Housing Advisory Committee Meeting   10/15/2025

I'm here and I'm going to go to my right.

Dan Rosensweig, nonprofit.

Chris Engel, City of Charlottesville, Office of Economic Development We are now in neighborhood long-term care. We are not sure how these are going to affect us in the future. I've been to five people that have one. Phil Ronzio of the Innovation Center. I'm the main Charlottesville City Council. I've been lended an at-large member with nonprofit and neighborhood experience. I'm Nicole Crow, real estate professional.

Alan Puris, City Manager's Office, Kathleen Glenn-Matthews, Shorropsville Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

Are there any staff updates?

Our Hopson half-grant application period.

The HOPS one opens September 19th and will close next Monday the 20th.

Usually one of your alternatives is what happens if you do nothing, so I imagine that would be one as well.

We are also engaging with 3TP, the same consultants who were at the last meeting, but some different folks in their office will be working on our ADU manual, Affordable Well Unit Manual, specifically the fees, the calculation, those are supposed to be reviewed regularly, and as well as some of the more questions that have come up in the last

About how those feet are applied.

That is being administered by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and they are working with the Virginia Center for Housing Research at Virginia Tech to work with localities to collect data and then the Virginia Tech folks will be doing a lot of that, most of that data analysis.

By the end of October, they will be

coming out with some of their introductory qualitative outcomes, a literature review, and kind of an inventory of existing housing resources in all of the communities that are a part of the strategic team.

So if you're interested in learning more about that, we could have Laurie G. come in and give a little update on that.

But if you don't already know, there's some sort of focus.

And that's it for me?

Kelly's going to talk about that.

But certainly, I think we're all looking forward to being able to step back up

So I have asked for this to be approximately a 10 to 12 week timeframe.

And then with that, I can move into, just start to dig around the steps.

Next thing on the agenda is the approval of the September 17th half minutes.

Give me a second.

But I see the Land Bank, but isn't Chris supposed to be doing a presentation?

And then we'll leave it, okay, because I was looking at it.

Okay, so the Land Bank, and so I need to show this bill, status review and discussion.

I can ju

and it remains silent on whether the land bank could be dissolved in order to reform as a non-profit entity.

Did we confirm that?

Was there concerns that the ability to discharge liens was not as easy to do in Virginia because of the way the statute was written versus other states?

Without sidetracking, I think both of those questions, it would be helpful to whether maybe not in this meeting, but in a future meeting, just to have some personal clarity on.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Chris, unless there are any additional clarifying questions on what I've shared so far.

Live Arts is another good example here on the mall.

Just like my first previous question, clarification around how like a third party like the media you're talking about.

for its borrowing or its debt at all.

So in that scenario, the UVA or the entity that you were lending to, they were carrying the risk and the loan.

It just didn't, it was silent.

Yeah.

So these are loans, not grants.

If somebody, if a nonprofit came to you, what's the turnaround time to try to, what's the strike time?

I've kind of glossed over the actual

So if that could be streamlined, something a little bit more general, a general description of what you intend to do would probably be best.

It's not intended to be lots of documents, but a basic kind of application.

It's written here anyway.

But I'd be happy to chat with you about that because this is, you know, I make my

So we've backed off that and kind of made it more into let's just do a straight line and see if that works.

Happy to share.

I am.

I don't know, that's what I thought of, but those are also fascinating perspectives.

Yep, exactly.

That would, yeah.

Part of the property owner buys the sunlight.

And I don't know if you guys agree with that, but.

I mean, Sunshine had his hand up and then Peppy

Okay, Peppy.

And I don't remember when we're going to get that information about the 3TP feasibility study.

Right, and so that's really focused more on the idea of creating a tax abatement tool that would support larger scale development by abating the taxes on the affordable units that would be created.

Okay, my fault.

It was not.

Kathleen?

different element versus a landing.

Having faith that we know how to do what we do.

Not ideal, but we're out.

So there's nothing that the city can do to hedge that risk.

So

Would the land bank be the appropriate authority in that moment in time as you conceive of the staff conception of it to go through that transaction or is it still not operating in that way?

Sorry about the homeless shelter.

Would the land bank be the functional entity instead of the city purchasing holiday drive if the land bank had been in place for a couple of years?

Housing authority can own land, the economic development can own land, but the city's going to buy.

I think that it's a real, sorry, the city can also, just to make sure I understand, the city can also purchase property.

But the money would come from the city to the land bank and then the land bank would own it.

What would your perspective be in that?

And if that urine surplus did not exist, I would guess that the city would not have made that purchase if it couldn't have been bondable, because the concern would have been the immediate fiscal capacity is not there to do it.

And then the question about is a land bank able to do bonding that doesn't impact the city would play in there if it was not cash available.

I think the power of it is you could make more affordable housing related purchases bond eligible than is currently the case right now.

Still have to pay the debt service, which would have to come from.

If a urine surplus didn't exist, there could be a $10-$15 million purchase of 150 units that would not happen if it could only be done with cash in that moment.

I mean I know that it's hard to get all the things done but I'm disappointed that we're here.

and my name.

Yeah, and one I also think is an important priority.

That was originally coming from OCS staff.

Staff at some level.

The city position is that, given that we're talking about tax dollars, the level of convert is that this entity exists as a city.

All of that is, you know, what the desire of the hack has been.

Then, you know, there has to be a conversation with Sam in the room or whomever that there has to be some commitment to fund, to pay a person to be able to do this if they're truly committed to one land bank and that it should be a part of the city.

I think we are hearing what you are saying.

Either way we go, it's going to need capital to be able to pay someone to be keeping their eyes on it and doing the work.

So far, they are only on this piece of paper, but I'm very much looking forward to.

That has been mine from day one.

I'm sorry I derailed you.

Is that the singular risk point or is there an additional risk point beyond that?

So I wasn't, I didn't understand the logic of that.

But if that is something you would like to pursue, that is another option here at this point.

Would it still have value in our eyes?

As soon as, provided we still have a CRA that means anything,

So I think that's still what we're trying to solve.

Let's give that time to germinate and get that right while we fund properly this thing that actually will start to deliver what we want, which is the ability to lock up land quickly.

I'm just thinking of what our affordable housing budget proposals are right now, and we're over our $10 million.

So if we want to have another $2 million to go into cable,

So then that's also resulting in a potential loss of affordable housing.

I would put forward this as a proposed alternative that might get us where we want to go eventually.

I know there's a million things.

And in some areas for a renter and making $15 an hour less might actually make their life worse.

I think I don't want to feel like I'm beating up any department in the city.

We've moved away from that.

At the end of the day, we are a small community, right?

But anyway, you get one more so we can move to the next.

which implies that you have a connection point between staff and the neighborhoods in a way that's more robust than it currently is.

It was formerly actually a responsibility of OCS and something that transferred over to OSA when OCS closed.

The neighbors, the community.

So different neighborhoods, your neighborhood?

I mean, because when things are happening, if FAR is not, and Legal Aid is not looking at what's getting built in their neighborhood, the residents don't know until they see it happening.

I mean, I think this is,

As someone new, that's an obstacle that you have to like overcome.

Careful that we articulate that we want to go back to that.

That is not happening.

I don't want my neighborhood association to

I'm talking about our low income community.

And to be honest, Freitfield is beginning to feel something.

Sure.

So I'm not sure, Joy, do you just want to go through?

where we can go through it, see what we have done and then set a thing for going forward for the calendar year 2026.

So I can send this around.

But I just, for me, for me being that I'm the chair

It's to look at what we have done and then we don't have what we have done and what still need to be done and maybe that's part of what can be.

It might not be entirely useless for the consultants to say

I want to spend a lot of our time.

So then we all right.

I have one.

Hi, I'm a really, really fast one.

I'm an organizer at FAR.

Thank you.

And I think that was floated.

and I think I might be here at Sunshine.

Yes, closer to the holiday.

No, I'm not.

We moved it to not be the GHC.

Okay, thank you.