinance Doesn't Move Forward

Vote was 3-2 against creating a dedicated affordable housing fund via ordinance, despite overwhelming public support for the idea at tonight's public hearing -- largest turnout of citizens for a public hearing in recent memory, which was gratifying and affirming (even if I can't shake the feeling that I let them all down). Was interesting/eye-opening to see how hard certain people (including a number of former Democratic City Councilors) lobbied, mostly behind the scenes, to help derail the proposal. All is not lost, however; thanks to a resolution drafted by David Brown and adopted unanimously at tonight's meeting, there's a chance we may yet be able to secure some additional funds for housing in the months and years ahead, even if we're unlikely to see the level of investment (or the sustained commitment of funds) that many of us had hoped. Such is the nature of politics -- compromise is the name of the game. And to Council's credit, what we have now in the funding pipeline for housing is at least a lot more than what we had 2 years ago....

My thanks to Holly Edwards for supporting the ordinance, and to my fellow Councilors for giving it a fair hearing. And special thanks to all who came and spoke at tonight's public hearing, especially those who shared their personal stories about struggling to get by in this "World-Class City" of ours. Your testimonies will not be forgotten.

Oh, and I've just got to pass on a word of appreciation for former Vice Mayor Meredith Richards, who stood up to say, this ordinance is a good start, but the problem is, it actually doesn't go far enough. That is a woman of vision!

Affordable Housing, Front & Center

We've been trying to take something of a thematic approach to City Council meetings so far this year. Our first meeting (Jan. 7) focused on a range of environmental topics. Our second meeting (Jan. 21) was heavy on alternative transportation (pedestrian safety, transit improvements, etc.). Tomorrow's session (Feb. 4) features a subject that citizen survey after citizen survey and community needs assessment after community needs assessment consistently points out as one the biggest frustrations that people have with the City of Charlottesville: the lack of affordable housing for our residents.

You know the litany of challenges: People paying 50% or 60% of their income on their housing costs. People working 2 or 3 jobs to keep up with their mortgage or their rent. People doubling up with family members or friends. People going homeless. People moving 30 or 40 miles away to find housing they can afford. Employers struggling to attract or retain workers because of the high cost of living (i.e., the high cost of housing) here. There is hardly a household in Charlottesville that hasn't been affected by this situation. The people at the top may have it good and may not recognize there's a problem, but most of us see it, experience it and hear about it every day. Yes, housing costs aren't skyrocketing like they were in the years following 2003, but wages still have a long, long way to go to catch up. We remain the region in Virginia with the largest gap between housing costs and wages. Not an enviable position to be in.

Tomorrow night, we will be considering an ordinance that would create a dedicated stream of revenue for affordable housing in the City budget. (Seth Rosen had the story in yesterday's Progress.) Unfortunately, for this coming year at least, it would actually represent a decrease in affordable housing funding from FY08 (when we used one-time surplus funds to significantly increase funding from the year before). But the idea is that as revenues increase in future years, a small percentage of them (the equivalent of 2 cents on the property tax dollar and 25% of lodging taxes) would be automatically set aside each year in a fund for the promotion and preservation of affordable housing.

In total, the ordinance would result in a little over 1% of the City's overall budget being dedicated to the affordable housing fund each year, which is a pittance really when you consider the true scope of the problem and the high priority that our citizens have assigned to it. (It's important to note, though, that these limited City funds will be able to leverage substantial sums of additional monies from state, federal, and private sector sources; of the 300+ localities across the country that have established dedicated housing funds, many of them routinely see their local dollars multiplied six or seven times over [or more] by other sources of funding. It's also important to note, as we're entering a period of economic slowdown, that housing development is one of the best economic generators we know of, in terms of promoting local job creation & business activity and recycling dollars in our community.) The ordinance also encourages the creation of stronger incentives for developers to be part of the solution through inclusion of affordable units in new developments and/or the contribution of monies to the City's affordable housing fund. I am pleased to say that our local developers have been very cooperative in working with the City on the creation of such incentives. Some real win-win potential there.

In addition to considering the dedicated housing fund ordinance, we'll also be making a final round of housing-related allocations from our FY08 budget and hearing a status report from Noah Schwartz, Executive Director of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority (CRHA), about CRHA's plans for redevelopment of public housing in Charlottesville. The Council meeting starts at 7:00pm tomorrow and the public hearing on the ordinance will begin around 7:40pm. Please feel free to come and share your thoughts on any or all of these subjects.

UPDATE: Christina Mora of NBC 29 does a great job of breaking down the issue with this report.

From the "Things That Should Go Without Saying But Need To Be Said Anyway Because Not Enough People Are Seeing The Connections" Department

Today's print edition of the Daily Progress includes an article entitled "Housing Costs, Low Wages Lead to Rise in Homeless," which links to this AP story. Apparently, when housing costs increase a lot faster than wages, some people can't keep up and end up homeless. "Until we have some investment in affordable housing," says Massachusetts state official Julia Kehoe, "we're not going to see a leveling off of these numbers." I've tried (see here and here, for example), but I couldn't have said it better myself.

Convergence of Priorities

This past year, the dozens of area congregations and thousands of area residents involved in IMPACT spent a lot of time studying local needs, and eventually chose their top two priorities for community action: expanding affordable housing and improving public transportation.

At tomorrow night's City Council meeting, we will be receiving a major new report from the Charlottesville/Albemarle Commission on Children and Families. The product of an extensive, year-long study of local needs, this report (which is Part Two of CCF's Human Services Strategic Plan for our region) concludes that the top two priorities for community action are: expanding affordable housing and improving public transportation.

I think these groups are trying to tell us something, but I just...can't...figure...out...what...it...is. :-)

First Year's Progress, Part 1

When I ran for Council last year, I pledged to push for constructive change in four key areas: affordable housing, education & youth, poverty & race, and the environment. (I've even kept my campaign website on-line so people could hold me accountable to the commitments I made along these lines.) Now that it's been a full year since I was elected, I thought it would be a good opportunity to reflect on some of the progress that we've made in these four areas. (Make no mistake -- we still have a long way to go...) I neither seek nor deserve sole credit for every one of these accomplishments, but I am proud to have been involved in advancing each of them in some small or large way.

Today, I'll focus on the first two topics: Affordable Housing and Education & Youth.

Affordable Housing

* Last Fall, Council appointed a standing Housing Advisory Committee (comprised of realtors, developers, housing advocates, neighborhood leaders and others) to help the City develop new initiatives to expand and improve our affordable housing stock.

* In November 2006, the Housing Advisory Committee unanimously endorsed the creation of a new Charlottesville Affordable Housing Investment Program (CAHIP) to consolidate, dedicate and expand financial support for affordable housing. CAHIP focuses on four key areas: permanent supportive housing for the elderly and disabled, low-income homeownership, workforce housing, and revitalization of public housing.

* During our FY2008 City Budget deliberations, hundreds of City residents (click here and here, for example) pushed Council to adopt the CAHIP proposal and otherwise increase City support for affordable housing development (preferably in partnership with the County and UVa). The final FY08 Budget passed by Council includes $1.75 million in new funds to capitalize the CAHIP initiative and leverage additional financing from federal, state, regional and private sources. This represents a five-fold increase in City support for affordable housing from FY2007.

* Also in our FY08 Budget, Council expanded our Affordable Housing Tax Grant Program to provide deeper tax relief to homeowners who've been particularly hard hit by rising assessments. With the average property tax bill increasing by approx. $230 in Charlottesville next year, the expanded Tax Grants ($250-$500 for qualifying households) mean that a significant number of middle- and lower-income homeowners will pay less in net property taxes in 2008 than they did in 2007. I would like to have expanded this program even further in FY08 and will try again next year.

* Council has also asked staff to develop a property tax deferral program whereby homeowners can opt to postpone payment of a portion of their property taxes until they sell their homes. This will be especially helpful for homeowners who are trying to get by on fixed incomes.

* The City's Planning Commission is working to develop stronger incentives for builders to include Affordable Dwelling Units in new housing projects, and Delegate David Toscano agreed to sponsor legislation in the recent General Assembly session (HB 2451) to help move this idea forward.

Education & Youth

* Council has provided strong support to the new School Superintendent, Ms. Rosa Atkins, and to our School Board in their efforts to bring positive change to our City school system. The FY08 School Budget, which Council fully funded, includes a number of innovative initiatives designed to improve academic achievement for all children. I am especially pleased at the creation of a new 3-year-old preschool program in the City's schools and the implementation of a proactive dropout-prevention initiative to keep more kids in school until graduation. Higher-quality after-school programming and teacher-training initiatives are also getting more attention.

* In response to concerns raised by parents and students, Council agreed to expedite Americans with Disability Act (ADA) improvements to our schools to remove barriers to students with physical disabilities.

* Council agreed to nearly double the size of our City summer youth employment program for 2007, and my hope is that we can double it again in 2008, and again the year after (being sure not to sacrifice quality for quantity along the way). Anything we can do to reenforce the value & importance of work and to help our teenagers to secure marketable job skills and positive mentoring relationships is a good thing.

* We have expanded our support for community organizations that offer positive opportunities to kids -- youth sports, tutoring and mentoring, environmental education, community service, the arts, etc. -- and we are supporting efforts by our City Police to reduce negative opportunities for kids (gang prevention, etc.).

Next time, I'll discuss some of the steps we've taken on Poverty & Race and the Environment. After that, I'll talk about some of our other accomplishments from this past year, and lastly (but not leastly) I'll focus on some of the areas where I feel we've fallen short and/or still have much work to do. Thanks for indulging me in this. More importantly, thanks for your continued support. It's not easy being an elected official but I can't imagine a better place to be one, and a better community to serve, than Charlottesville, VA.

Yeah, What She Said

My friend Holly Edwards has more good sense in one finger than the rest of us do in our entire bodies. As if we needed more evidence of that, she comes out with this letter to the editor from yesterday's Daily Progress, written in response to this article from Jan. 21 about the Bush Administration's plan to enact severe cuts in operating funds for public housing. As usual, Holly frames the issue much better than I ever could...

Radio Days

I was a guest on Coy Barefoot's "Charlottesville-Right Now" WINA radio show yesterday, talking about affordable housing and transportation issues, and Sean Tubbs of the Charlottesville Podcasting Network was kind enough to post the podcast on his site. You can listen to the interview by clicking here. Julian Taliaferro has a great radio voice; mine hovers around cringe-worthy. Nevertheless, many thanks to Coy and Sean for making this happen.

Oliver Kuttner: Hero to downtown baristas and guitar-slingers?

Local developer Oliver Kuttner dropped a mini-bombshell in last week's C-ville Weekly that really deserves more notice. Tucked away in this article about his architectural vision for the old Boxer Learning building on the Downtown Mall (formerly home to Central Fidelity Bank) was this passage:

What will be in the building? Kuttner wants several floors of retail by opening up the basement as a courtyard along the side street and creating a second floor of retail fronting the Mall. He plans four apartments above the retail in a first phase of redevelopment. The second phase will be a larger structure closer to Water Street that nears the nine-storey limit, which will contain either a 72-room hotel—or affordable apartments at around $500 a month. “In Charlottesville, you can’t rent anything cheap any more,” says Kuttner. “I think that with clever design I can do it.”

Let's hope he does figure out how to do it. Think of all the retail clerks, office workers, baristas, artists and musicians who are being increasingly priced out of housing anywhere near downtown. Many of them contribute mightily to the downtown business and cultural "scene" and many of them are currently paying an arm & a leg for parking everyday because they have to commute in from elsewhere. Wouldn't it be great if they had access to affordable rental housing within a short walk of where they work and play? Must downtown housing all be upscale and high-priced? Can't we have at least one oasis of residential bohemia amidst the Caspari Condos that are popping up all over downtown these days?

If you see Oliver, please sing his praises for thinking of the working stiffs and the starving artists. It's their town too.

Affordable Housing Alert!

Tuesday, January 2 is the day that City Council makes a decision on our affordable housing investment proposals. For the full scoop, go visit my friend Tatyanna Patten. (Thanks for the plug, Tat!)

Out of Reach

Every year around this time, the National Low Income Housing Coalition releases a report called Out of Reach, which analyzes housing costs vs. wage levels in communities all across the U.S. The report focuses on a statistic they call the "Housing Wage," which is the amount of money that a worker has to earn in order to afford an average two-bedroom rental unit in his/her community.

Well, Out of Reach 2006 was released today. And the 2006 Housing Wage for the Charlottesville area has been calculated at...(drum roll please)...$15.23. Know many retail or service jobs around here that are paying that much?

From the report:

"In Charlottesville, VA MSA, the Fair Market Rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $792 . In order to afford this level of rent and utilities, without paying more than 30% of income on housing, a household must earn $2,640 monthly or $31,680 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into a Housing Wage of $15.23.

In Charlottesville, VA MSA, a minimum wage worker earns an hourly wage of $5.15. In order to afford the FMR for a two-bedroom apartment, a minimum wage earner must work 118 hours per week, 52 weeks per year. Or, a household must include 3.0 minimum wage earner(s) working 40 hours per week year-round in order to make the two bedroom FMR affordable."

The People Have Spoken: We Need More Affordable Housing!

At our City Council meeting last night, the UVa Center for Survey Research reported the results of a major survey of Cville residents on quality of life issues in the city. (1,111 telephone surveys were conducted in February and March of 2006.) The Center conducted the same survey in 2000, so we can get a sense of how citizens feel things have improved (or worsened) in the intervening years.

Overall, citizens seem to be satisfied with the quality of life in Charlottesville. On a 10-point scale, 64% gave the city an "8" or better in their general estimation of Charlottesville as a place to live. (14% gave the city a "10.") The mean rating for 2006 was 7.72, down slightly from 7.89 in 2000.

The survey results revealed that not all is well and good in our fair city, however. One issue in particular jumps out as needing more attention. In asking citizens to assign priority to various local issues, no subject rose higher in priority between 2000 and 2006 than affordable housing. Citizens now put affordable housing as second on the list of most important goals for the City to pursue, just behind quality education. In determining citizen satisfaction with City services, no service rose higher in citizen dissatisfaction between 2000 and 2006 than the City's efforts to provide for affordable housing.

When you compare those findings to the meager dollars that the City actually allocates to affordable housing development (i.e., less than .32% of our FY07 budget--we spend more than 3 times that on upkeep of our City golf courses!), you quickly realize how far out of line our budget is with the needs and demands of our citizens, at least in this particular area. Hopefully that will soon change.

CAHIP

The Daily Progress ran a good article the other day (click here) on my first major legislative proposal: creation of a Charlottesville Affordable Housing Investment Program (CAHIP). From day one of my campaign for City Council earlier this year, I talked about creating a dedicated fund for housing, as over 300 other localities across the country have already done. The proposal we've come up with (click here to download & read it) would consolidate, dedicate and expand support for affordable housing in what I believe to be a sensible and comprehensive manner. And it does so without busting our City budget -- even when CAHIP is fully funded, which may take a couple of years, the City would still be spending well under 1% of our annual budget on affordable housing development.

City Council will be taking this proposal up for consideration at a Budget Work Session on Thurs., Dec. 14, from 5:00-7:00pm in the basement conference room of City Hall. For anyone who agrees with our regional Chamber of Commerce that affordable housing is the "#1 Issue in the #1 Community," I hope you'll concur that this proposal is a step worth taking. It certainly won't solve the affordable housing problem in our area, but -- as Jim Duncan succinctly put it -- "it's a start."