The public housing puzzle

Cassandra Brock still wants the open spaces, the expansive trees. She has lived at multiple Charlottesville public housing sites since 1970 and may have to move again, but Brock hopes that when she returns, she will be able to set up at the end of Hardy Drive with some things unchanged.

“I like my spot,” she said.

Brock currently lives in Westhaven, the oldest and largest of the city’s public housing sites. The Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority is now working with consultants to map out the redevelopment of the city’s 376 public housing units, many of which are cramped and deteriorating.

City leaders are getting a clearer idea, based on data and interviews, of which sites would be best suited for demolition and which could be rehabilitated in the next eight to 10 years. Yet the road ahead still leaves much to be finalized. Consultants say that the Residents’ Bill of Rights, a document crafted by local agencies and endorsed by the city to protect the sites’ tenants, may create additional challenges and hinder the entire project; and the housing authority’s status with the Department of Housing and Urban Development has not yet changed, meaning it is not yet eligible for grants.

Wallace Roberts & Todd — which also completed a master plan for the Downtown Mall in 2005 — is leading the public housing master planning process. After a week of visiting the city’s sites and conducting interviews, it released its first draft findings last month with an analysis of the properties and next steps.

“What they keep saying to us … is that everything is on the table,” said Paul Vaughan, the outreach coordinator for the Public Housing Association of Residents.

Regardless of what happens to each site, several felt it necessary to protect public housing residents from past poor decision-making in the city and by other housing authorities.

“There’s a bedrock commitment here that nobody is going to become homeless,” Mayor Dave Norris said. Norris is the chairman of the housing authority’s board of commissioners.

Charlottesville’s PHAR, along with the help of the Legal Aid Justice Center, spearheaded the effort to create the resident bill. It lists eight “guiding principles” to follow as the housing upgrades are being planned and executed, such as temporarily relocating residents for no more than 12 months and having a one-for-one replacement of all affected units.

“There’s still a lot of rumors out there about what’s going to happen,” said Audrey Oliver, a 14-year resident of South First Street and a member of PHAR’s advisory board.

According to minutes from a May 14 meeting, David Gilmore, who is working with Wallace Roberts & Todd, had previously commented that such a bill of rights can hinder redevelopment. Gilmore did not return calls for comment.

Alex Morris, the project manager with Wallace Roberts & Todd, said figuring out how to temporarily relocate residents based on the bill of rights’ standards would be difficult because the document limits any move to no more than 12 months. Morris said the one-for-one unit replacements will be “not so much a challenge in the final plan, but as we phase the plan over numerous years.”

Morris said there has never been a redevelopment plan he’s worked on where every family wants to return to public housing.

“It may not really be needed in the implementation,” he said.

Those who have supported the bill of rights acknowledged that they knew the document would make things harder. Vaughan and others said they encouraged the consultants to think more creatively when developing plans because the bill of rights would not be dropped.

Amy Kilroy, the housing authority’s redevelopment director, said, “We certainly impress it on them whenever possible,” of officials’ commitment to the document.

Oliver added, “We worked hard on that, we didn’t work on it for them to overlook it.”

Based on initial findings, South First Street, Westhaven, Sixth Street and Michie Drive would be good candidates for redevelopment, meaning the sites would be completely torn down and built up again.

“You can’t rehabilitate these apartments, you have to tear them down,” said Harold Folley, a Westhaven resident, of his neighborhood.

Though he said he was excited about redevelopment, if Westhaven were demolished, he said, “To me, it’s destroying history.”

Rehabilitation with infill — where buildings would be updated and made denser — are viable options also for South First Street, Sixth Street, Michie Drive, Madison Avenue and Riverside. Crescent Hall, according to the draft, would be better suited for rehabilitation.

“There are things that might change,” Kilroy said.

Actual scenarios will be presented in September and recommendations will be made by the end of the year.

Kilroy said the final master plan, in addition to recommendations for each site, would likely include financial models and an implementation plan to help lay out the project’s construction phases and suggestions for resident relocation. The key to funding is getting the housing authority to not be listed as “troubled” by the federal government because of failed physical site inspections.

This year might show a reversal.

Housing authority Executive Director Randy Bickers said that by all indications, the city’s public housing passed its most recent round of inspections. But it has yet to receive the official word.

“We were just not eligible because we were troubled,” Bickers said, referring to the grant funding. Of the entire redevelopment process, like the sites’ tenants, he said it is both exciting and scary as they take on such a huge endeavor.

“But this is the future for us,” Bickers said.