As the Charlottesville City Council’s Sept. 1 deadline to clear an encampment of unhoused residents along the Rivanna Trail nears, the Council unanimously voted to set aside $4 million as part of its relocation efforts at a meeting Aug. 3. The Council also received a status update on the City’s efforts to clear the area.
The Council officially announced last month that it will be clearing the Free Bridge encampment amid reports of public safety risks, including fires at the encampment, one death in June and two sexual assaults in July. Some residents have expressed concern at previous meetings that such an approach is inhumane, arguing the encampment is a community like any other and that its clearing will further disrupt the lives of unhoused residents without addressing the root cause of homelessness. Other residents note that the encampment has made the area dangerous and rendered the Rivanna Trail largely unavailable for public recreational use.
The Council indicated that the clearing of the encampment is a multiphased process which includes connecting unhoused residents with support services and housing opportunities if possible. It further includes opening a new low-barrier emergency homeless shelter at 2000 Holiday Drive near the Community Garden and Bodo’s Bagels on Emmett Street. Some businesses have expressed concerns that the presence of a low-barrier shelter nearby could decrease tourism in the area and their number of customers.
According to the resolution, the City will pull the $4 million from its Capital Improvement Program contingency fund, and will spend the money on “emergency sheltering services” and “direct to housing initiatives” aimed at finding physical homes for the encampment’s residents. During the Council’s earlier 4 p.m. work session Aug. 3 — an initial afternoon portion where City staff deliver presentations for Council members and no formal votes are taken — Assistant City Manager Samuel Roman presented on the status of these ongoing efforts in greater detail.
Roman explained that the City has already deployed teams consisting of University clinicians and other local providers to interact with unhoused residents at the encampment, assessing and collecting data on their immediate needs. The City ultimately used this data to connect 54 occupants at Free Bridge with employment and educational opportunities, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, vital identification records and other support services.
City staff are also entering the encampment as part of the removal process to flag discarded items which have no clear owner. Roman said the City will soon hire a contractor to begin removing these items.
Both Roman and City Manager Samuel Sanders explained that the City will partner with outside firms to facilitate the transition, as well. The Clutch Consulting Group — a Houston-based consulting firm that seeks to build “efficient and effective” systems for combating homelessness — will engage with local landlords to find potential housing opportunities for unhoused residents at Free Bridge. It will also assist residents with relocation to the Holiday Drive shelter. Central Arizona Shelter Services will staff and operate the Holiday Drive facility, while Community Solutions will continue collecting comprehensive data on the needs of the City’s unhoused population, according to CVille Right Now.
Charlottesville’s Parks and Recreation Department also continues to send daily trash collection services to the encampment and provides garbage bags to residents upon request, according to Roman. Further, he said that following the most recent reported rape at the encampment July 27, an expanded Charlottesville Police Department presence has been dispatched to patrol the area, including overnight — though to a lesser degree.
During the “Community Matters” segment of the Aug. 3 meeting — the public portion in which up to 16 speakers can address Council members for three minutes each — City residents still had mixed reactions on whether a mandatory relocation is the best pathway forward for unhoused residents.
Albemarle County resident Isis Neumann accused the City Government of having ulterior motives in clearing out the encampment. She argued that the City government was using the death of Anthony Spears, a city resident who passed away at the encampment recently, to justify displacing his neighbors in a manner that he would have objected to.
“I cared about Tony,” Neumann said. “I went to a celebration of life and met his family in Amherst. I walked down the trail on the day he died … and made sure everyone knew their friend passed away … What the City is doing is disrespecting his death. Imagine that you died and in response the City evicted all of your friends … do not lie in our faces and tell us that you care.”
Neumann also disagreed that relocating the residents of Free Bridge will protect victims of sexual assault, sharing her own experience as a victim of domestic abuse. Sending residents away from the Rivanna Trail, Neumann argued, will disperse and isolate them which could make fleeing or calling for help a greater challenge.
Conversely, Albemarle County resident Andrew Gray said that while he believes housing is a human right, other City residents should also be able to use public recreational spaces like the Rivanna Trail without fear.
“The people of Charlottesville have a right to walk through parks without sexual harassment,” Gray said. “Our adults and our children have a right to recreation near the river without worrying about environmental hazards like needles, or finding themselves in the eyes of one of the rapists who was arrested there recently.”
Gray explained that two of his uncles were homeless and told him on multiple occasions that they “preferred living outside” to staying in homeless shelters. He asserted that the clearing of the encampment is only a “temporary” solution, and that the large population of unhoused residents underscores the need for upzoning — continuing to allow increased density for housing projects. Gray argued upzoning will lower rent costs at a time where there is a well documented correlation between rent and homelessness, and he further called for more public housing units to be built in the City.
During another presentation at the 4 p.m. work session Aug. 3, Hunter Smith, Charlottesville’s Deputy Director for the Department of Human Services overseeing adult programs, presented on the work of the City’s new mental health emergency response team as the initiative heads into its third year.
The “Assisting with Navigation, Crisis Help and Outreach Resources” team — or “ANCHOR” for short — launched in the summer of 2024, and serves as an alternative crisis response for 9-1-1 calls that involve mental health crises or substance abuse. The team’s purpose is to “de-escalate“ situations that would normally result in arrest with “trauma informed and culturally responsive” on-the-ground mental health support.
The ANCHOR team also goes beyond crisis response by engaging in follow-up calls for individuals who have experienced mental health crises. They also perform welfare checks and connect residents with mental health resources such as those offered at Region Ten — a community services board that provides such resources and has a location in Charlottesville — or the Behavioral Health unit of the University’s Medical Center. The team consists of City staff from various departments, including two law enforcement officers and both a qualified mental health professional and a peer support specialist from the City’s Department of Human Services.
“We’ve got [firefighters], police, mental health workers and everyday they’re able to work together and solve problems in a way that’s very unique,” Smith said. “I think we can learn a lot from how these people work together.”
The meeting’s policy briefing summary asserted that ANCHOR has had an “informative” second year, noting that it recently implemented a record-keeping system to track the individuals it assists. According to Smith’s presentation, the number of unique individuals the ANCHOR team provided help for increased this year from 222 in FY25 to 239 in FY26, while the average number of repeated encounters with the same individual dipped by 12.5 percent.
Smith also said that the team was noticing a “wider range of issues,” and has recently been dealing with a greater number of behavioral health issues — which broadly require help with regulating habits, reactions and lifestyle choices as opposed to just psychological help. He noted that a more precise system of documentation is on ANCHOR’s agenda for FY 27.
In response to Council Member Jen Fleisher, who pointed out that interactions with female residents in particular increased from 177 in FY 25 to 219 in FY 26, Smith said this was another data point the team obtained recently, and is analyzing its potential causes.
Other points of focus for ANCHOR in FY 27, according to Smith’s presentation, include improving community outreach efforts, attempting to increase its follow-up capacity with a dedicated “Care Navigation Team” and looking for partnership opportunities with similar response teams — such as Albemarle County’s Human Services Alternative Response Team.
The Council’s regular meeting schedule for 2026 can be found on the City’s website.
Luca Bailey is a third-year Politics student from Free Union, Va. As a staffer on the news and video desks, he has covered topics ranging from the General Assembly and state elections to local politics and University governance. He is also The Cavalier Daily’s beat writer for the Charlottesville City Council.
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