Human Rights Commission Meeting   8/17/2023

Order at 632 p.m.

Ernest.

Here.

Jeanette.

Here.

Mary is not here yet.

Wolfgang.

Here.

Suzanne.

And Lyndele.

Here.

All right, now we'll recite our mission statement.

Act as a strong advocate to justice and equal opportunity by providing citywide leadership and guidance in the area of civil rights.

For those that are joining us virtually, if you're having any technical difficulties, you can call 434-970-3115.

Again, that's 434-970-3115.

We have to approve our regular minutes from 7-20-23.

Ernest?

Approve.

Epstein?

Mary's not here.

Wolfgang?

Approve.

Kathryn's not here.

Suzanne?

Approve.

Andy?

Epstein.

We have to approve the amendments from our work session on August 3rd, 2023.

I just have one edit in the action items for Next Steps for Jessica.

It was actually to, I mean, in addition to what's there, it was to email city council and then email Captain Van Martin the letter that the group put together for in response to our question about the Salvation Army.

So we'll vote with those amendments

So I don't have any chair updates.

Thank you for the team for putting together this panel.

And I'm not going to take much time either.

The report's attached as usual.

Oh, thanks.

If you do have any questions, you can always reach out.

We've updated it with the actions that you've taken since the last meeting in terms of the HRC work record.

So again, if you have questions about any of it, let me know.

Happy to answer them.

And that's it.

Sorry, just to quickly say, the two first people who are going to speak today had last minute things pop up and will be unable to join us, so we'd start maybe 20 minutes after the timeline that was given.

Okay.

We'll launch into it?

As Victoria just said, we had a couple of cancellations last minute, so we are running a little bit ahead of schedule.

That may mean that, so I think Emily's not here yet, she would be the first one, so just to say, Kimberly Fontaine and John Sales, our first two speakers, were the ones that had to cancel.

Liz, that might mean that you might be up first if you're willing.

We're kind of advancing the schedule quite a bit.

No pressure.

And maybe I'm going to make an assumption.

Are you Katie?

And my apologies.

I'm the one who spelled your name incorrectly on the agenda.

So that's my bad.

I added some additional letters for you.

Maybe I could leave it to the two of you to think about if one of you feels more prepared to go.

I could do like outreach updates if we need time for a little bit.

Sure.

Fill out the time.

Cool.

They can decide.

Okay, so to recap some things that did happen this past, I guess the last couple of weeks.

We had West Haven Day, so thanks Ernest and Ginny and Lily for making that happen.

Very, very cool.

Soul of Seville was also this past weekend.

Which is also, that was a very beautiful and long event that went on, so just like a lot of foot traffic, a lot of people passing by, that was a really cool thing to be able to participate in as well.

In the coming weeks we have, we did one Tuesday tabling event at Southwood in anticipation of kids going back to school there.

This weekend there's a couple of other things happening for back to school as well in the downtown mall and at the Boys and Girls Club, although

I will only be tabling the one that's happening on the downtown mall for now, pending confirmation of some Sunday details.

There'll be more things coming up in September, so if anybody wants to talk about Pride or, I was going to say Southwood again, Subroso, please let me know.

Those will be on the 16th and the 17th of September.

And on the week of September 20th, the ADA team is doing a public town hall to get feedback on the ADA transition plan, which is not really an outreach kind of event for our office, but we're helping plan it.

Well, no.

I think we're just waiting for going to do the panel discussion.

But I can just maybe clarify, if you hadn't had a chance to look at the agenda, sort of the format of what we're trying to do, we had set it up such that each speaker would have

Eight minutes to speak which is why the timer's set there so that'll give you a guide.

Remy will kindly run the timer for us with like two minutes of transition time between speakers.

Obviously maybe that's a little bit less important now because we have fewer speakers but we'll probably still stick with that time and

Just that we're not doing public comment before or after, also to save time for questions, so if you're able to stick around after everybody's presented, commissioners may have questions for you.

And again, the focus of this is on state-level legislative priorities, so the commission is tasked each year with

providing guidance to council on state legislation that they think should be prioritized, usually with a focus on human rights issues.

And in this case, housing is the chosen focus for the commission this year.

And so that's why we invited you all, because you all have expertise in that realm.

So that's kind of the scope of what we're after this evening.

I think it's not in the paragraph, but

I'm waiting to hear back from the Clerk of Council.

Each year, the schedule for the presentation of the legislative agenda has kind of been a moving target a little bit, mostly because there's been states of flux in leadership and so forth.

But typically, the submissions happen in September, so we're trying to gear up for that to be prepared if they request them.

say at the beginning of September.

So it may be later than that so we may have more time to get more feedback but just to know that's kind of our time frame.

So that's what we have.

Welcome Anna.

I was going to suggest actually that for those who didn't make it or weren't able to actually join the panel tonight, even those who didn't previously sign up but maybe were invited but weren't able to join, I think going back and asking for their input, maybe you as commission can decide if you want to do that, delegate that amongst yourselves or if you want us to take that on.

Here we are.

Based on that clock, anyway.

Oh, OK. Oh, yeah.

Could we do public comment?

Is that?

I think we have people online, right?

Sure.

We have two minutes for public comment.

If you're joining us on Zoom, you can press the raise hand icon if you want to speak at this time.

Have we all decided who'd like to come first?

Hello everyone, members of the commission.

Thanks for the opportunity to join you here today.

My name's Katie Darden and I'm here on behalf of a group called Livable Seaville.

Livable Seaville's an all volunteer group that's open to anyone

feels inspired by our mission and wants to get involved.

That mission is to advocate for policies to build an inclusive community in Charlottesville and the surrounding area and the state, everywhere, but really we're focused on Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

And for us, building that inclusive community means advocating for affordable housing, sustainable transportation, and healthy neighborhoods that welcome everyone.

Livable Seville members' bottom line support housing for all.

We agree with experts here and elsewhere that housing is fundamentally a human right and that Charlottesville is in an affordable housing crisis, as many places are, but again, we're focused on here.

Livable Seaville advocates for inclusionary zoning that will allow more people to build and live in all sorts of homes in Charlottesville and the surrounding area, including single family homes, multifamily homes, any kind of home you can think of.

We believe there's plenty of room in this town for everyone who needs and wants to live and work here.

So we have to make sure there's enough housing for everyone.

So what does Livable Seaville, this ragtag group of volunteers, actually do in practice?

First, we try to keep abreast of what's going on, debates and policy-making initiatives that could impact the future of housing in Charlottesville.

We work with other groups and organizations to add or try to add a strong pro-housing voice.

For example, members of our group worked to build a coalition to support Charlottesville's comprehensive plan

When it's budget planning time in Charlottesville, we're right there pushing for the city to adequately provide for things such as its affordable housing fund and bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, sidewalks, bike lanes, things like that, public transit.

Livable Seaville helped write the pro-zoning reform coalition letter that has been signed by dozens, I think 30 local groups and organizations.

As the letter said, we support a zoning code that embodies the city's commitments to racial and economic equity, environmental justice, and a more accessible Charlottesville.

Our group is always eager to work with other organizations to partner, to put our heads together, to help advocate for better housing options, better land use, and more sustainable transportation.

Beyond working with organizations, Livable Seaville encourages individuals to add their own individual voices to pro-housing advocacy.

There are a lot of people out there who believe in this cause, or at least parts of this cause, but just don't have enough time or energy to really get involved.

So we try to provide information in relatively quick and painless ways for people to show up and speak out.

For example, we put out a monthly or near monthly newsletter that reports on important or interesting developments in the realm of Charlottesville area housing and transportation.

We try to offer specific suggestions for contacting local government and policy makers.

We offer ideas for further reading or research, and we put on webinars to hear from expert guests on topics that are important to us, like homelessness, safe routes to school, which is going to be really important starting here in Charlottesville next week.

As I mentioned, part of Livable Seaville's mission is advocating for sustainable transportation.

I know we're talking about housing here, but we believe that sustainable transportation, transportation options are integrally tied with housing advocacy.

Many of the members of Livable Seaville

Really prefer walking or biking or riding the bus instead of driving by car all the time.

So we experience firsthand how important it is to develop safer, more reliable pedestrian, bike and public transit infrastructure in this area.

For us, it's just all part and parcel of building this healthy, affordable, safe, and inclusive neighborhoods.

We want to make the best use of this beautiful place where we're lucky to live, or where some of us are lucky enough to live.

We want to use our land more for people than for cars.

We want to give people different options for getting around and connecting in this community.

We also believe that local actions are a big part of mitigating climate change, including renewable energy projects large and small.

For example, Livable Seaville played an active role in advocating for the Woodridge Solar Project that is supposed to be able to provide enough energy to power about half of the homes in Albemarle County.

We were happy to see that get approved by the county.

We really think that every part of our mission from increased housing density, improved public transit, and safer pedestrian and bike infrastructure, that all serves our common climate goals by reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and overall energy use.

But we also think it's very important, as many of us do, to make sure that the burden of pursuing those goals doesn't fall disproportionately on members of lower income or historically dispossessed communities or neighborhoods.

Charlottesville and Albemarle County need to build more housing in every neighborhood, including much more affordable housing.

and make significant commitments to non-car centered infrastructure and renewable energy so that all of the members of our community can thrive.

Well, Liz, would you be ready?

I think so, yeah.

Well, thanks for inviting Pacham to

to the table.

The housing and homelessness landscape in Charlottesville is, as everywhere, complex.

Individuals lose their housing or languish in street homelessness for a variety of interrelated factors, including mental health issues, physical health issues, substance use disorders, as well as the generational impacts of racism and poverty.

Pacham has had the privilege of serving more than 1,800 of our region's most vulnerable neighbors, those experiencing homelessness since 2004.

Primarily our work has focused on operating low barrier winter emergency shelter for adults in collaboration with a vast network of faith congregations and secular partners.

Low barrier means that we welcome all adults into our shelter

regardless of mental health status, substance use, criminal justice records or other factors with some rare exceptions made to protect the safety of our guests and staff.

During the pandemic, Pacham as a seasonal shelter operated continuously and in new groundbreaking hotel-based settings roughly from spring 2020 through June 30th this year.

In just one of those special projects, Premier Circle, we served 177 individuals with high health risks related to COVID, and we housed 91 of them by the project's close.

And since July 1st, more have been able to move into housing, and we can credit the effort

and dedication of our team of case managers, more than 50 other staff, as well as dozens of other community partners to make that happen.

Our current focus at Pacham is twofold.

First, we are focused, of course, on securing our 20th season of winter shelter, again, based in host churches.

and second, we are returning to our pre-pandemic efforts of establishing a year round low barrier shelter.

Like our partner, The Salvation Army, we recognize that the need is great.

In reflecting on 20 years of organizational experience and seven personally, it's a shoe in to just say that the folks that we serve and the context in which we serve are very different.

I would want to highlight three problems and I'll try to go through them quickly.

The first is the changing rental landscape from additional dwelling units and small holding landlords to management companies.

I've worked to create a master landlord list so I got very familiar with all of the different names as far back as 2006 of folks that would rent

in Charlottesville.

As we began to clean up these lists, what we noticed was that efficiency and rooming house units that once were under a private landlord were increasingly being managed by a corporation.

Many of the landlords had aged or moved away and they needed help managing their properties.

The pandemic's eviction moratorium and other economic factors have further driven small holding landlords to sell.

to outsource or to convert to short-term vacation rentals like Airbnb.

What that means is there are now many layers of bureaucracy between a Pacham client and housing.

And it's almost impossible for them to access these historical units that they once could rent, things like third-party background checks,

credit history requirements, or even just fully online applications and payment methods.

I understand the motivations of the landlords.

This is not to vilify them.

It just highlights that there's a marked shrinking of the housing marketplace that our clients can reasonably compete in.

The second is the loss of affordable units relative to HUD updates.

It's related to the first, the loss of landlords, but it's also a more granular impact of the general understanding that rents are increasing astronomically in Charlottesville.

Once one of my clients would be able to rent a rooming house for $500 or $650 a month,

Those same units today cost 750, 850.

And driven by the HUD determinations around annual median income and fair market rents, if you're renting a room in a house that has four rooms being rented similarly, that house's rent

is over three thousand dollars a month and therefore it is not affordable so you can't even rent that.

That change is most critically felt by our clients that have sex offenses or violent felonies because they can't rent from public housing authorities.

They are often excluded from vouchers and even if they get a voucher their backgrounds prevent them from renting from these corporations.

The third thing that I want to highlight is the loss of mental health services during the pandemic as the healthcare system necessarily closed ranks to figure out how to protect us from all the unknowns of COVID.

Virginia lost half of its mental health beds.

And where did those folks go?

To Pacham.

Into our shelter.

We have always served folks with significant mental illness and that's never going to change.

But what it did is increase the number of folks in our shelter on any given night with significant mental illness.

So instead of just one or two folks with auditory or visual hallucinations or extreme paranoia, there were five or six or seven.

And I hate to say it, but it illustrates the point.

Well, there were a lot of other wonderful symptoms of significant mental illness that we had to deal with.

Our team saw a lot of naked bodies and dealt with a lot of literal poop during the pandemic, all because our clients needed more help in mental health facilities and it wasn't available to them.

So in conclusion, I have a couple of recommendations.

First, I urge the commission and the council to understand that shelter saves lives.

Housing is not a panacea for the complex factors driving homelessness, nor is it easily achievable for many of Pacham's guests.

Shelter is not a long-term solution, but it needs to be included as we navigate the complex changes required to make

Housing accessible and affordable again.

Starkly put, if someone freezes to death outside during the winter, you don't need to house them.

PACHAM exists to help folks come out of the elements and heal.

I'm going to go over time.

I apologize.

We've served a variety of folks where it's the heartbreaking reality that they come into the shelter without hope.

A 30-year-old.

morbidly obese, traumatized because of his sexual orientation and he was facing the possibility of staying in an assisted living facility at 30 years old.

Pacham gave them shelter, helped them get disability benefits and access to housing right across the hallway from his parents actually.

An 80-year-old spent five years in our shelter locked in her own traumas and fears.

And just last week, she agreed to be housed.

A 60-year-old, who's one of my favorites, a history of alcohol use, grouchy at the slightest whiff of failure, and he just talked to me consistently for years.

And then one day, he saw an ad in the paper for Midway Manor

And he brought me the newspaper and asked for help applying.

And eight months later, he moved in.

There's already so much positive work being done in our community around housing.

It's hard.

And I would love for us to value every part of the system.

I love your t-shirt.

Good evening.

My name is Anna Mendez.

I have the privilege of supporting the team at The Haven.

I first want to start by thanking you, Chair Harris, for this opportunity to come and speak to you.

Members of the commission, thank you for your attention.

Director Niemeyer.

You are a rock star.

Thank you for all that you do for the city of Charlottesville.

Ms. McCullough, you also are doing the Lions work behind the scenes, and also Remi Trail and the city comms team.

This does not work without you.

So thank you.

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate this invitation to elevate issues related to housing and homelessness for consideration for state level advocacy.

The first thing that I want to say is that I just want to echo and amplify everything that has already been said this evening.

want to bring three specific points to your attention as you are considering recommendations for state-level advocacy and then I'm gonna leave you with one closing thought.

So the Haven would urge you to urge city council, to urge the General Assembly to one, prohibit discrimination based on homelessness.

Virginia needs to recognize homelessness as a protected class.

This is not a novel idea.

There are many states and localities in the United States that already do this.

Protecting the human rights of people experiencing homelessness and housing instability starts by protecting them as a class.

We also urge you to use your voice to end the de facto income discrimination that is so often used against people that have been awarded a voucher and are relying on their voucher to be able to access housing.

The Virginia's Tenants Bill of Rights

explicitly denies discrimination on payer source.

But how we are increasingly seeing landlords get around this is by saying, oh, we're not discriminating against you because you have a voucher and you want to pay for our unit with a voucher.

We are denying you because we require that you prove that your income is at least three times the monthly rent.

If a person's income is three times the monthly rent, they don't qualify for a voucher.

The second thing I would urge you to use your voice in support of is to recognize homelessness as a public health crisis.

There is no reason that we should not in Virginia be able to use Medicaid funds to pay for a person's rent.

We know that when someone is stably housed, their need for things like hospital and emergency department usage plummets, so much so that the return on the investment is significantly greater than what it cost to house them in the first place.

The third point I would love for you to join with us in making to the General Assembly is that Virginia must develop a meaningful statewide plan to end homelessness and it must address the systemic causes of homelessness.

We know what those causes are.

They are a lack of deeply affordable units and incomes that are not sufficient to pay rent.

We know that the housing wage across Virginia is about $23 or $24 an hour.

Can only imagine what that actually is here in Charlottesville, and yet in Virginia today minimum wage is $12 an hour.

So as you are thinking about how you want to best use your voice to influence things this upcoming General Assembly session, I really, really urge you to think about, one, how can we prohibit discrimination,

against people based on the fact that they lack housing.

How can we recognize homelessness as the public health crisis that it is?

And how can we develop a meaningful statewide plan to actually end homelessness and get people housed?

The last point that I would like to leave you with is to draw your attention to

Virginia Code 3.2-6546, which for the non-attorneys in the room requires that each county and city in Virginia maintains a public shelter for animals or funds a private equivalent.

There is no such requirement for cities or counties to provide any support for shelter for human beings.

I hope that this offends you as much as it offends us at The Haven.

Thank you, and I'm very much looking forward to answering your questions.

Emily doesn't appear to be here.

Is she virtual?

Oh, OK. Remy, can you see her up there by chance?

Perfect.

Okay.

I just logged on.

Would you like me to start talking or do you want to give me any introduction for what you'd like me to cover?

Welcome Emily.

Thanks for joining us virtually.

I appreciate that.

I don't know what you can see, but this is Todd talking to you.

So yeah, we're giving each speaker about eight minutes to speak on any legislative priorities that you would like the commission to advocate for.

Sounds good.

I'm happy to stick around for questions.

So the Legal Aid Justice Center works closely with the Virginia Poverty Law Center on General Assembly.

Vills, and also defensive measures.

And I just want to mention defensive work because it is so often a really important part of what needs to happen at the General Assembly.

And it is often very spur of the moment and can be really challenging.

But as far as the agenda, like the proactive agenda that we're working on,

We are trying to restore the 14-day pay-or-quit notices.

During COVID, the worst of the pandemic, it was extended to increase people's right to more time when they're getting an eviction notice.

But now it's back to five days, which is a really, really difficult time for people to get their lives together or the rent funds together or whatever it may be.

So that's one piece, increase the payer quit notice from five to 14 days.

Another is about conditions, and I don't know how much awareness you all have about Virginia landlord-tenant law, but it strongly favors landlords.

And we are among many states, but certainly there are many who do better than Virginia.

And one of the key areas is what happens when people are living in unsafe or unsanitary conditions.

The bill that we're gonna try to be working on is to allow tenants to raise unsafe or unsanitary conditions as an affirmative defense to non-payment of rent.

Right now we do not have any kind of rent withholding right in Virginia, and this is sort of a step toward that direction.

So it would help people who were being evicted for non-payment

and also living in unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

The third one we are working on is about an appeal bond and letting indigent tenants waive that appeal bond.

It would give them the same rights that

Indigen people have in other types of civil cases, but currently, if someone is trying to appeal an eviction judgment, they have to pay an appeal bond, and that can be a real hardship for folks.

And another one, which is near and dear to people who know some of our big landlords in town, is to require landlords to disclose all fees that will be charged to renters in a separate document before the lease is

entered into.

So we have some landlords locally who have a lot of add-on fees and people don't even know about them sometimes until they've lived in a place for a month or already moved inside the lease and then realize there's a whole bunch of heavy fees that are going to be added on top of the rent.

The fifth one is to prohibit mid-lease rent increases

in both the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act and the Manufactured Home Lot Rental Act, unless the renter agrees in writing that a mid-term increase is permissible for them.

And we've been seeing that more in recent days as housing costs go spiraling upwards continuously and we see landlords trying to

put in a rent increase during a lease term which is really unacceptable for a lot of folks and just puts them more at risk for displacement and homelessness.

And then we have

An authorization for localities to pass rent stabilization ordinances for mobile home lot rent and residential rent in multifamily dwellings.

So this would basically take rent control out of the Dillon Rule process and make it more possible for localities to add rent stabilization to their local control

Other topics that are going to come up, we're looking for a budget item that would start a state sponsored voucher program so that more people can get rental subsidies.

And there's a homeownership initiative that will use the Habitat for Humanities model and increase homeownership for people up to 60% of the area median income.

And lastly, we're trying to work on a bill that will improve manufactured homes, also known as mobile home, park residents' ability to buy their communities when an owner wants to sell.

So basically helping get them more of the first right of refusal and be able to keep

the property as a mobile home park or for the residents to decide how to redevelop it but we're seeing a lot of mobile home parks that go on the market and it's a very significant source of affordable housing in Virginia.

And a lot of times when they're sold, people are mass-evicted and, or rents go way, way up and the mobile home park becomes something much more expensive.

So trying to find ways to preserve more of the manufactured homes.

That's all I have.

Thank you, Emily.

I think that's all of the speakers that we have on the panel for tonight.

Emily, I don't know if you heard at the beginning, we had a few folks who had to withdraw due to some other things that came up.

So we have four panelists here.

And I guess maybe, Jessica, what would you prefer?

You could do that, yeah.

Is that possible?

Yes, if you'd like to speak at this time, you can click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar, or if you're joining us via telephone, which I don't think anyone is, you can press star nine.

Thank you.

All right, commissioners, do you have any questions for our panelists?

And thank you for our panelists for coming and talking to us today.

Is that a question for Emily?

First, thank you for joining us.

Yeah, it's something we didn't used to see much of, but now we're seeing more of it as housing prices keep going up and landlords realize that they can make a lot more if they raise their rents.

We're not seeing tons of it, but I imagine there may be other communities that are seeing a lot more.

And I think the only

Prevention that we have come up with is basically a state law that would prohibit this from being allowable.

So we're hoping that one gets through for sure.

General Assembly is a challenging body to get anything through, especially pro-tenant legislation, so who knows what'll happen.

Thank you everyone who came and spoke.

I learned an awful lot today and I appreciate that.

I wanted to ask Anna from The Haven, I just want to clarify something that you asked for and I want to make sure I understand it.

Okay, great.

for questions.

I just had a question for Kate and Liz.

I appreciate what you've outlined as far as issues.

Do you have, I mean you listed out multiple things that are of concern, but when it comes to legislative agenda items, what are you hoping to see?

Like what would you need to be in place to help support the concerns you've brought up?

So I think part of the issue with sheltering folks over a set of years is that the funding for shelter waxes and wanes with the popularity of the idea of shelter versus housing.

I'm not sure how you would phrase it, but I would strongly encourage shelter to be included in the conversation around housing.

It's not either or.

When someone loses their housing, they need a place to go.

And we want that to be rare, brief, and non-recurring, but that still means you need a safe place for them to go.

Thanks for the question.

I would reiterate what others have said and I learned a lot today too.

The mid-lease rental increases blew my mind.

I would say Livable Seaville

includes a bunch of zoning nerds.

I'm not particularly one of them, but there are a lot of people who focus a lot on the ins and outs of zoning.

And one of the things we and others like to say is legalize housing.

So get, to the extent that you can responsibly do so, get government out.

of that decision about where you can build a corner store or where you can build an apartment building instead of a single family home.

So to the extent that this can be a state legislative priority, just make it legal to build homes without having to get an act of God to make it happen.

So that's what I would say.

Also, with respect to sustainable transportation, which as I said, we consider an integral part

Inclusive housing and welcoming neighborhoods.

Sometimes when you are trying to build bicycle or pedestrian infrastructure, you can run up against VDOT, for example.

Whatever can be done, I'm not a lawyer, but whatever can be done to facilitate the building of infrastructure that'll make it easier for people, not just cars, to get from one place to another.

I think we would ask that you consider that in your recommendations.

Jessica, I have a question.

I'm not quite sure who this is to, to be honest with you, and I know we have the weird podium thing, but so I heard you all say that Virginia is definitely a pro-landlord state.

I'm curious where

I have a list of what you all have talked about, and so I'm also curious in terms of where Virginia stands.

I've only been back in the state of Virginia for about 15 months now, so I'm still catching up, but where Virginia stands on mental health services.

on shelters and on affordable housing.

I can make some guesses, but as I think about legislative priorities and I think about where this commission may or may not want to double down on, I'm just curious about where Virginia stands on some of those other pieces.

I'm happy to, if I am a subject matter expert on anything, it is mental health law in Virginia.

Virginia is the 10th wealthiest state in the nation, yet we fund our public mental health services.

We are the 30th least well-funded, so Virginia would actually need

to double our investment in public mental health dollars in order for the 10th wealthiest state in the nation to have the 10th best funded mental health care system on a per capita basis.

What is particularly egregious about this is that while we don't spend a whole lot of money on public mental health care in Virginia,

Virginia is actually the state in the nation with the third highest highest number of inpatient psychiatric beds.

So what that means is that 75% 75 cents of every public mental health dollar in Virginia goes to pay for an inpatient bed and only 25 cents of every dollar goes to pay for community-based

Services.

That is exactly opposite of the national average.

State spending on the national average is 75 cents of every dollar for community-based services and 25 cents of every dollar for inpatient psychiatric beds.

Virginia does not need more psychiatric beds.

If psychiatric beds to solve the problem of mental health care, we would have no problem left to solve.

The existence of inpatient beds does not prevent the need for an inpatient bed.

What prevents that need is a person's ability to easily access high-quality, evidence-based, culturally competent, trauma-informed care in their community before they are in crisis.

That does not exist anywhere in the Commonwealth, and it particularly does not exist

here in the greater Charlottesville area.

I know you are the Charlottesville Commission on Human Rights, but this is not a problem that ends at the city limits.

I think it's also incredibly important to remember to keep in mind that mental health, and I include substance use disorder under the umbrella of mental health care,

is not, this is settled science, mental health and substance use disorders are themselves not drivers of homelessness.

West Virginia, lived in West Virginia for 10 years and I still have people I love there dearly, but

West Virginia has one of the nation's highest rates of mental health issues and substance use disorder.

It also has the lowest rate of homelessness and the highest rate of home ownership.

So we absolutely need to make investments in our mental health care system.

but the reason that so many people who experience homelessness are people who live with mental health conditions is the same reason that so many people who experience homelessness or housing instability are black and brown and that is because when there is a resource scarcity the people who are always least able to access that resource are the people who have been historically marginalized and discriminated against and oppressed

I don't think I have enough time necessarily.

It's historical artifact is really what it is.

Virginia has the honor, I guess, dishonor of having the oldest psychiatric hospital in the nation, Eastern State Hospital.

was in existence prior to the United States being a country, right?

And so we just as a commonwealth decided like prior to statehood that the way to address mental health issues was to like lock people away so that we don't have to see them and then this has just become

Virginia is also a very low tax, low service state.

So everything that I've said about mental health care, there is a

A parallel that could be said to our public school system as well.

So we're just seeing it.

If we think our public schools are underfunded and not resourced well enough, the only system in Virginia that is less well resourced is our mental health care system.

The level of investment that we would need

In order to have an adequately funded mental health care system, we are not talking about marijuana revenue.

When there was all of this talk about, let's legalize marijuana, people were like, oh, right, we'll have more tax revenue and that is going to solve our mental health care and our public school challenges.

No, it's not.

The level of investment we're talking about needing is we need to completely overhaul Virginia's tax structure, which is something that has not happened in more than 100 years.

In Virginia, we need to have a progressive income tax, and we need to begin taxing consumer services the way that we tax consumer goods.

It was in the late 60s or early 70s that household spending for consumer services began to outpace spending on consumer goods for the first time, but yet we still have not decided that we are going to tax consumer services.

Those things together would represent almost an increase in a billion dollars in revenue for Virginia every year.

Thank you.

I do want to chime in a little bit.

Of course.

For lack of being able to affect that kind of monumental change, I want to highlight two things that just come to my mind about how we are trying to navigate and fill that need locally.

The first, related to mental health services specifically, we have an amazing resource in the crisis intervention.

programs that we run locally.

We have internationally recognized CIT leadership here in Charlottesville.

And Tom does an amazing job of coordinating and helping facilitate wraparound care across the homeless services, emergency services,

you know probation and parole to care for these folks who are maybe at risk of losing their housing or are homeless on the streets.

So again I just want to highlight something that is working pretty well here and it's something that we can

raise as an example of something maybe to invest further in or model on.

And the other related to housing is we've increasingly seen in our shelter at Pacham over the last several years folks coming to us from farther and farther out.

And a lot of it has to do with, again, the generational impacts of racism and poverty.

Basically, family homes are falling apart, but there are programs locally that attempt to renovate and keep people from losing their homes or losing the livability of their homes.

One that comes to mind is AHIP.

There are similar programs in other outlying counties.

and I believe Building Goodness Foundation also participates somehow.

But again, I know these problems are huge and the monumental change would be wonderful.

Thank you.

Yes, I want to also thank the speakers and I'm very curious as to what the city is going to do with the grant money that they just received from the state for affordable housing.

It'll be interesting to see what projects have special needs and it sounds like there are a lot right here in this room that could use some of that money.

So I'm hoping when we find out what the City of Charlottesville is going to do that you guys organizations will be involved

in receiving some of that money and if not I will have them send them a copy of this because they need to see and hear.

Yeah, I just wanted to iterate that.

Thank you so much for coming and sharing so much information with us.

Thank you for all that you do.

I know Liz, you said it's hard and it's not easy.

We received that and we know that and that's why we've taken on housing as our

So I thank you for your vulnerability.

I thank you for sharing the stories because we often forget there are humans that are being affected and witnessing that.

So thank you for your time, your effort.

Our action item steps are to take this and consolidate it and then recommend this and use our privilege to recommend this to city council for legislative.

It seems to only be legal if you are in a designated low-income housing unit that has an escalator clause and HUD income guidelines change during the course of your lease.

I have been madly googling since, and I was like, this is awful.

I have to see when this is legal.

And so that, like my 20 years ago, that is when it is legal in Virginia.

Oh, I was just gonna say, exactly.

It's really, really,

It's bizarre that anybody's allowed to do a mid-lease rent increase and it always takes tenants so much by surprise.

And people are already living in really precarious situations.

We work a lot with low-income housing tax credit developments where renters do actually have some additional rights.

They have some level of just cause eviction protections.

and Organizing Protection, so retaliatory evictions are harder to do in low-income housing tax credit developments and those are places like Park's Edge, Harchwood, Prospect, Greenstone on Fifth, Rio Hill and Mallside, there's several in town.

And I did want to also just mention that those properties have expiring subsidies and they will need a lot of local dollars and local organizing to keep those developments affordable.

Some of the landlords are committed to long-term affordability, but some are not.

So I just had a question for Anna about your point about recognizing homelessness as a protected class.

Do you also see that as an idea or initiative in the employment space?

Yes, that's what we mean.

It would be illegal to discriminate across domains in Virginia once something is considered a protected class.

So that would include for the purposes of employment.

Yep, absolutely.

since I'm up here.

The one other thing that I would encourage the city of Charlottesville to do on a more local level is to

More strongly communicate to our surrounding localities that homelessness does not end at the city limits of Charlottesville.

I am actually

Really, really grateful for the level of support, financial support that The Haven is now receiving from the city of Charlottesville.

I am new at The Haven, and though I am new, I

I have been able to, for the first time ever, get the city of Charlottesville to make a financial commitment to our day shelter.

Our day shelter has been in operation in the city since 2009, but yet this is the first fiscal year that public dollars have supported our day shelter.

We are incredibly grateful for every single one of those $90,000.

Thank you very much.

and we get $14,000 from the county of Albemarle whose budget is significantly larger than the city of Charlottesville.

And if I was an elected official in the city of Charlottesville, that would not be okay with me.

Because yes, The Haven is at 112 West Market Street within the city limits of Charlottesville,

But when people are experiencing homelessness, more than half of them, their last stable address was Albemarle County.

So yes, they come to us and they eat breakfast and take a shower and do their laundry every day and we're grateful we can give them a place to check their email and get their mail.

We serve as the legal address of record for over 500 different people, which means that every single year we sort and store over a thousand pounds of mail, I think only the post office.

and the university probably handle more mail every year than we do.

And yes, many of the people who use our services are people who were born and raised in the city of Charlottesville, but for every single person born and raised in the city of Charlottesville who is hanging out with us every day, there is one person who was born and raised in Albemarle County.

Increasingly, there are also people who were born and raised in Greene, in Louisa, and Fluvanna.

And the reason for that is most of the people who come to the Haven are employed.

It is a myth that most people experiencing homelessness are not employed.

Most of the people who come to the Haven actually have more than one job.

So when someone whose home was in Albemarle or Nelson or Green or Louisa or Fluviana, when they find themselves in homelessness, they were already, more likely than not, they were already commuting into the city of Charlottesville every day for at least one of their jobs.

And so now they no longer have a place to live in Albemarle County, so now they are sleeping in their car

in the city of Charlottesville because that's where their job is.

So I recognize that Green, Nelson, Louisa, and Fluviana don't have a whole lot of financial resources to put into this problem, but the county of Albemarle is significantly more affluent and better resourced than the city of Charlottesville.

I would love to piggyback.

Oh, go for it.

Sorry.

Thank you, Emily.

Again, I just want to point out areas where things are being done pretty well.

So the city has, what is it called, like a community

Community Hotline.

So if you're at risk of losing housing for some reason you can access certain funds through a city hotline which is shared with Albemarle County.

MACA, which is another nonprofit organization, manages similar funds for three of the outlying counties and then Skyline CAP

manages a similar fund for other counties.

So that would be an area where, again, absent the possibility of monumental immediate change, encouraging development of those funding systems or communication systems might be a more approachable solution.

I'm really glad these issues are coming up because we run into the same frustrations, especially around rent assistance.

And the city has really beefed up what they've done, what they used to do for emergency rent assistance.

And under COVID, they did some wonderful things, the county, the United Way,

and the Mutual Aid Network all worked together with also the Community Foundation and did a wonderful job stepping up.

Now the county says they're starting their own rental assistance program, but it's still not ready.

And their money ran out, I believe in April or May.

So they've had months where they haven't had any assistance available for people.

Supposedly it's going to be ready to roll in September, but we keep hearing any day now kind of messages over the last couple of months.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for adjusting with the schedule.

Do you guys mind sharing, some of you guys are reading off of notes, if you mind sharing with us, that'd be helpful.

And if there, any time, right, we're gonna, this intent was for

Just a legislative agenda, but if there's any way that we can continue to elevate, like you said, Emily, concerns, you have our email address and please let us know.

We can continue to bring that to city council.

So thank you so much for your time.

Yeah, I just want to say thank you.

And again, on some of the positives that if I'm not mistaken, I saw there are people that are moving into Kendall Wood.

into the new spot that are getting new homes.

So that's awesome.

But I would say, you know, the issue of outlying counties, that is something that we definitely need to work on, that we maybe need to get the mayors, the board of supervisors together to work on that because that is definitely an issue.

And I'm not going to say that those locales don't have the money or the resources because they do.

If you can live in Lake Monticello, which is an HOA, you can afford, and if you've been to Lake Monticello, there's new housing being built out there, huge housing project out there right now.

And other counties as well, there's opportunities, but I think it's just having a conversation,

and saying that because, yeah, a lot of people do work here in the city of Charlottesville.

And I get that people are living in their cars.

And I would, you know, when you said that, I just thought about how many people probably go to the Haven and probably work at UVA, you know, in different places like that.

And to think that they don't make enough money to afford housing is just heartbreaking.

to think that.

And also to look at, I was looking at something today and looking at rent of some townhouses that, you know, a guy was selling.

It's like $2,200.

Yeah, speaking about the townhomes costing $2,200, voucher limits are, they vary because of HUD and household size and all that, but typically voucher sizes are $1,000 to $1,200.

and there are strict heartbeat rules about how many bedrooms you must find for your family.

I'm typically working with single individuals or some couples, but even then, where are you finding these $1,100 units?

Oftentimes we're having to combine a voucher with additional like one-time financial support to pay things like

utility deposits or even just moving costs plus applying the voucher if it's possible not trying to double dip but applying it to an affordable unit so like taking a C-Strap voucher to

It's such a limited pool and it's so hard to describe that.

We say that there's no housing but

There's housing out there, but the rules for those units has changed so much.

Thank you.

I would add, it's pricing out our staff.

Yeah.

I mean, it's hard.

Sorry.

It's incredibly hard.

We lost an amazing day shelter team member in May when her lease expired and her landlord was like, you're a great tenant, I want you to stay and I'm increasing your rent by $600 a month.

And she was like, you know, that doesn't work for me.

And so she she left Charlottesville.

The vast majority of Haven's staff cannot afford to live rental or even owning or renting in either the city or the county.

So we have team members that are commuting in from Fluviana and from Waynesboro.

So, yeah, I mean, like it's just it is across the

Ernest, I just wanted to say back to you about Lake Monticello.

When we had our special guest, like our focus group last year, they did mention that the reason why a lot of people are here in Charlottesville was like accessibility.

So I live with the lake.

It's not accessible.

Like that new housing development is not accessible if you don't have a car.

So I just wanted to uplift that other perspective.

I just wanted to give a plug for the zoning changes that are coming and you all being active with that process if you're able to be or even as individuals it would be really meaningful because one example of the rent being set too high is Chris Henry's development at Dairy Market and when Crescent Halls was being renovated

There was a major water main break and everyone had to be moved out in a night into emergency temporary or permanent housing and then within the next week they were looking for permanent housing because going back into the building was going to be worse because of all the water that had gone through.

Chris Henry's rent in that development was $50 too high to qualify for the voucher usage and they refused to lower it.

So that's the kind of thing that really makes for bad neighbors.

And I think the zoning that's being considered what we're

Pushing for is to look at the adjoining properties to what they're calling the sensitive areas, which has to be one of the worst names around.

But looking at the neighborhoods that are experiencing mass displacement and have been for many years and trying to see what works well for their neighborhood so we don't have more things like the standard in the dairy market that are negatively impacting their neighbors.

So I hope you all will be active with that and I'd be happy to share information about that too.

Any other questions before we... Well thank you again for coming to join us tonight.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Well, we have to confirm.

I was going to do public comment one more time, but I guess not.

So we need to confirm if we're going to have our work session on 907.

If y'all need to leave, please feel free to step out.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

So do we want to have our work session on the first Thursday of next month?

Are there any Commissioner updates?