City wrestles with affordable housing numbers

By Rachana Dixit

Published: October 10, 2008

Nailing down the number of affordable housing units in Charlottesville is nearly impossible, complicating the city’s efforts to expand its stock, officials said Friday.

“That’s been one of the issues all along, trying to figure out what the need really is,” said Jim Tolbert, director of Charlottesville’s Neighborhood Development Services.
City councilors on Thursday expressed a desire to know the total number of affordable units as they began discussing how to spend this year’s $1.4 million housing fund.
But officials say the number of affordable units built outside the city’s purview — such as ones constructed privately by developers or made affordable through rental vouchers — is ever-changing, making it almost impossible to have an exact count. Whether those units remain occupied or vacant adds another confusing component.
“We can tell you where all the public housing is, that’s real simple,” Tolbert said.

Last year the city spent its $2.1 million affordable housing fund on 152 units, and of those, 11 were new construction.
Recent economic concerns have added to the complexity of the issue. With an increasing number of people unable to afford their homes, Mayor Dave Norris said the city’s housing strategy needs to be comprehensive.
“We’re trying to meet the needs of both moderate-income families and lower-income families,” Norris said. “We don’t have to choose one or the other.”
That’s in contrast to a statement in an April memo from Tolbert to City Manager Gary O’Connell. Tolbert wrote that the focus of Charlottesville’s housing discussion had shifted from preserving the middle-class base to housing the city’s working poor and homeless.

In terms of determining the baseline of affordable housing in the city, U.S. Census data can be used to make projections, but Tolbert said they are guesses at best and are updated only once every 10 years.
To set goals for the city’s housing fund, councilors need to know how much housing previously was available to low-income renters but has since become market-rate, Councilor David Brown said.
The numbers, he said, “are hard to capture,” but anecdotes and observations over time have culminated in the realization that Charlottesville has a problem with affordable living.

Other research has backed the claim. A January 2007 State of Housing report from the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission — whose service area is Charlottesville and the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson — projected that by 2010, the region would need an additional 3,950 affordable rental units.
“It’s hard to exactly craft a goal, but you do the best you can,” Brown said. “That’s true in a lot of areas, where you can’t be exact.”