Residents note requests in bill of rights

The first-ever Residents’ Bill of Rights has been crafted by the Public Housing Association of Residents to spell out its requests as the city prepares a massive overhaul of many of its 11 aging housing sites managed by the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

Its creators say the document is a big step for public housing resident involvement and it will help to ensure that residents are not permanently displaced as redevelopment occurs — a fear that Joy Johnson, vice chairman of PHAR’s board and a resident of Westhaven, says still exists.

“We have to make sure those people don’t get lost in the system,” said Johnson, who has lived at Westhaven since 1983, roughly 16 years after it was built. “It’s saying, you need to consider all these things before you start tearing the buildings down.”

Several ideas have been floating around about the sites’ redevelopment, including having mixed-income, mixed-use complexes. But regardless of the sites’ final look, the bill, which was created with the help of PHAR’s Richmond counterpart, has eight “guiding principles” for city officials to follow as the upgrades are being planned and executed.

They include that the replacement units will be reserved for very low- and extremely low-income households, there will be a one-for-one replacement of all affected units and each displaced household will have the right to choose to return to the redeveloped site or to relocate permanently to another replacement unit.

“Here’s a safeguard of what we need,” Johnson said.

While the federal Uniform Act provides some protection — the 1970 law requires the government to provide assistance to those displaced as a result of property acquisition — Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris said there’s no guarantee about how many new units would be constructed in the place of the old ones.

“It doesn’t mean they have to rebuild the same number of units,” Norris said. But he added, “Because of the bill of rights, rest assured they’re not going to end up homeless because of redevelopment.”

Emily Dreyfus, the resident association’s interim coordinator, said the process to craft the bill began in March.

The idea came from a group of public housing residents, who decided that it would be a good vehicle to get local officials to commit to their desired outcome of the housing revamp. There are 376 public housing units in the city.

“It’s been a long process,” Dreyfus said.

Dreyfus said there were a handful of people who directly contributed to the bill, such as those on PHAR’s 12-member board, but many more indirectly influenced the bill’s progress by expressing worries about their homes and neighborhoods.

“We were hearing concern and interest from many more,” she said. “Not everyone is going to come to a City Council meeting and testify.”

The bill was endorsed by the housing authority’s Board of Commissioners last month and by the City Council shortly afterward.

Staunch advocates for improved public housing say the bill demonstrates the stark difference between what’s going on now in Charlottesville versus what happened in the 1960s — when Vinegar Hill, a predominately black neighborhood on the border of downtown, was razed in the name of urban renewal and never redeveloped as promised.

“We wanted to cover all the situations we’ve heard that have caused crises in other communities,” Dreyfus said.

City Councilor Holly Edwards said that 50 years ago the ones who were most affected by redevelopment decisions were not at the table when they were being made.

“People really were not able to be in the decision-making room,” Edwards said. But, she said, several PHAR members attending the City Council’s last December meeting is a sign of how things have changed.

Johnson said she is sure that the current City Council would not let a second Vinegar Hill happen on its watch. But whether the document will be upheld in the future by the next round of elected officials is not something she can predict.

“Ten years from now, I don’t know what they’ll say,” Johnson said. “But hopefully this will be a document that will help to guide them.”