Community Writing Collaborative 

Charlottesville, Virginia houses a world-class institution of learning, one of the largest outdoor malls in the country, a national championship winning collegiate basketball team, and a rich colonial history associated with many of our prominent Founding Fathers. What this city doesn’t house, however, is hundreds of its citizens. Two hundred and sixty-one to be exact (“Homeless in Charlottesville”). It is no secret that Charlottesville has many issues with affordable housing, and in the words of Charlottesville’s Director of Human Services, “(it) has always been terrible” (Dimock). The expensive nature of the city drives up the cost of living, even for those who are not in poverty. Charlottesville ranks twenty-fifth in the country in terms of income inequality, just one spot behind Los Angeles (“Wage Gap Study Ranks Charlottesville Among Nation's Highest”). The top one percent of earners in Charlottesville make a median income of $1,604,407, while the rest of the population only earns $43,652 - nearly a $1.56 million dollar difference (“Charlottesville's Income Inequality Crisis”). This significant wage gap is slowly leading to problems of gentrification and forcing many homeless people to search for housing outside of Charlottesville, which leads to greater problems regarding infrastructure and transportation shortcomings.

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The lack of affordable housing in Charlottesville is only one issue of many that amplifies homelessness within the community. Employment opportunities, as well as substance and domestic abuse, are also serious problems that force many to turn to the streets. By simply being on the streets, many of these individuals become far more prone to injury and disease, the symptoms of which they cannot afford to treat. 76% of respondents in one study (“Homeless in Charlottesville”) indicated that they did not have health insurance, but the majority wanted to be able to see health professionals about their physical and mental issues. The missing roof above people's heads opens the doors to a variety of problems much harder to solve and prevent than homelessness, yet very few people ever correlate these issues much less their solutions. The lack of housing creates a string of problems for these residents. Homeless people are significantly more susceptible to diseases and sustain injuries than the non-homeless population, yet they are much less likely to seek professional medical care because of a lack of insurance. Insurance is not only too costly for many of these people but is also often unattainable due to systematic barriers like government ID requirements. Chronic issues pertaining to mental illness, physical illness, substance abuse, and difficulty finding and maintaining employment often get worse once one becomes homeless (“Homeless in Charlottesville”). Homelessness drives these co-occurring issues that in turn feed back into causing homelessness, creating a vicious cycle that many struggle to escape from.

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With the ever-rising prices of housing in Charlottesville combined with the lack of employment opportunity for those in need, homelessness is bound to persist. Without serious reforms in the law as well as how society chooses to contribute to ending this problem, a few hundred homeless people may be only the beginning. 

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To decide what to do next in the quest to end homelessness in Charlottesville, we must analyze the supportive and preventative systems already in place. With such a widespread crisis happening in the city, it makes sense that the government and private companies continuously try to alleviate the stresses caused by homelessness and prevent it from getting any worse. These projects and initiatives are essential to the well-being of many struggling people in Charlottesville, yet with the issue still running rampant, it is important to explore the specific remedies offered and their effectiveness.

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The Charlottesville city government promotes these initiatives that aim to stabilize the issues of affordable housing. The various government officials that we communicated with all stressed the same line of dialogue: homelessness is a real problem in this city that needs to be met effectively. These people are the ones to start the battle, and in some ways they already have. In 2012, the city opened The Crossings, the first permanent housing community catered specifically to the chronically homeless and low-income people living in Charlottesville. The development rents out thirty rooms for well below the market price and thirty rooms for free to those on the streets for years. Director of Human Services Kaki Dimock described the opening as “the only bright spot [in the fight against homelessness]” in her many years working with advocacy groups in Virginia. Since then, the city continues to support affordable housing initiatives which led to the ongoing renovation and expansion of Friendship Court, another low-income residence, and other redevelopment efforts.

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Yet there is so much more to this issue than just building homes. There needs to be systems in place that allow more people to access affordable housing and other supportive resources that they can’t get on their own. Currently, many private organizations make up the system of care that addresses the co-occurring issues alongside homelessness that compound the pressures of being homeless and makes the struggle to break out of the cycle much worse. The services these organizations provide are thus indispensable to many people living in Charlottesville across all gradients of income and housing stability. Two of these organizations, our local partners The Haven and Loaves and Fishes, stand out as exceptionally helpful to people experiencing homelessness and food insecurity. In addition to warm breakfast in the morning and shelter throughout the day, The Haven provides an array of basic necessities that are often taken for granted in addition to administrative services that help people find jobs and housing. Loaves and Fishes provide support through their grocery store-like food pantry that creates a reassuring, welcoming, and humanizing environment for anyone that walks through their doors. On a regional level, the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless advocates for funding and initiatives geared towards solving the homelessness crisis in and around Charlottesville. All of these organizations help fill in the gaps that government housing programs cannot cover and ultimately keep many from falling through the cracks of the broken system.

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The city government provides much financial and legislative support to the efforts of these individual organizations as they handle the day to day pressures of homelessness on the micro level. This private support allows the government to follow initiatives relating to creating better affordable housing opportunities and job security within Charlottesville as those backbone organizations handle all of the remaining necessary tasks. Charlottesville also serves as a major center for social services in the region, indicating that a large influx of people are coming into the city for access to the important resources they need. Many of The Haven’s clients aren’t Charlottesville natives, yet they gravitate to this area because their own living places don’t provide the same amount of high-quality resources. This convergence creates additional stress on the government’s financial capabilities as people outside of the city’s realm of tax collection use many of the same important resources that Charlottesville residents need to survive.

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The lack of affordable housing is at the center of Charlottesville’s homelessness crisis. The city’s housing market is massively inflated by pressures of gentrification, an influx of students moving into historically low-income family neighborhoods, lack of space in the city’s small 10 square mile area, and oversaturation of people looking for resources in this center for social services. All of these factors dramatically raise the average cost of living in the city. As of now, it is hard to relocate people into neighboring counties because Charlottesville lacks the infrastructure to provide reliable public transit for those who can’t afford their own personal vehicles. This makes it harder for people to move away from the high cost of living and for the government to fund housing programs within Charlottesville’s limited area. Despite the pledge to spend $17 million on resolving issues related to homelessness over the next five years (“Charlottesville Budget”), the city is simply running out of space to place their struggling constituents.

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Even when introducing measures that would target rising rates of homelessness, the city is stuck at a crossroads in terms of what members of their community they’re supposed to serve. These representatives are the voices of all Charlottesville residents, not just the homeless. Other populations in the city simply don’t need the same resources that the chronically homeless should be afforded. Their private interests may lie elsewhere, which makes the opportunity cost of spending more money on the homelessness crisis and deviating resources from other ventures much greater. For example, the open plot of land that formerly housed the Cavalier Inn holds a lot of potential. The city could contract the area out to TJACH in order to develop a new low-income residential area that could house at least 60 people, like The Crossings. While this may not be the best location for this type of project, it would still immensely help the homeless and low-income people that can find space in the new development. However, the same plot of land could be used to develop a new hotel. This space is a short walk from central grounds and visitors, families, and prospective students would fill up the rooms fast. This new hotel would create many service jobs and generate massive tax revenues for the city to use in other initiatives to solve homelessness. Both options are very attractive to the government, but choosing one over the other creates division between the homeless population and the general Charlottesville public. This conflict of interest arises every time someone proposes a new housing redevelopment program. The city must do what is best for its inhabitants, yet with every decision they make, they put the interests of one population over another. 

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Regardless of what decision the government wants to make, it nevertheless lacks the autonomy to do so for itself. Virginia is one of a handful of Dillon Rule states, which means that local governments have little authority to make decisions for their constituents without permission and guidance from their state-level overseers. Despite knowing what needs to be done to help resolve homelessness in the city, the state is often stingy with expensive programs and often would rather see the money go towards actions that would reap greater monetary benefit for the state and city. This further entangles the city government because they must choose what problems, and thus what people, to prioritize. Yet some decisions they’ve made have already keyed the public into their preferences, such as when they removed the benches from the Downtown Mall. Actions like those only serve to hide the homelessness crisis and push the struggling side of Charlottesville out of the public’s eye. When the city takes these types of reactionary and exclusive steps, it undermines their platforms and initiatives that supposedly have the interests of the homeless population in mind. While the city claims to promote solutions for the affordable housing problems, their actions seem to be geared against the victims of the homelessness crisis.In reality, removing the benches from the Downtown Mall only deepens the stigma surrounding homelessness and emboldens the dichotomy between “us” and “them.” 

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After conducting interviews with various community leaders and researching issues of homelessness, we have developed a set of proposed solutions that we think could solve this important issue. Using input from the experts we spoke to as well as our judgments of the current infrastructure of Charlottesville, we believe that our bill, if passed, will take the city in the right direction. While some of what we call for may seem expensive and costly, the community must recognize that no price tag is too high when it comes to the lives of our neighbors. With that in mind, we present to you “Proposition 261: Solutions to Charlottesville’s Homelessness Crisis.”

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Resolving this issue starts with the city government’s priorities. Before we can even start initiating beneficial programs, the city must place the homelessness crisis as its most important goal. While they were elected to serve all residents of Charlottesville, the population with the greatest struggles must hold precedence over others. Living on the streets and remaining stuck in the cycle of chronic homelessness creates life or death scenarios for hundreds within our city limits. There is no reason for the city to place any other special interest group above their most vulnerable and endangered constituents, and this attitude must carry all the way to the state level so that we can make the decisions that benefit society the most for ourselves. We recognize that this is a strong claim, yet we fully support this assessment. While some might argue that other groups are in more desperate need, we would ask if the situations of those groups are even comparable to the homeless population. Many of these people have been living on the streets for years without basic necessities, and only surviving due to programs set up by the government and local organizations. Their lives are in flux due to structural issues within Charlottesville and American society in general. They’re left with few options and hardly any choice in deciding how to live their own lives. This lack of autonomy stunts their human potential and hinders their ability to live fully. While other groups’ problems seem pertinent, the severity of existing as a homeless person in Charlottesville simply outweighs the issues other groups face. Therefore, unless the city gives the homeless population the priority over other interest groups that it deserves, we can’t effectively meet the problems caused by the affordable housing crisis.

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The city must continue to invest in affordable housing developments and give low-income projects precedence over hotels and commercial interests. The most direct way to solve homelessness is to give people homes to live in, and creating more areas like The Crossings and Friendship Court will accomplish that. The capital for these initiatives is there, whether it be funded by an increase in taxes or state and federal support. Building these low-income housing developments in neighboring counties and places outside of the city’s densely developed and populated area resolves the issues of space that comes with Charlottesville’s small square mileage. We are not advocating for gentrification or forced relocation of existing communities, but instead to create new developments where costs of living are already cheaper. Alongside this, we want the city to expand its public transport system to service neighborhoods outside of the city so that residents of these new areas can still commute to Charlottesville for valuable work opportunities. We also want the city to raise its minimum wage to $15 to an hour, a figure generally considered to constitute a living wage by many humans rights movements (and UVA itself), as the measly federal rate is not enough to live on. By providing better flows of income to struggling low-income people, they can better work themselves out of poverty and homelessness so that they no longer rely on low-income housing developments and services that local organizations provide. While resources like The Haven and Loaves and Fishes will remain operational, in the long-run we want them to be supplemental rather than essential. By funding more preventative and structural changes rather than short term remedies, we will effectively reduce homelessness in Charlottesville to the point where our “Proposition 261” becomes “Proposition 0.”

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We additionally recommend that the University of Virginia take a role in trying to reduce the burden of solving homelessness on the city as the university is a major influencer in the area. With the recent turnover in leadership to new president James E. Ryan, there is no better time than now to begin work. “I consider it to be a real privilege to be a part of the UVA community,” Ryan said. “But with privilege comes responsibility – the responsibility to create opportunities for others” (McCance). The university is diligently working to create more upperclassmen housing, but many of the students turn to off-grounds housing options for their living accommodations. This takes away opportunities for more affordable housing from those who actually need it, and landlords will in the vast majority of cases side with students over homeless people because they are less likely to cause trouble for the landlord (i.e. less likely to miss rent payments, have addiction problems, etc.). If the university mandated second-year living on-Grounds, created more upperclassmen corridors, and subsidized majority-student off grounds apartments, such as GrandMarc or Cavalier Crossing, there would be more affordable housing available for homeless people and demand in the off-grounds housing market would decrease dramatically, causing prices to further decrease as well. UVA should also consider spending some of its endowment on the immediate costs for affordable housing developments. President Ryan stated that “public service and the idea that service should be at the core of our mission, as a public institution” (McCance) and considering that we have the resources, we should put them to use. The University has an ethical obligation to pay reparations to the community that it took advantage of for years. Some of the systemic issues that exist in Charlottesville today that actively deprive the low-income population can be traced back to actions taken by UVA as well as the city that exploited African American communities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Given this, it seems right that UVA should finance some of the housing redevelopment plans as well as oversee investment in the community’s well-being.  By simply loaning the city money to complete its projects without interest demands, these projects could become a reality worthy of the Jefferson legacy.

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Work Cited

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“Charlottesville Budget.” Budget and Performance Management | City of Charlottesville, 2019, www.charlottesville.org/departments-and-services/departments-a-g/budget-and-performance-management.

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“Charlottesville's Income Inequality Crisis.” The Cavalier Daily, 12 Oct. 2017, www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2017/10/charlottesvilles-income-inequality-crisis.

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“Homeless in Charlottesville.” Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless, 2012, tjach.org/.

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McCance, McGregor. “President Ryan Seeks Ideas and Inspiration From University Community.” UVA Today, 2 Aug. 2018, news.virginia.edu/content/president-ryan-seeks-ideas-and-inspiration-university-community.

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Mendoza, Taylor, and Hriday Singh. “Interview with Stephen Hitchcock.” 16 Apr. 2019.

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Singh, Hriday, and Taylor Mendoza. “Interview with Kaki Dimock.” 11 Apr. 2019.

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“Wage Gap Study Ranks Charlottesville Among Nation's Highest.” WVIR NBC29 Charlottesville News, Sports, and Weather, 25 July 2018, www.nbc29.com/story/38731722/wage-gap-study-ranks-charlottesville-among-nations-highest.

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