It is what Mayor Dave Norris called “arguably Charlottesville’s biggest problem.” It is what, according to many city officials and non-profit groups, makes finding a proper home in Charlottesville so difficult. Affordable housing — or the lack thereof — has once again become a major agenda item for both city officials and the Charlottesville community as a whole.
Recently, the lack of affordable housing in the City of Charlottesville has caused several unfortunate consequences for low-income families and the area economy, Norris said, noting that many families are moving out of the city into neighboring areas in which housing costs are lower. Other families have been forced to cut back on basic amenities such as food, child care or clothing in order to pay for their housing.
Some must “work two to three jobs to live here [and] others are going homeless or doubling up or settling for substandard or overcrowded housing,” he said.
Norris cited several reasons for the lack of affordable housing in the city. While housing prices and tax assessments have increased dramatically during the past decade or so, wages have not increased at the same pace, he said. Many employers in Charlottesville, including the University and its contractors, do not pay their employees a living wage, Norris said.
“The data indicates that we are now ... either number one or two in the state in terms of the gap between wages and housing costs,” Norris said.
University Chief Human Resource Officer Susan Carkeek, however, said in addition to offering competitive wages and benefits packages to all of its employees, the University also offers an annual educational stipend and job training programs. The University’s current minimum starting wage is $10.14 per hour plus a benefits package, which, when added to the regular hourly wage, makes wages equivalent to $14.05 an hour, according to Carkeek. The wages will also be increased Nov. 25 by approximately 30 cents an hour, Carkeek said, noting that only 62 of the University’s 9,000 full-time employees are at the minimum wage level, and none of the University’s employees live at or below the federal poverty line.
Aside from wages, though, the University also plays another pivotal role in the affordable housing story, Norris said. The demand for housing exceeds the supply of housing available, and the housing market in Charlottesville sustains additional pressure from the University that other areas do not face, Norris said.
“There’s an ongoing frustration that some of us have that the University has not kept up the space with on-Grounds housing,” Norris said. “More and more students have been competing with working families for the rental housing that is available ... it drives up rental costs and, in most cases, the students win out.”
If given the choice between renting to University students or low-income families, landlords will usually rent to University students, Norris said.
The lack of affordable housing options for families also contributes to other problems, Norris noted. The exodus of low-income families from the city exacerbates suburban sprawl, and commuters from these areas also contribute to traffic problems within the city and use a lot of gas, Norris said.
Additionally, the lack of affordable housing options puts pressure on lower-income families, which is a “huge, huge factor when it comes to the instability of families,” Norris said.
Parents who are forced to work more hours outside the home must spend less time with their children, Norris said. Other families are forced to move frequently to find housing they can afford, and this stress can have profoundly negative psychological and social ramifications for children, said Noah Schwartz, executive director of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority. Low-income families — those who typically cannot afford decent housing — have a much higher risk of being less successful in school, having more interactions with the criminal justice system and being unable to afford primary-care healthcare, he said.
Efforts, though, are underway to resolve the affordable housing crisis, Norris said.
According to City Council member Satyendra Huja , the city has allocated $2.4 million of its $140 million budget to address the situation for the 2008-09 fiscal year.
Norris noted that until last year, the allotment for affordable housing programs “hovered around $400,000 a year.” The increase in funding is meant to better address the problems at hand, he noted.
There are presently several ways the city helps low-income families find affordable housing, including providing 376 units of public housing funded by the federal government, Schwartz said. Eligible families can also use a “portable subsidy” when paying for housing, he noted. Currently, 290 families use this option, which stipulates that families can use the subsidy to pay for their housing as long as it complies with specified regulations. Albemarle County and several non-profit charitable groups also have vouchers available for families with a demonstrated need, he noted. In addition, there are several tax credit programs for housing providers who offer below-market rental prices, Schwartz said.
Even with the current programs, however, Schwartz noted that the need still exceeds the availability of affordable housing. He said there are about 450 families on the waiting list for public housing, and in the first three days after the portable subsidy waiting list opened last week, more than 470 applications were received. The city is several thousand housing units short of the quantity needed by families in the city, he said.
Melissa Celii, grants coordinator for the City’s Neighborhood Development Services , noted that even though the number of housing units available for low-income families has increased in recent years, so has the number of families in need of the housing. She also noted that the upkeep of current housing units also requires resources from the city.
“Clearly, there is a need much greater than the supply,” Schwartz stated, adding that all of the programs add up to “nickel and dime stuff relative to the need.” Resolving the situation will only happen if the community “[puts] real money into it,” he added.
“For all the noise about the poverty issues, the housing issues, are we seeing that translated into more dollars by the city or county?” Schwartz questioned. He also stated that the local government should not bear the entire responsibility, but that charitable foundations and the community at large need to help.
He added, however, that he believes that in the long run “this isn’t a housing issue but a poverty issue ... Housing is immediate, but the long-term preventive issue is poverty.”
One way to address the issue of poverty would be to provide low-income families with more economic resources by eliminating the education gap and helping them to become employed in skillful trades, Schwartz noted.
For the last six months the city, Albemarle County and the University have been collaborating on a joint housing task force, Huja said. This group is focusing on ways the three entities can individually and jointly influence the housing situation positively and develop new strategies to deal with the challenges faced by low-income families in the area.
Celii noted that the University was instrumental in bringing the three institutions together as a call to action.
“Anyone in housing will tell you that the University is a player. ... The University is realizing its role and its importance in shaping affordable housing, and it’s being proactive” in searching for a way to address the issues surrounding it, Celii said.
The task force hopes to conclude and present its resolutions within the next 30 days, Huja said, so new initiatives addressing the affordable housing issue can be implemented as soon as possible.
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