Livable Cville is an all-volunteer group that advocates for better housing, transportation, and land use policies in the Charlottesville area. Here’s what we’ve been up to in 2023. (🧵) One of our goals is to educate ourselves and the community and use that knowledge to advocate for a better Charlottesville.

In 2023 we sent 10 editions of our newsletter and added 400 subscribers, taking our total to almost 1000!

mailchi.mp/dc062fdf0666/w…

We sent a letter to the city advocating for elimination of parking minimums in Charlottesville’s zoning code. We believe this is a key step for meeting the city’s housing, climate, and equity goals.

(🧵) Link to letter here: dropbox.com/s/t5e6663s6lts…

We think eliminating parking minimums is one of the keys to meeting Charlottesville’s housing, climate, and equity goals. More on this from us coming very soon!

https://twitter.com/qzondervan/status/1572715956652343298

Everyone’s doing it!

https://twitter.com/louismirante/status/1573100623276683265

Livable Cville wrote a Letter to the Editor in the Daily Progress on the relationship between housing density and climate change. Please read, distribute, and act! [N.B. The Daily Progress did not mention that this Livable Cville wrote this letter. Their conventions don’t appear to allow for a group to sign a letter. They wanted 1-2 names, so @mtgillikin and @whatthecarp are listed, but many others helped write this.

Impressive work from @c3climate, pushing our community towards a more equitable, functional, and climate friendly transportation system. Thank you @CaeCL and @kruse_susan!

https://twitter.com/c3climate/status/1440324203874377737

Here are their 14 recommendations in brief. Read the full report for more. static1.squarespace.com/static/5a0c67f…

A question that keeps coming up is whether Charlottesville has a housing crisis.

We think the answer is yes & that it extends beyond very low income residents. Here is a chart from Albemarle County showing jobs that do not make a “housing wage,” such as teacher & electrician. What is a housing wage? It’s how much someone working full time needs to made to afford a 2 bedroom apartment. In Albemarle County in 2019, it was around $24-25 an hour, more than most people working in the county make.

Opportunity to advocate for affordable housing!!!

The RST rezoning is going before the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors this Wednesday evening, the 15th. If approved, it will allow 190 affordable homes for 30 years between 30-80% Area Median Income (average of 60% AMI). The development will have 332 homes total on 19.5 acres on 29 North near Forest Lakes and Hollymead. It includes 254 apartments, 190 of which will be affordable (via Low Income Housing Tax Credit funding). The remaining units will be market priced townhomes.

Do you have questions about housing in Charlottesville as we move through the @CvillePlans process? We put together a resource that we hope will help provide answers as we seek to fix our community’s housing crisis. Let us know what you think!

bit.ly/3mFhBiW We tried to answer 16 questions we’ve heard come up. In case reading a PDF isn’t for you, we will thread them out.

People who care about their views more than their neighbors sometimes argue that there's no housing affordability crisis, despite all available evidence. Let's talk about some of that evidence! Over 5000 households, or half of renters, are cost-burdened, meaning they spend >30% of their income on housing. Over 2700 households are extremely cost-burdened and spend >50% of their income on housing.

There's been a lot of talk about whether single-family zoning is good or bad for affordability. Without comment, here are some single-family homes that were built in Charlottesville in 2020. 915 Stonehenge Ave Ext, sold for $545,761.