Housing alliance establishes ambitious goal

After years of renting apartments in Charlottesville, Rebecca Morton — a city employee and mother of two — decided in the early 1990s to try and buy her first home.

Morton enrolled in a Piedmont Housing Alliance program that allowed her to rent an apartment while placing a portion of her rent in escrow. After two years, she had improved her credit and saved enough money to purchase a 1,226-square-foot home in Charlottesville’s Venable neighborhood.

“I can still remember [closing on the house],” Morton said. “It was exciting. I had to take a few minutes, step back and say, ‘This is my home.’”

In the past 25 years, the nonprofit Piedmont Housing Alliance has helped 494 clients — including Morton — become homeowners in the Charlottesville region. The organization marked its quarter-century anniversary Wednesday at a party at the Key Recreation Center off the Downtown Mall.

At the gala, PHA Executive Director Stu Armstrong laid out an ambitious affordable housing goal for the Charlottesville-area community to reach in the next 25 years.

Armstrong challenged the community to help 1,500 first-time homebuyers obtain affordable houses, build or preserve at least 1,000 affordable housing units and secure some $250 million in financing for affordable housing.

“In my mind, this is achievable,” Armstrong said. “There’s a greater consciousness in our community that we need housing that supports our service sector, our police officers who protect us, our nurses. We have to offer a spectrum of affordable housing. And I believe we have the community’s will behind us.”

PHA has stepped up its efforts in the past 12 years, assisting the vast majority of its first-time homebuyers in that time, Armstrong said. In just the last year, PHA has assisted 53 homebuyers. Seven years ago, the organization made homebuyers a top focus and set a goal of helping 500 people buy a home by the end of 2008.

“We have the momentum to achieve these goals,” Armstrong said.

Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris, an advocate of affordable housing, said PHA’s goals are ambitious but realistic.

“It won’t solve our affordable housing problem, but it’s a big step forward,” Norris said. “You have to aim high if you want real change to happen.”

Over the next 25 years, Norris said, Charlottesville and its surrounding counties will need to keep working to address the region’s dearth of affordable housing.

“We are far from solving this problem,” he said. “There’s still a lot of people in our community who are struggling and are having to make some tough choices because of the lack of affordable housing.”