Housing Advisory Committee Meeting   12/17/2025

I'm Nicole Scro, I'm the real estate professor.

And I'm Alan Puro with the City Manager's Office.

I'm Melvina Hill, Bar Intern.

Thank you.

Yes, and thanks for bearing with us today.

I know there's quite a list here and we have some special guests from NDS to provide some updates about what's going on in the department.

But I'll start just from the housing division and I'll focus today on the SISREP evaluation work plan that is in your materials that are in front of you.

This was also shared with city council on December 1st.

And I really want to share it with you all because you'll, as the half members, be involved in the portions of engagement when we are working on those portions.

So there will be more communication to come for you all in the new year as we kick that project off, but I did want to get that before you all but I won't

Take time to delve too deep into it, but we're just trying to holistically look at that program.

We know it really is one of the only programs we're having in the city that is 100% the funding is going towards families that are earning 30% or less of the area median income.

Yeah, it's the Charlottesville Supplemental Rental Assistance Program and it was designed to kind of be functioning similar to the Federal Housing Choice Voucher Program and it's a local housing voucher program that folks can apply for and then use on the market to find housing.

We know that the federal program could always use more funding and so we wanted to supplement it at the city level.

Of course, that still only goes so far, but it's a little bit further than just the federal dollars alone go.

Can I just add one thing?

So an update on the housing division program evaluation.

We have kicked that off.

We have a consultant on board to lead that evaluation for us.

So some of you may hear from him.

His name is Andy Friedman.

He's from Progressive Housing.

He was formerly a long time director of housing and community development in Virginia Beach, really built that program from the ground up and is now consulting and advising other localities on how to achieve their goals in this space.

So just wanted to give you an update on that.

They will be, he will be coming to

A half meeting to provide an update during the process.

But again, just be on the lookout.

Start building it, yeah.

Yeah.

And I'll note too while we're on that topic, the next button on Lori Jean Toulou from the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission will be coming in and potentially with

the folks that are working on the regional housing study to give the group an update.

They have done a lot of the preliminary data analysis and have presented some of their preliminary findings to the project management team, which I got to hear.

And I think you would all be really interested in that as well.

So as long as you're good with that for the January, I'll put her on the agenda for that.

Great.

Well, thank you, Madeline.

And again, an introduction.

I'm Alan Curran with the city manager's office, and I've been the lead

staff are on the tax abatement study and process that we kicked off back in April when we made a presentation to council about the concept of a tax abatement and city council asked staff to commission a study to look into the concept of a tax abatement but first of all do a market analysis so we can identify what are the primary impediments to

housing construction projects in the Charlottesville community to carefully quantify the costs of housing so that we can understand what cost impediments may exist, and then do an analysis of what incentive opportunities city government may have before it.

to potentially overcome some of those impediments on some levels.

And so that's what the tax abatement study has done.

We hired a consultant, 3TP, who you recall have addressed, he had Jeremy and Mike here, I think it's your

two meetings ago and so they have been conducting the study and we're to the point now where they have completed their final report draft and their feasibility model which I think we demonstrated for you a couple of meetings back.

We're kind of in the final let's edit let's make sure all the grammar lines up and we will be presenting

all of that to the Planning Commission on January 13th and between now and then making the

final report and the draft report and the draft model available for review.

So my understanding is we'll probably have that available soon for you to review.

Just missed the opportunity for today.

But just a couple of quick hits from what that report is gonna conclude, which most of which Jeremy was already here, may raise these points when we're last in front of you.

But again,

based on all the data.

And incidentally, he's been working very diligently to get a lot of information, real time information from current projects, ongoing projects, projects that have tried and not gotten off the ground.

And that includes both in the past couple of years and in our rearview mirror.

Talking to developers, I know he met with some of you, both of you individually,

with the goal of getting as accurate information as possible to look at costs in the areas of hard costs, financing costs, soft costs and then of course market rate rents and of course the affordable rents because all of that data is going to inform that model that will help us as a collective whole look at what the impacts

The policy implications of a tax abatement program will be.

But again, as a reminder, those major findings are that market conditions for housing construction are challenging right now, primarily because of a lot of high costs and construction materials.

and many others.

We also have high costs of financing.

All of those cost impediments are making it tough to get housing construction off the ground right now.

Their other finding is that the inclusionary zoning ADU requirement is indeed a material impact on

how much housing construction costs increase but while it's material it's not necessarily significant it is not in and of itself a barrier given all those other barriers that are much more significant.

They also then looked at tax abatement models across the country and essentially conclude that given the headwinds to housing construction, kind of the traditional base and increment formula for a tax abatement would probably not be particularly feasible without putting significant risks on city budget because of all of the changeable factors that are in the typical base increment.

that's impacted by land values, improvement values, tax rates, etc.

On the other hand, they talk about the conclusion, one of the findings discusses the potential viability of the rent, what we're calling the rent gap model of an abatement, and that's based upon what's going on in Baltimore, where essentially it's a much more

Elegant model in terms of very simple what the tax abatement formula would be as it documents what is the loss of revenue that a project would incur because of the 10% ADU requirement.

That's what we call a tax gap model because it tries to identify what the gap is between what they could have collected as revenue without the ADU requirement to what they have to do because of the ADU requirement.

That's the gap.

And then the model would consider the opportunity to fill some of that gap with a tax incentive.

um they talk about the findings are that that might be a viable model although it concludes that in and of itself it is not likely to be sufficient to uh reduce the impediments to construction at this point in time and so they also went on fortunately we wrote the scope broadly enough that they looked at other incentive opportunities

So the final version of the model that we hope to roll out soon will include additional additional other additional incentives that we could consider the council could consider coupling with a tax abatement.

But the bottom line is the model provides a great

financial illustration of all of these impediments and all of these potential incentives and helps give us an opportunity to have some conversations and counsel to have some good policy deliberations.

Yeah, just a quick question.

A moment ago you were referencing

that their conclusion towards the end was the tax abatement would be insufficient on its own.

Is that because of the other factors outside of our control, i.e.

interest rates and that sort of thing?

It's the former that it's given the current cost impediments, and I should correct that, it's that a tax abatement wouldn't put

Future budget revenue at risk would likely not be feasible enough to overcome because the requirements of the size of that incentive would be rather significant with the idea of not putting future budget revenue at risk.

But that's in the current context.

And that's an excellent question because one of the final findings and reminders is all of these conditions are going to change.

Nothing stays static in this world.

And so the value of the model is that staff will be able to update these cost inputs on a regular basis as financing costs are likely to come down.

We will be able to change those inputs as the facts on the ground merit so that we could evaluate what a tax abatement might do within the context of this world in six months, 12 months, a year, two years.

You know when you think you have it

Yeah, very soon.

I'm reading things as we go and actually I have the model up on my desktop because I wanted to make sure that we made some final formatting changes towards the end.

We wanted to be able to better display

what the actual impact of the abatements would be to tax revenue over year by year, over the 30-year term potentially, et cetera.

We wanted to make that a little bit more transparent on the front end.

So we just got back kind of those final enhancements to the model.

And I just want to make sure that they match what staff recommended and requested of the consultant.

So Mike,

Inquiry on this and from my recollection about my thinking about it and the earlier iterations of our conversations.

Have we taken a look at this and does this model address circumstances where an affordable unit is not required, for example, under a smaller configuration where it's not required to the density of the zoning and seeing what

Impact we can have for providing one there.

So let's say we've got a four unit on an RA and they want to do an affordable one.

Do we have a built in for something on that scale?

because it seems in my, and this is very much back in the envelope and anecdotal and the plural of anecdotes is not data, but I know that, but it seems to me that there might be an opportunity for a bigger bang for the buck on smaller ones where immediate cash flow

The answer is yes.

The model is adaptable to projects of all sizes.

Although the original scope of the project at Council's direction was to focus on those that are required, the model was adaptable.

In terms of the number of units, the number that would be affordable, and you can plug in, I'm going to build a 500 unit structure or I'm going to build a 4 unit structure.

So that can be done in the model.

To address another point that you had raised in there, one of the incentives

additional incentives that's built into there would be the idea if the city could roll out a bridge loan for the smaller investor who can't necessarily afford between conceiving it and leasing it out.

Exactly.

So we've built that in as an opportunity.

Again, it's giving us a lot of tool options so we can demonstrate what the impact would be on the feasibility of that.

And that is one of them.

Can I just jump in real quick on the timeline moving forward?

So the Planning Commission presentation is an information item only.

We're not asking

Thank you so much.

being studied right now.

And so if there are questions after you've had a chance to review the report, we can certainly talk about those again at your January meeting or even February meeting.

Great.

Thank you.

I probably can make that very clear.

I don't know.

I want to say I'm really excited about this.

It kind of threads the needle of

Staff concerns about budget and how providing a tax abatement would affect the budget, but development concerns about feasibility for projects under IZ, but also concerns about providing too much, you know,

Incentive and over-incentivizing.

So it's very targeted.

And I'm very curious what the other incentives are that supplement.

The report will come out.

But it's very exciting.

But one thing that we mentioned a bunch is the difference between the 80% and the 60% AMI for RA, RB, RC, so we can capture

The model does allow us to flex between the AMI levels.

So we could plug in what would be the impact on an abatement if we had anywhere from 30 to 80% AMI.

So that is built in.

I don't think we quite threaded the needle on the voucher addition, but

Again, this is a dynamic model that we can change and add to.

So that was Jeremy's primary build.

I think that's a good question to consider, like put in the hopper with like all the other potential areas of study we could consider over the course of the next year.

And again, I think once we've

Had a chance to review the report, you know, we can see what maybe are the greatest areas of interest for additional exploration.

Clearly, I think this report shows that there is no silver bullet, you know, that a lot of other tools are going to be needed.

I mean, you can see it in the model.

It was 15% and then our 20 earlier inclusionary zoning analysis used 12% as the cutoff.

Okay, because what I don't want is for us to evaluate the data based on feasibility for chasing the best rate of return for investors.

That's

And then the other thing is we had talked about including a layer for looking at what ROI in an opportunity zone would be.

No, we did not.

Right, and in particular, we had some discussions with, it was either Minneapolis, Columbus, Ohio, or both, who have done just that.

So we

Just to clarify for those of you who don't know, OZE Opportunity Zone designation is typically census tracts that are lower income and that are more like our more core neighborhood designated spaces.

Can you guys say which areas in Charlottesville?

It was the Fifeville census tract, mostly Belmont-ish.

That towards Belmont, down to Southwoods.

I mean, that's the county, but I believe 10th and Page was counted in there as well.

So historically, that's true.

And there was also some leniency in the OZ legislation previously that if you're doing something in an adjacent tract to an OZ tract, there is still opportunity for benefit too.

And the governor elect will be the one who will redesign

So the way that OZEE was set up was that there were some statutory OZEE census tracts based on census data, and then the governor had the opportunity to designate additional census tracts beyond the statutory.

So I was around and conferring with the governor's office at the time or staff and advocating, but it was a fairly opaque process.

Basically, city councils or mayors contributed their

And the statutory stuff based on census can give you some wonky answers in some tracks, for example, in the city, for example, because the lowest quote, income census tract, right next to the university, because yeah, they're not poverty stricken.

And I just want to thank Emily for the prompt.

You are around what does OZ benefit?

So OZ, Opportunity Zones are ways for investments in those districts to gain additional tax benefits for the investors.

So the ideal outcome is that that benefit has some impact on either on deeper affordability or affordable housing in some way.

In the in the first round of OZ, I think we generally saw that that was not the case, that it was just opened up a door for the investors to get more equity out of or more benefit out of the OZ investments.

There is a couple of studies that came out in the last year or so that highlighted that there, you know, I don't know how much I trust this, but that, you know, a couple hundred thousand units of housing were developed out of the OZ incentive, but that much was affordable housing.

It was just housing in general.

and it was unclear.

I mean, there's disputed analysis about whether that would have happened anyway in that environment and whether really just put more money in the pocketbooks of folks who are developing in those census tracts.

One of the things that I advocated for back when it was first happening in Virginia is that it's federal legislation, so there's nothing we can do locally to hamstring it.

But what we can do is set up guardrails around how we

put our own incentives on there to push the right kind of investment as much as possible.

I actually think that there is an opportunity at the federal level when it comes back around again, this time in the update to the law.

They actually provide additional step up in basis or additional tax benefits to targeted to rural area investment.

And so there's no reason there's now a blueprint for how you would do it for affordable investment, for example.

And so we have it at the national level.

It started running that up the flagpole with legislators on both sides of the aisle and hasn't been completely shut down yet.

Okay, well I think the good news about this study that's coming to a conclusion and the subsequent model is, I think when you get a chance to look at it soon, you'll see that it's actually a starting point, it's not an end point.

There's subsequent things we can do, whether it's vouchers or opportunity zones,

or what have you.

There's things we can do with it going forward.

So it's a starting point, not an end point.

And I think Nicole's point, I think you'll see that when you see it, remember what she was talking about in terms of all that you can see things from multiple different perspectives.

I think what will be the most valuable about this model is that everybody will be able to talk the same language at the end of looking at some of the scenarios.

As Nicole was saying, how much this might have impacted the budget, how much it might make a project more feasible.

Give us an opportunity to look at other incentive policy options, et cetera.

So now we spend a lot of time on this, but just briefly, can you just say, is the model in Excel?

Who will have access to it?

It's an Excel model that will be owned by NDS staff, which means that they will

I want to make sure that we create some processes for updating things because again it's dynamic it's not intended to be an endpoint and so Kelly's team will take possession of it as soon as it's final and how we go about it from there is yet to be determined.

Yeah, it could potentially.

I mean, and even if it was shit, it's like we would still have

Our Own Coffee.

Correct.

My name is Osei Akinloten.

The easiest way to remember is Osei KDC.

I currently serve as the Long Range Planning Manager for the Neighborhood Development Services Department.

What I really wanna do, because we are a new division, our inception was February of this year when I joined the team and we have expanded and I'll discuss that a bit.

But to introduce you to us, our purpose and some of the work that we're leading and how it connects to everything else we're going to discuss today.

All right, so I've introduced myself.

Additionally, we have Tori, who's in the back there if she waves her hand.

She is our long-range planner.

Additionally, we are fortunate enough to have Mike, who has been serving as our intern since this summer.

He has transitioned to not only serving long-range planning, but transportation planning.

He is with us for 10 hours a week, and five hours are dedicated to each division.

Sarah, who is not in the room, she serves as the historic preservation and long range planning intern.

She is with us 25 hours a week through May.

For her, she is primarily focused on historic preservation and dedicates about seven hours per week to long range planning.

So as you can see here, I've outlined the purpose of our division, which is ensuring

Today's decision aligns with the community's vision for the future.

And we'll get into that just a bit in the next couple slides.

And it is our mission to foster a planning culture rooted in justice, connection and resilience by connecting systems, partnerships and community voices to guide Charlottesville towards a future where everyone thrives.

So basically what that is, we set the policy.

We set the time policy and the direction for growth and preservation.

We translate your priorities into clear, implementable guidance and policy.

And we attempt to align the work across all city departments.

So our North Star in the Long Range Planning Division is the Just Communities Framework.

It builds upon what is already within the comprehensive plan, but sets out clear bounds at the local level.

So it focuses on anti-displacement, inclusive governance, and wealth building.

It centers fair access, affordability, climate readiness, and reparative and restorative approaches, acknowledges historical exclusion, including the lack of representation of black communities.

and it commits to shared benefits, reparative engagement, not just the identification of past harms but repairing those past harms and accountable outcomes.

So I want to highlight our 2022 for you.

So we have acquired a public engagement platform called Social Pinpoint.

It will be announced or made public next year.

Our platform name will be Connect Charlottesville.

Next is home stays as short-term rentals.

We collaboratively worked with zoning to gather feedback.

The survey early in the year, we just had a public engagement about two weeks ago unveiling what potential changes or updates we are proposing to that regulation.

Neighborhood Fact Sheets.

And again, I'm going to look to Mike because he really led that effort all summer.

We met with neighborhoods across the city for that development.

They are available online and includes proposed transportation projects, zoning information, historical information relative to neighborhoods.

And again, that is available on the Neighborhood Leaders site.

I will say we worked with the Neighborhood Leaders for

Quite a bit this year.

It was an absolute privilege.

Sad to have let that one go.

Also an environmental study.

So Tori is actually leading our environmental policies and regulations study for the city.

It's currently in its infancy phases.

There is a work session with city council on January 5th, if anyone is interested.

And finally, just to highlight another project is attending Page and Rose Hill plan.

You may have heard of this.

We have been working on this since its inception.

It's still in its early phases.

We're trying to move at the speed of trust.

Currently, it is one pause until we get further direction from Council and City Manager's Office.

Why is it paused?

We need further guidance, input from the community for how we should move forward with this planning process.

Oh, there's always engagement happening with the community.

My motto is to be in and with community.

So I like to be boots on the ground.

I will share next year.

We will have planning pop ups in 10th and Page and Fifeville.

So due to concerns about

items or projects in the neighborhood.

We had to take a more holistic look, which includes zoning, which Matt will get to, as well as housing, which I believe Madeline, do you have a few slides?

That was the only space that we could

at this point.

Oh, I did hear back from Care Center.

I have reached out to them months and months ago and just didn't hear back.

Yeah, there needs to be because everyone doesn't utilize the city of Palmer's house.

Mostly they are participants.

But if you're talking about the whole community, it has to be another space.

Since I'm responsible for the West Haven Community Center and it has changed somewhat, it has to be a scheduled time.

Absolutely.

And we will prioritize times that are better for the community as well.

Even if we're doing it at the legal aid space,

That's another space where it seems to be kind of neutral for all the communities to meet, the 10th and Page neighborhood, if they don't want to meet.

And there is a division between West Haven and 10th and Page.

I've noticed that there are some... West Haven seems to be, some 10th and Page folks seem to see that as separate.

And I think developers see it the same way.

That's why we have this pushback with LV Collective.

Absolutely.

And I really want to make that connection.

As you've seen before, I attend the 10th and Page Neighborhood Association meetings and I want to become connected to my statement.

So I look forward to connecting about it for sure.

So

I've already somewhat talked about long-range plans.

It is the guiding document for the city, our vision, overall policies.

And again, all of our departments are supposed to look to that for guidance, capital investments.

But again, we are a new division within the city.

And so again, we're in our infancy phases and we're trying to get our footing and trying to figure out what that looks like and how we integrate into the existing ecosystem here within the city.

So, um, examples of plans, of course, not only the comprehensive plan, but smaller plans that have already been developed, our climate action plan.

Um, we will be moving forward with a mobility plan.

Um, and of course the parks and rec master plan that was adopted this year.

So I just wanted to provide an example.

I don't know why this is still up here.

Sorry about that.

All right.

So the vision, this is the process.

So the vision is the master plan or parks master plan identified the need for a citywide vision for recreation facilities.

And I apologize for the comprehensive plan.

I'm identifying needs for the citywide vision for parks and recreation.

The policy, the parks and recreation master plan adopted this year outlines clear strategies for investment

and implementation.

An example of that is recommending targeted improvements to Northeast Neighborhood Park, including ADA access, lighting and new amenities.

So we're going to move into planning.

The smaller area plan redefines scope.

especially, not especially, but for those areas, small identified areas.

It applies to citywide goals to a smaller scale.

It should reflect the local contacts and lived experience.

You are the experts of your lived experience and it should be included within all we do in planning.

and that leads to investment, which is the CFP funding for Consul Park, supporting major upgrades, alignment with comprehensive plan and the master plan priorities, including new recreation facilities and accessibility improvements.

I just wanted to give you a small example of implementation and what work has to be done and how we fit as

Longridge planning into that process.

So you're well aware of this process.

I just wanted to highlight, especially as we're going into the conversation with our development review manager, of course, the affordable housing plan was adopted prior to the comprehensive plan.

It identified housing affordability as the most urgent challenge and that is outlined and projected within our comprehensive plan.

It helped or assisted identifying clear targets and needs first for this effort.

So from there,

A new development code was outlined.

The need was outlined in the comprehensive plan to align with the regulations and policies outlined within the comprehensive plan.

And I apologize I repeated that.

But it also provided a clear standard for enabling consistent outcomes.

And that was adopted in 2024.

So we took an obscure process to the actual development code.

Adopting the housing plan first is probably the best timeline or process for us because it focuses on the need, the urgent and important need within our community.

And so you will see that throughout the document and the focus to implement that and include that in everything we do here within the city.

So moving into zoning, that code, it took a few years to develop after a comprehensive plan.

But because of the housing that led that comprehensive planning process, it was included or prioritized also within that development code inclusive of the inclusionary zoning and other items.

So I don't have another slide.

It's just my contact information.

But I just wanted to share that long-range planning

guides policies, regulation, policy regulations.

Long-range planning also improves or hopefully improves trust and consistency.

That is what we're currently working towards.

I'm going to say it over and over and over again.

I move at the speed of trust.

There are obstacles.

There were acknowledgments like at the meeting that I had at 10th and Page.

Well, you were there at 10th and Page.

And it resonates with us.

We hear you.

And that is how we

prioritize and move forward within our work plans, our processes.

Yeah, it's supposed to be intent into action, and that is the purpose of our division.

So this is my contact information.

I look forward to collaborating with all of you as we move forward.

That is the goal of long range planning.

Thank you for bringing this into development.

I would love to make absolutely sure that you're connected with our resident planners.

who meets just about every Thursday still in the process of planning the redevelopment of West Haven.

And one of the things that they talked about, the residents talk about, one of their goals and objectives

is to do because West Haven was the baby that was birthed out of Vinegar Hill, that there is a historic content there that needs to be still told, needs to be visualized and that a lot of people

even though it may have been dirt ground it was their homes and a lot of people lost that and so there's some reparation that they're always talking about but one of the things they wanted to build and

is to have a memory wall, is to be able to do a memory wall just basically showing what was invented here, how it was torn down, how it sat for 15 years.

And then when the new thing, when the West Haven was built, to show, because there's lots and lots and lots of pictures of just actually showing how West Haven was dug out.

how they just dug it out.

I mean, it's unbelievable that they went so far down.

And then also about 30 years later, the water issue that is running down on the buildings and causing mold and stuff like that.

And so they've been struggling with that piece of it.

And then that was the pushback.

That was one of the big pushback with LV Collective because their goal was

How do we connect back to West Haven?

And then when they did their footprint, showing some of what they would like to see connected back, when they use our footprint to draw their design, it actually now will block the visual of whatever a memory wall

would look like.

And so that became personal to the residents.

And so this is why we push back because even if the wall go up, and even if they have done something to show the history, the wall is the only thing that's going to be seen, it will not be people.

And so I would love for you to

Connect with the Redevelopment Committee.

John Sales is not here, and Brandon is leading that charge.

But I personally would love to see you working with them to see how they can come up with something.

Even if we lose the battle of that forsaken thing going up, how do you still do a memory wall or something historic memory of showing

I want to upload something you said about the culture that exists there.

And we are not just focused on the physical infrastructure.

We look to the social infrastructure that exists within your communities as well and that's very important.

Also, place making.

People always reference place making, which to certain people does not go well.

It's a negative word or a negative process.

We focus on place keeping as well, that historic value, that historic texture that exists within neighborhoods.

And I agree, it needs to be prioritized.

It needs to be recognized.

And I look forward to connecting to see how we can collaborate on making something happen.

Good afternoon.

So I'm Matt Offley.

I'm the development planning manager at NDS.

And this is a good segue.

Thank you, Jose.

I can kind of talk about our division in NDS.

So as Jose was talking about with long-range planning, the front end, engagement with the community and policy making.

Development review is not a policy side.

We are

a review and compliance side.

So we are the side of the house that reviews site plans, development plans, and utilizes the development code.

And so

As the development code adopted in 2023, this was a new, as OSE alluded to, this was a long process.

This is a very different code than our previous code, our O3 code, which is more form-based and builds off the comprehensive plan.

But as with any code, as the planners on the development

from the youth side have been engaging with it.

We've gone into areas where it's not working and we have divided those into three tiers, being tier one, which is our kind of small, dramatic errors, small changes, tier two, which are areas we've run into that are choke points, but are not.

The policy and the intent is not changing, but there's a better way to approach it.

And then Tier 3, which a lot of people in our community are very interested in.

Those are the policy changes.

Those are the issues we're running into as a community.

So as I explained with the Tier 1, these are very small things, small changes.

I wanted to highlight kind of these updated dates.

So updating the development code for Tier 1 and Tier 2 is going to be a yearly process that we'll be doing every year.

This batch that we're taking forward, we're going to Planning Commission on January 13th with about 70 Tier 1 changes and about 23 Tier 2 changes.

I'll be speaking to that too throughout this.

But again, Tier 1 are very minor edits, things you just run into with any document, like Scrivener errors, those type of changes that we've caught.

Tier 2, or excuse me, here's some examples of some Tier 1, not very exciting.

Again, Scrivener errors, mostly.

and then also catching any changes related to development that came out of state regulations.

The two biggest ones that we were hit with this year was our review times were shortened by quite a bit at the state level and the role of Planning Commission was scaled back for development review.

So these two bills that were passed, we needed to incorporate into our code and our processes.

Tier 2 amendments, again, address more oversight and ambiguous areas of the code.

But again, nothing that impacts the policy or the intent.

One of the good things about our development code is every section has an intent section, what it is trying to do.

And so these changes fall in line with those.

So they're more about model.

Can I ask a question?

Can you go back?

Sure.

I'm struggling with the tiers.

because right now, part of what both Seven and a Half Street and 10th and Page is dealing with is about the things that we missed when we supported the change in the code about how these humongous buildings

That is about a policy change and engaging the community and really hearing from the community, creating a planning scope.

to handle it.

The tier one and tier two which are moving forward are just about changes.

They're not.

This is more informative where the public engagement is at the public hearing side of it.

So why wouldn't community engagement be in tier one?

If they're getting ready to build a building, that's where you start with the community.

Yeah, so the tier one are just scribbling errors where there were typos in the code.

So that's why we have like we have like 70 of them and then

Can I actually offer one suggestion for the labeling?

Like tier one is low impact changes.

Tier two is medium impact changes.

I'll give the example I'll use.

I'll give, I give the, it's a car.

I gave it.

And I use this with Planning Commission too.

So the code is a car.

Tier one is washing the car.

Tier two is changing the oil.

Tier three is the light came on.

So some of the tier two examples that

that are coming up is a good example is that this is a very form-based code that has gone away from unit type.

Our old code was all about different types of dwellings, single-family homes, duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, multifamily.

Our current code does not use that language.

It just talks about unit count.

And as part of that, one of the unintended consequences was

and some of the low density residential, you can have duplexes because you have a four foot side setback and that's preventing a type of housing we want.

And so we were proposing some language that would allow duplexes so you're allowed to go to the property line.

But that's the kind of the level of these tier two, these are minor changes that are not policy changes.

And then tier three are focused on policy changes, focused on

significant amendments that impact the long term goals of the plan.

And they need to have a planning process because they need to have that robust community engagement to really, this really ties into the long range planning.

And this will tie into Director Brown's

Next presentation, which gets into the work plan and some of the planning projects that are going on to incorporate some of these things in the tier three.

And then just some examples of tier three.

This is, of course, not all of them.

I know we've heard from the community, from developers, from our builders on some of these tier three.

But, you know, some of the examples is

What is a building?

Just a minute, please.

I don't want to be annoying, Matt.

Can I ask you if the sub-lots in CX and RX has been

So we have, it probably won't go through with this batch, but that we get, we're doing a yearly, we'll be doing this yearly where we're rolling a lot from this first year.

This has taken more time than we would like.

We're hoping the next 2026, we're hoping it won't be as many as, you know, 70 plus tier ones and 20 some tier twos.

And we'll actually fine tune the process.

But what we want to do is, this is really about maintaining the code.

The Tier 3 issues are about finding community goals and community policies.

This is the big planning side.

The Tier 1 and Tier 2 are about just making sure the code still works as we want it to work and we're maintaining it yearly.

So another example kind of the tier three is the RNA districts.

You know, these are in the code that they have need to be explored more.

Are we, you know, doing the right things with our RNA districts?

To Nicole's question, where can it be done this year?

Where it have to be done?

Because we're going with the packets really already, just because of the logistics.

So we're going on January 13th for the public hearing.

So that information has to be done about a month in advance to make sure we're doing that.

We had to send the advertisement out as to advertise the newspaper twice.

Thanks, Joy.

It's OK. Nicole, I can get better information for you.

And once we we have all the information in the working document, which will be part of the packet.

I actually really think that the process.

I think the process has actually been really good.

You've done a great job stewarding it.

I think the tier one, tier two, tier three makes a ton of sense.

As it pertains to the development codes, I'm going to beat the dead worst I beat all the time when we talk about this, that I don't actually see.

I've investigated in 15 different parcels now.

It's not the development code primarily that's responsible for chilling development and stopping the implementation or

Fire Suppression and Engineering.

Until those three things get worked out, we can perfect the code and we're not gonna build anything.

I think we're definitely moving in that direction.

We have definitely seen under the 2003 code, we definitely saw a lot of barriers with zoning.

And I think a lot of those barriers have been removed with the current code.

And we're seeing where the where those barriers are now that

Just invite, I'm sorry, probably doing this on behalf of the Chair, but I'd like to have to be a resource on that.

Here we have people who finance projects, who develop projects, who design projects, who build projects.

And so we would love to be part of that process.

And in fact, I think it's one of the things that we're prioritizing later in the meeting as on a work plan.

So put us in, Coach.

We'd love to help.

Sorry, Joy.

That's fine.

I don't know, are we using the microphone?

Is it necessary?

I'll just talk.

So I am going to provide you with a brief update.

I think this is our last staff update.

Share with you an overview of our scope of work for a review of our informal housing dwelling unit manual, our ADU manual, and the specific focus that the study is going to have on our in lieu fee expectations and student housing specifically.

So as you all know, we are required to review the manual on an annual basis.

And so what we decided to focus on in this first update were the in lieu fees specifically and expectations for student housing.

Really, because we are seeing student housing development in the community interest in that and a number of questions have been raised about

whether the expectations for contributions for affordable housing are correct, are right sized for student housing and fair relative to expectations for other sorts of housing.

Also questions about where policies for student housing apply geographically, whether or not that geography is appropriate.

So you can go, oh, I can advance.

So the focus as I just said will really be on

In-lieu-fee payments, student housing, and also expectations for bonus height.

And we will conduct the study, ultimately have some recommendations that we'll bring forward.

As I just mentioned, sorry, I had just gone through some of this, but the criteria for student housing affordability expectations will be looked at, the geography, whether the current focus for student housing requirements is appropriate, if that should be changed, whether the requirements for student housing should be different than requirements for known student housing, and whether we should have different expectations for the application of bonus height.

The process will start with the development of some guiding principles to inform recommendations.

We are looking at peer jurisdictions, policies and strategies.

And we're also looking at different methods for how an in-lieu fee quota should be calculated.

We will be asking questions of stakeholders.

as we conduct this study, what really should define a successful outcome?

What would mean success?

Should a policy prioritize onsite units or should it prioritize fee payments or is a balance needed?

And how should the production of student housing really be treated in our community?

What are truly our goals?

What are our concerns for student housing?

So we are,

Conducting engagement with commissions.

We will be sharing an overview of this with council in the new year.

We will be evaluating study findings.

We are working with the same consultant who did the tax base study.

So we have a really great baseline of expertise.

3TP, yes, to help inform this work.

You know, they already have an in depth understanding of the financial feasibility of different types of development.

They're taking a closer look at student housing.

We'll be developing some policy options and hoping to have recommendations in the spring of this year.

But ultimately, we're hoping that these recommendations provide a better framework for

So you all are doing this now.

We will be doing it and if and when you do, how are you going to be reaching out to communities to talk about it?

And we do have some students who are working with FAR

So we would be happy to meet with your interns.

Looking forward to doing engagement.

We've started the work, the kind of the internal analysis of financial feasibility and things like that.

We have this, you are our first stop in an engagement effort.

So

Because they have a student group, Friends of FAR, who is actually working on that, working on some of that stuff.

That would be great.

Just to get feedback so we better understand how the students are feeling, if they're feeling the same way we're feeling about these students, housing being built in our neighborhood.

So I would appreciate it if- Absolutely.

and click to it.

So to circle back to that question from earlier, so the 10th and Page and Rose Hill small area plans paused in reaction to the two large student housing projects that are being proposed.

Yeah, so the tax abatement study is wrapping up

This review of the manual recommendations for student housing, you know, that will be concluded in the spring.

In the meantime, we do expect that there's going to be some discussions with council about questions that have been raised about these large scale projects.

Those questions are making it difficult for us to move forward with the long range planning process because I think there's questions about what should really be looked at within the scope of that small area plan.

So we're hoping that through some engagement with council, we can get some clarity on what the scope of the small area planning process should be.

Having said that, and as Osei alluded to, moving at the speed of trust, it's really important for us to be receiving

Knowing that the community is really wanting to move forward.

There's no sense in us doing a planning process, you know, kind of on our own.

And I think just to add kind of a city council perspective on it, I think, you know, one of the challenges

These projects are the main focus of people in the neighborhoods, not just because are one of the main focus that's engaging people, not just because of the two individual projects, but symptomatic of underlying zoning districts.

And, you know, to have plans to create a small area plan where you're saying, and we're not going to do anything about the issue everyone is most concerned about.

For city council, I feel like makes it

Just challenging and then connected to that, I would guess a big priority for many people is going to be a desire for community oriented development.

And that has, if that's going to be achieved, the plan would need to coincide with zoning changes that make that feasible.

Community believes like 501 Cherry is a good type of project that we should try to get more of that literally only happened because it required rezoning with the discretionary decision point.

So those are just political decisions city council will have to come to.

I mean, they both like are symbiotic.

I thought it might be a good time to get community feedback to inform how,

And around the student housing, it's just interesting to hear how there was some perception from other folks of

how the unit, they're using the school numbers to kind of say, oh, people are moving back in the neighborhood and students are moving out, but that is not so.

And so that's why I want to make sure that the community is involved because there is a whole lot of myth that is not so true.

When you talk to people who live in the neighborhood,

or from people who live in the neighborhood who knows.

You know, like there's this one myth that, you know, Venable, people are moving in the neighborhood, new people are moving in the neighborhood because the numbers at Venable went up.

But what happened was all the kids in West Haven who used to go to Bellarmine are now going to Venable.

And so, yeah, and then, you know, there's some other things too that we know who is renting, you know, affordable housing or buying some of these housing and renting truly affordable housing to folks and it's not the stuff that get newly peeled.

But anyway, so I would just, it's not, yeah, I would just love to see you working.

from the community perspective just from, and even Rose Hill, no one is paying attention to Rose Hill, but Rose Hill Drive has a pocket of low income communities there that, you know, right now nobody's paying attention to it, but I am, and some of us is, because we know sooner or later, most of those houses,

Just to add to that, I think, you know, some of the Weldon Cooper Center's past work could potentially be of some use.

About a decade ago, they did that study on trying to estimate school enrollment after the standard and flats went up, and they updated that.

literally like a year ago and presented that finding at the Regional Housing Partnership and said they are no longer seeing families move in to neighborhoods.

And they are explicit words where we do not expect additional student apartments to result in families with children moving into neighborhoods.

That decade old study is no longer Welton Cooper's analysis.

And

Our original inclusionary zoning analysis, if there's any way to get with some of the people who developed that, it could be of value because one of their findings was that in geographic areas, they estimated that our inclusionary zoning was too low and that it could actually be higher, particularly for student housing, given it was somewhat profitable housing type.

And I think it'll be relevant that

They estimated anything above six stories in our market is student housing.

That was explicitly in words on the paper.

So when we think six stories and above, we should really think student housing and think about what that means.

And the final thing is

I don't know how we do it, but I feel like we really, really need to try to connect with UVA to get a sense of what their plans for enrollment growth are, because I really don't think this is just like a talking point.

It is totally reasonable that UVA's response to a glut of new private student housing is to just increase enrollment either at an undergraduate or graduate level.

And we have no, at least I don't have any sense of what their long term plans for enrollment growth are.

Well, I appreciate the feedback.

We will.

I wanted to let you know that we were taking these questions seriously.

That is not in our scope.

It's an interesting question.

I made a stab at it.

I actually need more data to really speak confidently, but

I think that piece would be really valuable about how to regulate student housing.

As you were speaking, Mike, it occurred to me that even like through all the presentations and discussions that have happened so far today, and I was trying to map it out all in my mind about what study goes where and how it informs the next piece and the plan that moves forward.

Like I do think there would be helpful to have sort of a visualized diagram that shows

The intentional building of our studies and our work to lead to whatever outcomes we're trying to pursue.

Because I know like we are here for two hours now, we're going to come back next month and we'll have forgotten all those dates.

because we're not in it every day.

So having some reference point for us to understand how those studies are, we know they're intentional, we know they're purposeful, but how they relate to long range planning, how they relate to the outcomes we're trying to get at the zoning side, at the other parts, the triangle that Dan was referring to,

We went through this process, you know, going back in time to like the 2018 timeframe where the first real or the first meaningful affordable housing assessment needs study came about.

A planning commission had begun their comp plan process.

The HAC was proposing to do the affordable housing plan and it was all of a jumble for a while until it took us probably a year to work through what the planning commission was doing, what we were doing, what the city council wanted to see before we started to get a plan that was clear and contiguous.

That's good feedback.

That's something we can think about, figure out how to communicate that.

We are in the process of developing some webpage updates that should help a little bit understand the individual items a little more, but I think showing how they sequence with one another would be helpful.

And to go back to the earlier one, or earlier presentation, this would be just a decision city council would need to make, but I wonder if kind of a political tier on the changes would be warranted because some of the bigger changes will require study, but some of them I feel like don't require any study or analysis.

It's just does city council make the decision or not?

You're welcome.

Second.

Second.

Any discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Yeah, I was looking at this right before you pulled it up, Madeline.

And the three things, we went through a two-round process for trying to take a whole range of ideas and try to figure out what we were going to focus on first.

And there were two clear winners with a close third.

But essentially, you know, what Dan was referring to around the triangle between the zoning code and then related regulations was one of the top focus areas.

Budget Advocacy, and IAT is the second.

And Kelly, I know you're getting food at the moment, but I'm going to just loop in to the city council meeting that happens on Monday, and how there was a reference at one point to the work that I think, Michael, you brought it up, or around the IAT, the investment intervention analysis.

I can never remember.

Intervention analysis tool, thanks, Dan.

that we had done years ago and it sort of has sat and languished since.

You sound like you were interested in and so one of the things I was going to suggest as an outcome of this meeting is that we establish a small working group and then to meet with Kelly and whoever you think is appropriate on your team just to do an intro to it to see what was there and then we can see whether what we think would be helpful moving forward.

And then

The third one was place-based incentives.

Well, this gets at the small area plan and around the potential for designated revenue for implementing a small area plan priorities through a TIF structure or any other sort of structure where it allows for

community directed spending and prioritization in those communities.

So a lot of the things already talk about, like the things that are already in play.

I had not heard that the small area plan process had sort of stymied for a minute because of the, you know, what you were bringing up for.

Yeah.

But I think just to reinforce, I'll say this from my perspective, but I think this is true for the hack as well, that that is one of the priorities that we wanted to see happen.

Don't forget Sunshine.

Well, not in round two.

I think that's really, really important and could have been a solution to the two projects moving forward right now.

Having very aggressive and very pointed and directed land acquisition by a collective group

It would be great while we have an opening of the zoning code in wealthy neighborhoods so that they can build in those wealthy neighborhoods but protect.

We're trying.

My last thought was interesting in Sam's comments during the work session around that is that he seemed, I didn't, he wasn't totally explicit, but he seemed to imply that he was less supportive of like a strike fund, for example, more supportive of other forms of intervention, but he didn't really go into details on what those might be.

Yeah, I mean, I was a little disappointed with how defensive SAM was.

I think the Planning Commission meeting was good.

I think that there were a lot of issues identified in the Planning Commission meeting.

And then it kind of seemed like at council meetings, it was really defensive because of those identified issues.

And that was a little disappointing.

To say that there's a process in place for analyzing affordable housing because we have an RFI or whatever,

A little ridiculous.

I think we have an opportunity.

To increase transparency, I've had some more standards or criteria that we're all in agreement on.

To develop criteria for evaluating applications, making sure that there's a public, a timeframe for public review.

I think that's something that staff wants to work on this year.

So perhaps there's different opinions on how much a process is in place today, but I hope we can all agree that there's an opportunity for improvement moving forward.

And do you guys see that as being the IAT?

I think it's a tool, potentially a tool that can help inform that process.

I don't know if it is the process.

So what

By way of sort of general observation, I think that, and I spoke to this at the planning commission meeting last time, that part of OSA's job fits into this box, but this is, these processes need to be within a strategic framework that everybody understands and can refer to.

and we really don't have sort of strategic level thinking on a lot of these things.

And part of that is because there are people who have that as a piece of their job, but not a big enough piece of their job and the rest of their job takes priority over that.

I mean,

You know, when you're when you're busy trying to bail out the boat, you don't have any bandwidth to figure out how to plug the hole if you're busy.

You know, I mean, it's the thing that's immediately in front of you that you're dealing with.

And so I was very relieved to see that we are hiring a citywide chief strategy officer, because I think that can really inform some of these larger decision making processes and how they all interact with each other.

But that is a very important role.

You know, I have been on the HAC for 12 years.

I've been involved in the city's housing efforts.

And one of the constant refrains from staff from commissions, from council, from planning commission, is that a lot of this is really, in spite of itself, really siloed and not integrated well.

And I think part of that is the larger questions that we need to start asking about, you know, larger scale processes, long term thinking, how it all fits together.

And there needs to be somebody who does just that.

So I'm really excited.

Hopefully we've got some good candidates for that position that they can start putting a bit of stick about and print, you know, and

impressing that, because otherwise, to Sunshine's earlier point about let's see how all this interacts, and that's on a very small scale, but that's easy fix.

Yeah, I can graphically show you this, but to make sure that we've got this in the broader outline.

So I'm not sure I've got a point to this other than I really hope we get a strategy officer on board and they are loud and aggressive about developing some strategic tools, because I think that's one thing that we bump into a lot here.

Particularly if we're hiring, you know, consultants have that capacity, but unfortunately it's not a static situation.

They can say, here's a way to think about this.

So let me all add to that, and I'm channeling OSA, is that, yes, having a chief strategy officer, developing a strategic plan that can guide us in the short term,

benchmarks for measuring success helps inform prioritization, yes.

But our comprehensive plan and the supporting elements of it should really be what I think is guiding how we do our work.

And if we don't feel like we have enough guidance in our comprehensive plan, or maybe some of the guidance and elements of our comprehensive plan is a little outdated, you know, maybe that's where some other focus should be.

And I also think that there's just a lot we can do as a program moving forward to help clarify, you know, how things move to get pieces moved together, what areas we're focusing on in any given year.

I'm looking forward to developing a work plan for the housing program for the next two years that you all will be a part of helping us to create.

Yeah, well, the land bank.

Sorry, Nicole.

I mean, it is, right?

In the first round.

So, can I ask a question?

Sure.

Of Kelly, thinking about

And maybe it's a follow-up.

So it's the ordinance, ordinance and related regulations, the triangle that Dan was talking about.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I mean, we are actively engaged in number one, and that's already on our work plan.

That will continue to be on our work plan, refining the ordinance, finding other ways to facilitate the development we wanna see.

So that will stay on the top of our list.

Small area planning, a huge fan of it.

I think we should be doing more of it.

And I think it's a way of,

Prioritizing our investment in the community.

So that'll be at the top of the list.

But then we have so many other things that we're working on.

We have a SISRAP evaluation.

We are trying to develop recommendations for tax abatement and student housing.

Hearing you say that, it's just like a huge amount of work and a huge amount of new initiatives.

I know our affordable housing plan called for increasing staff levels for implementation of it.

So the housing program evaluation will have recommendations in it for what a program, how a program should be staffed that's trying to accomplish all the things we're trying to accomplish.

So I think that will be a very important report for informing recommendations for this year and for probably many years into the future.

The manager's operating budget, I'm not sure when it comes out, what he will include in there in terms of his recommendations, but definitely he is aware of the workload and the need to make sure that our team is supported.

He spoke to that on Monday night.

I think that's probably all I should say in this forum.

Does that help?

Can I go back to where you started and maybe try to get a little more specific because what I heard Matt talk about was and I heard you say prioritization like it's already underway around the ordinance side.

Yeah, I mean, he wants to bring together a working group that can start to think through those challenges and develop some ideas for how to troubleshoot.

The challenge is that a lot of things are going to be outside of the control of our department.

very honestly, potentially even outside the control of the city if you're talking about building code issues.

So while I think we really want to try to dedicate some time and mental energy to thinking through what else is going to be needed to see our vision become a reality, we will need to try to manage expectations about what it is that the city can accomplish

I think it is a lot.

Like utilities are a big part of what, yeah.

I was gonna say, can they come talk to us?

There are some constraints that we really, I think, need to do a deeper dive on to better understand.

I laugh when I say that to myself, because I had a boss that used to always say that.

More to come.

And it was very frustrating.

Because it's not very satisfying.

That sounded like that, but I didn't hear any clear plans for it.

I think he wants to get some more of his thoughts down on paper before he makes up.

I'm sure he's

Is that something we can ask them to bump up?

And I think we know how much of a priority it is.

I think you didn't talk about bringing up the overall NDS work plan at some point too in the future just to show between the broad scope of everything that is going on in that

Okay, well, I'm on the point of working with groups.

Can I ask a quick question?

Yeah.

Because I wanted to ask Matt.

Do you all keep track of in the pre-op meetings what the issues are?

Just so back to the IAT piece, the working group there.

And one of the things we did in the working days of the IAT is we structured it so that no more than two of the commissioners, so we didn't have to have it be a formal public meeting.

We just didn't do working group related stuff before it came back to the committee as a whole.

I would recommend, at least in terms of a meeting with you and whoever else you designate,

that that is the right format just to catch you up and see what you think of it and see what their next steps might be.

Uh-huh.

Nicole, you and... That's too many.

You can only have two unless you call formal.

Well, you can still come to the meeting.

No, you can't come to the meeting.

But, you know, I will point out that Rory has retired from the Planning Commission.

So maybe two of us plus Rory.

Well, he also engaged with it.

Oh, I know.

All right.

OK.

Anything else?

Oh, never mind.

You did it a week ago.

Sorry.

Do we have any?

There's no one on.

Hi everyone, I'm Wendy.

I just wanted to make a public comment to say that I really want this body to take a stand on this issue of OB Collective on West Main Street and The Mark on 7th Street.

I think that I've been to every HEC meeting since September and Ms. Joy has raised the issue at every single meeting and asked for this body to do something about it and prioritize it and it really doesn't get much traction.

But as the housing advisory committee, I think it's really important that this body in specific takes a stand and makes a recommendation to city council or whatever it is that you all can do to put pressure on city council.

and the Planning Commission to change the zoning code.

I think that you should do that because these buildings are going to be catastrophic for core black neighborhoods.

They're going to accelerate gentrification and dispossession.

I know that y'all are all approaching housing from different hats.

Some of y'all are developers with habitat or livable, but I think that amid all the noise of supply and demand or how displacement actually happens, I think that what this actually just comes down to is like keeping black people in their homes.

And I think that if you will have the opportunity, like if you ask yourself, if you have the opportunity to intervene and do something about Vinegar Hill or Gospel Hill at the time, like what do you have?

I second that wholeheartedly.

And Wendy, I really want to say like, yo, I really commend you because you got a shout out last night at that bar meeting.

I know this part, this is not the public comment for y'all, but I truly, truly second what she's saying.

And I think y'all should stand on what she's saying because y'all are part of this community.

You know what I'm saying?

And your word really do hold some weight.

Everybody at that table, y'all hold weight and y'all can make a change.

Y'all can hold

Y'all can hold that area down and y'all can hold what's left of urban areas.

Y'all can hold us down.

You know what I'm saying?

Y'all can really do that.

But Wendy, yo, I'm telling you, like, you tough.

You hear me?

I'm talking about like, you really got the gift of God because you'd be in every room and when you walk in, it's like, they gonna know you coming with that, with that work.

You hear me?

So I commend you because, bro, you show up, man.

You show out every single time.

You don't hit no, you don't miss.

And I truly appreciate it.

Like, I truly appreciate the information you gave last night about that being a slave plantation.

That joint was just like, boom, like you dropped the, you know what I'm saying?

He got on his computer instantly, like, hold on, is it?

And then he stopped typing.

I was like, yeah, it is.

You hear me?

So you come with them, you come with loads.

Like, you come with loads of information and I really, really appreciate you, for real.

Like, you are one of those people who gonna be in history, in those books, with Black people, you know what I mean?

In those neighborhoods, it'd be like, yo, Wendy Gallio, like, she was that girl, like, you're gonna be in those books the same way some of those people were that helped save Edgar Hill, you know what I'm saying?

Anyway, anything else?

Okay, can I have a motion to our next meeting is?

Well, do we want to talk about that?

Uh-huh.

Do we want to talk about that?

Oh, oh yes, I'm sorry, Nicole.

Do y'all want to comment on what you said?

Do we want to set a meeting to talk about it?

I mean, it doesn't have a...

What I will say is it does, I mean, it does matter to me being that I'm the chair, that I hear y'all view about what we're saying.

to me from based on what I'm hearing and double checking with my mentors who is getting me to understand this whole zoning thing.

It was a miss from all of us.

We did not realize how this was going to impact.

It was a miss.

And so a lot of times when we decide things, there are things we don't foresee.

But now we're seeing it and it needs to be addressed because it is going to be an impact.

Well, I just want to say I truly appreciate you being able to

Put on the front street, you know what I mean?

That you guys had a little bit of, you know what I mean?

Like y'all messed up a little bit.

What was that lady's name that was up there as a volunteer?

She had the black and white on, she had white hair and she had admitted- Tom Lewis.

Is that her name?

She was one of the bar members.

Yeah.

She had admitted completely all the brown, like it's all of our fault.

You know what I mean?

So I really, I like to hear when you can admit that it is your fault or you played a part in it being your fault.

You know what I'm saying?

That you didn't.

You're not keeping that part away from the public.

Everybody makes mistakes, you know what I'm saying?

And we didn't know that it was going to trickle down like dominoes like that, but now we do know.

If it's at all possible for you all to meet before your regularly scheduled meeting or to delegate to whoever's willing to be on a committee that would make a statement on HACS behalf because I think that the City Council work session is two days before your next regular meeting.

You're talking about the mark.

So this is the one after the

After the application is submitted, then it goes to the bar to decide whether they want to curb the height.

So their discretion is on height.

Yes.

Two stories.

Yeah, so the seven and a half street one last night got denied.

But LV collected when it went to the bar meeting a couple of months ago,

or maybe three months ago, they were told to come back to the community and work with the community.

They came back one time and just said, this is what we're going to do.

And they didn't do or not.

They didn't outreach or do anything, because Zena Howard reached out to us and said, hey, haven't you heard from them?

And we said, no.

We set up a meeting.

It was at Legal Aid.

We spent two and a half hours.

and we had people like John Sales and different people in the room talking to them and they still were not hearing us and this is what they're going to do.

But we haven't had or seen any movement.

They haven't, we've been keeping up with the BAR, nothing has happened and you know, I don't think that they have

They don't have to come to you all.

They don't have to come to city council.

Right, they are entitled to this amount of development.

And I'm saying that's a miss, we miss because the community doesn't have a say so in it until the BAR meeting.

That is the decision that was made.

And the other relevant timeline is City Council will have a work session, I believe our second

meeting in January to discuss possible changes related to student housing generally, whether that could be zoning changes, special exception permits, additional BAR purview.

Staff will be presenting on the scope of work for our study for student housing and the scope of what those recommendations could do to

address how those two recommendations could impact future student housing projects.

But we have to be just really mindful of the fact that these applications are already submitted projects and the fact that they have entitlement already under the code.

If we, and I don't know if I agree with this, honestly, I'd stay up at night thinking about this, but there are changes.

What?

I second that, and obviously that is a very controversial decision, but it is a decision that City Council can make.

So it's going to be relevant to think about whether city council does or doesn't change anything.

And I think it will also be useful to have city council provide a clear perspective on their opinion on it.

And it's a very controversial issue.

I think, obviously, HAC is not going to

Joy, can I ask you some clarification in terms of what you would like to see come in front of the HAC?

So I see like four different, four different subdivisions of the question.

One is the application package that's currently in front of the BAR.

Two is the place of the BAR, the role in the zoning code, because one could argue that the BAR being part of it at this point is kind of out of order in a way.

But that's a big question for probably a tier three type of thing.

Changes to the zoning code, so a rewrite of the zoning code to potentially like scale back the intensity of parcels.

And then student housing, there are questions about student housing.

And so I just want some clarity about what it is that you would like this body to weigh in on the application process on the particular application package, or the policies that are kind of

I think how I would answer that question is how it is, all of it is impacting our neighborhoods.

It's all of it, right?

It's the height.

Wait a minute, honey.

One is the height.

Two, first thing is that that's something we did not foresee.

I, we, the community, didn't foresee.

Maybe y'all foresee this, but we didn't.

But now that we're seeing that your monster building like that in a neighborhood does impact, that's something that needs to be changed.

And then the other thing was that there were no community involvement in any of it, none whatsoever.

So for me, it's all of what you just asked.

It's about that community, right?

I just, the way I think about it is, there needs to be, and I think everyone here would agree, there needs to be the city acting to write historic

on just things that the city did in the past related to land use and minority communities, right?

Like the city should act and do something reparative.

So then does that mean that we have lower height?

Does that mean we have a land bank or a land acquisition entity?

Does that mean zoning changes need to happen, right?

Like all the things Dan asked.

And it is like, I kind of am deferential.

What does it look like to have a repair happen?

I think it starts with one, undoing what you didn't foresee, and two, you listen to the community, you plan with the community, and you deal with the community.

And none of that happened.

from either one of them.

None of that happened.

And I will go back to the Dairy Central.

Dairy Central was a prime example that this shouldn't even happen again, because Dairy Central came in, have a couple of meetings, and they promised the community something, and then they did not do it.

They did the opposite, which now is

causing a lot of issues in the community as far as traffic and all kinds of stuff.

So I just think that we need to pay attention to what's left of our communities.

And so that's where I'm coming from.

I mean, the standard, we basically said, we don't like the standard.

The standard is overshadowing.

And I think, I can't remember her name.

She used to be my annoying person at the planning commission.

I can't remember.

Jenny.

Jenny.

Yes.

She said this is a, the standard is a mistake, right?

And here it is, we're going to go even four story higher than what is there at the standard.

Again, you all don't see how it impacts the residents who live in 828, 822 and 814.

That's standard.

I do.

They do.

You're not living it.

You're not seeing it.

And then there was supposed to have been an entrance to West Main, and all they gave them was just a pathway.

And that's going to be closed off if that building go up.

So again, that's why our residents don't trust any process.

Even with us doing redevelopment right now, they're showing up, but they're saying they're gonna do what they want to do anyway.

So come on.

I don't know what else I can say to you all, is that this is something that if we win, if we lose this battle, it's gonna, wherever, it's gonna be any pockets of low-income community.

And I would just add, I think, to everything you said, I agree with that,

would add, I think, clarification on just the basic issue is buy-write seven to 11 stories of student housing adjacent to 10th and Page, Fifeville, Rose Hill.

Is that good or bad?

Because there are people who think it's good and they want more of it to happen.

And that's, I don't agree with that, but that's a legitimate perspective.

Well, I would say,

No, I'm just done.

But I think that it's kind of important and see where that takes the community conversation.

And we had another mistake.

I mean, the call to Mobile Home Park was bought after it was rezoned to RX3, which allows five stories and unlimited density on that parcel.

But anyway, I don't want to hold up anyway, because it's like 210.

So for me, it's a resounding yes.

I was just trying to figure out what it is.

So there's like different it's doing things.

I'm hearing displacement.

I'm hearing an urgency about a particular application that's in front.

And so the hack speaking about that is different.

It's related, but it's different than the hack speaking about height in zones adjacent to ours.

We're going to be useless talk if we're just talking about any kind of goals.

And so we can talk about what what is it about this particular piece projects that makes it so urgent and from that conversation maybe pour out

What particular action steps council can or should do, if anything?

Yeah, I think there are very specific things you all could say.

Click send a letter to council on Monday that I'm happy to forward to Madeline and she can circulate it.

But what you could talk about is changing the core neighborhood corridor

Overlay, I think it is an overlay, to decrease height substantially from what it is, because right now it can be, it can be close to what they're asking for.

And they're not in a coordinated overlay right now.

And that was what the oversight was, was not to have done that.

But

You could do that so it's not spot zoning.

Identify all of the core neighborhood corridors in the city that would be relevant and decrease the height in all of them.

Can you clarify, and Kelly just left, but

in terms of what is actually on the docket for the 20th for city council relative to this.

I'm just trying to see if it, at the special meeting, I hear the call for a special meeting.

I just want to see if there's actually agency that would be meaningful.

It's just, it's really as broad as kind of what we're talking about now.

They've had like two separate discussions about the discussion.

And so there's no action expectations out of that meeting necessarily.

Staff is mostly looking for knowing where city council stands on a lot of items, yeah.

But I think it'll be as broad as you said and when Lloyd and myself requested this,

The explicit, at that time, the goal was to have a work session to discuss student housing as a whole related to underlying zoning districts.

We want to change that.

Yeah, I mean, I think it lives, like I hear 100% the concerns, the lived experience, the lives to be impacted.

What I know is being balanced on the different side of the equation,

is the risk of down zoning on sites that then gives purchase for other entities or other advocacies that aren't really rooted in the community in the same way to pursue down zoning for their own purposes, to undermine the rezoning purpose that we came up with in the first place.

And so the big question is just like how to do this in a way that is responsive to the community request without opening the door and causing further unanticipated harm.

Like, you know, we're like, we're trying to fix a miss, but we don't want to do something that then opens up the door to another miss.

Yeah, just like the zoning code.

If fear is a concern, I don't think we should have that stop us from trying to get to the most refined

Zoning Weekend.

Things change, but the political center in Charlottesville is changed so much.

Well, in many ways it hasn't changed.

But the downzoning pressure in the rich neighborhoods, I just don't see that happening.

The constituency has ran candidates and didn't just lose, lost terribly.

And I think part of this sadness and limitations of zoning too is

The market on its own is naturally seeing the least change in the wealthiest neighborhoods.

Let me, might I suggest,

that we're talking about a special meeting where we're not exactly sure what the topic, where the pointy end of the sphere on the topic is, but we know what the topic is, right?

And also that this is a good segue into that relationship between the neighborhood, the core neighborhood zoning, which and its relationship to this.

And maybe this is a larger conversation about

I think one of the most

It could be applications more.

Wendy and you keep bringing it up.

Yes.

I'm not surprised.

All right.