Last year, Charlottesville was named the fifth happiest place to live in the U.S. — but the ranking doesn’t tell the whole story. Over the past few years, rent prices in Charlottesville have skyrocketed, pushing many long-time residents beyond the limits of Albemarle County. The city of Charlottesville also has a longstanding history of displacing minority communities. So for many residents who live in public housing, this “happiest place” looks and feels very different.
To this day, Charlottesville locals continue decades-long efforts to advocate for community housing interests. Many are members of the Public Housing Association of Charlottesville, a non-profit organization dedicated to advocating for and with public housing residents in the area.
As a way to stand in solitary with these locals, a group of University students formed Friends of PHAR, a CIO that partners with PHAR to fight for local policy that better represents the needs of public housing residents in Charlottesville. Abba Kodiaga, president of Friends of PHAR and fourth-year College student, said that she was inspired to join PHAR in order to become a more active member of the Charlottesville community — especially given the historically fraught relationship between the University and its neighbors.
"I think it's important to learn and engage with U.Va.’s relationship to the greater Charlottesville area, and more specifically, Black communities here,” Kodiaga said.
When it was first founded in 2022, Friends of PHAR was originally a group of students researching local public housing grants. Since then, Friends of PHAR has grown to about 20 members, achieving official CIO status in May. The CIO allows students to tailor their advocacy to meet historically underserved needs of public housing residents in Charlottesville and take on new housing issues as they arise, such as proposals for luxury apartment complexes that infringe on existing local communities.
Kodiaga stressed that University students are key actors in advancing this grassroots advocacy.
“We want to educate the student population a lot more about housing here in Charlottesville because it's a big problem,” Kodiaga said. “Oftentimes, we think that it's up to city officials to handle it, but as students, we do have a voice, and we do have the ability to support community members in the work that they do.”
Rachel Mulvaney, vice president of Friends of PHAR and fourth-year Batten student, shares Kodiaga’s aim of involving University students in activism beyond Grounds. Alongside Kodiaga and other Friends of PHAR leaders, Mulvaney mobilizes members to attend city council meetings, arrange discussions with leaders of PHAR and organize various other events to channel their passion for housing equity into positive change.
“Throughout my time at U.Va., I've learned so much about the destruction and displacement that U.Va. students have caused in the local community,” Mulvaney said. “If there's anything I can do to give back to the local community and improve the relationship that exists between U.Va. and local residents, I want to contribute to that.”
Before Friends of PHAR formally established its mission to advocate for Charlottesville public housing residents, Kodiaga was drawn to the initial student research group. The team’s focus on data collection and local perspectives, she said, offered her a chance to engage with the local housing crisis first-hand early on in her college career.
“I was a first-year looking for ways to get involved in community organizing and bottom up approaches to solutions for the many inequalities faced by a lot of people and in the world, and specifically, Charlottesville,” Kodiaga said.
In the years since she joined PHAR, Kodiaga’s research experience has continued to be an asset to the group’s advocacy as new challenges arise. For instance, Charlottesville’s oldest and largest public housing community is located in a historically-Black neighborhood, and many public housing residents disapprove of a new proposal for luxury student housing in the area.
In response to these development plans, Kodiaga said that Friends of PHAR conducted a survey of University students to determine their housing preferences regarding price, location, and other factors. The organization’s research indicated that many students prioritize proximity to Grounds and have no intention of infringing upon local communities, decreasing support for LV Collective’s proposal.
“Our data showed a lot,” Kodiaga said. “For one thing, most students don't know that it's going up to begin with. That is interesting because they're building it ‘for students,’ but students don't even know it's an option.”
This data is just one of the many tools in the Friends of PHAR’s advocacy arsenal. The CIO has also spread the word through educational initiatives — recently, they helped organize a “Fall Fest” for public housing residents, complete with pumpkin painting, informational tabling and other fun activities for children.
As a group of University students, Friends of PHAR also makes a concerted effort to collaborate with similar advocacy CIOs on Grounds. In doing so, Mulvaney noted how the organization integrates conversations about housing rights with the social justice issues that contextualize them. She said that Friends of PHAR most recently hosted a documentary screening and discussion with Humanitas, a student-run human rights journal, featuring a film about the history of racially-discriminatory housing policy in Charlottesville.
Providing ample social context for these modern issues can be a complicated task, and it is perhaps even more difficult to overcome the distrust felt by many Charlottesvillians due to the University’s historical ties to public housing displacement. Mulvaney said Friends of PHAR strives to repair that fraught relationship.
Mulvaney said she finds unfiltered, one-on-one conversations with public housing residents the most helpful to do so. Speaking with PHAR Chair Joy Johnson one day, she gained valuable insight into how something as simple as moving a basketball court’s location within a Charlottesville park completely transformed that space from a community pillar to a place only occupied by University students.
With challenges still lying ahead and decades of displacement not far in the past, Friends of PHAR still has many goals for progress in the future. The leaders of Friends of PHAR encourage students, whether they are from Charlottesville or not, to fight for fair housing for their community.
“It is important to be a good neighbor,” Mulvaney said. “When you move somewhere for only four years, it is important to know about the people who have formed their whole lives here. Figuring out how to give to a place you're only at for four years is something that I think is super meaningful.”
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