Joint Task Force on Affordable Housing

The Joint Task Force on Affordable Housing was created in December 2007 to address the region's shortage of affordable living choices.

The efforts were the first time Charlottesville Albemarle County and the University of Virginia came together to discuss the issue. The final report was unveiled in January 2009.

Members

Representing Albemarle County

• David Slutzky, Board of Supervisors
• Bill Edgerton, Albemarle County Planning Commission
• David Paulson, Housing Committee
• Leonard Winslow III, Housing Committee

Representing Charlottesville

• Satyendra Huja or David Norris, City Council
• Cheri Lewis, Charlottesville Planning Commission
• Karen Waters, Housing Advisory Committee
• Charlie Armstrong, Housing Advisory Committee

Other members

• David Neuman, University of Virginia
• Susan Pleiss / Rhonda Miska, IMPACT

Report

Selected recommendations for both the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County:

• Commit to a dedicated annual stream of funding to support the building and preserving of existing affordable housing
• Support the creation of a regional housing fund that can accept investments from public and private sources
• Support the creation of single room occupancy units and other affordable living choices
• Support and encourage new security measures in neighborhoods that may have affordable living choices but the perception of being unsafe
• Consider the use of general obligation bonds to pay for affordable housing initiatives
• Support the Thomas Jefferson Community Land Trust which could lower cost of housing by purchasing the underlying property
• Pay all city, county and UVa employees a living wage.
• Support efforts to create a regional transit authority
• Continue support for regional non-profits that work on affordable living choices such as the Piedmont Housing Alliance, Habitat for Humanity and the Albemarle Housing Improvement Fund

Selected recommendations for the City of Charlottesville:

• Adopt a proffer policy that requires affordability for three different income levels – extremely low, very-low, and low-income levels based on specific annual median income levels
• Create a Housing Ombudsman Office

Selected recommendations for Albemarle County:

• Amend existing proffer policy by putting caps on cost of proffered units, provide more incentives for developers to get more credit for making units even more affordable, and to enforce the affordable cost of proffered units through deed restrictions
• Create a new fund that would aggregate all County housing money (including cash proffers)

Recommendations for the University of Virginia:

• Consider building housing sites to provide higher density mixed income housing for students, staff and faculty
• Continue providing housing for all first-year students, consider more housing options for other undergraduate and graduate students
• Pay all employees a living wage and encourage all contractors to pay a living wage
• Support a regional transit authority and other transit network options

External links

A Report on Actions Needed to Address the Region's Affordable Housing Crisis