For years, residents of Midway Manor struggled with the living conditions in their building. They dealt with small nuisances like dark hallways and unreliable HVAC systems, and serious safety hazards like days-long elevator outages that left many of the building’s residents — all of whom are low-income seniors and people with disabilities — unable to access their first-floor mailboxes containing bills, checks, and vital medications.
But residents are now hopeful those days are in the past. The building has undergone a comprehensive renovation, one that touched practically every surface inside and out, Steven Kahn, vice president of acquisitions and redevelopment for Standard Communities, the California-based real estate company that owns Midway Manor, told Charlottesville Tomorrow in December.
“It makes me feel better because it’s so bright in here,” longtime resident Mary Carey told Charlottesville Tomorrow last October, after most of the renovations had wrapped up.
“It’s nice,” she said, a smile spreading across her face. “As far as this renovation is concerned — and I am not trying to get brownie points — I think Standard did a wonderful job.”
Other residents agree. One described the renovations the afternoon of March 10 while he was sitting outside the building’s lobby in his rollator (a walker with wheels and a built-in seat), enjoying some fresh air with three of his neighbors.
“Very, very nice,” he said, adding that he particularly appreciates the new microwave and the stove, as well as the bathroom renovation.
His neighbors had similarly positive things to say.
“I’ve been here since September, and I have no complaints about mine,” said another resident, sliding his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker.
For a while, Midway Manor residents didn’t have very good things to say about the building. There were significant problems they thought might never be fixed, at least not while they were living there.
Midway Manor is a four-story 98-unit apartment building located on South Street in downtown Charlottesville. It’s home to about 100 seniors and people with disabilities, many of whom use walkers, rollators, wheelchairs and other mobility aids to get around.
The building is privately owned but publicly subsidized, and most of the building’s residents receive Social Security and/or disability benefits as their sole income. Residents pay 30% of their income toward rent, and the government covers the rest.
When Charlottesville Tomorrow first started reporting on issues at Midway Manor in spring 2021, the apartment building was still owned by its original owner, a company called Midway Manor Associates. In 1981, the company signed a contract with the federal government promising to keep rents affordable for the next 40 years — until fall 2021. After that, the company could choose to renew the contract, or not.
So, when things started to go awry right before the contract expired, residents panicked. They worried that Midway Manor Associates was intentionally running down the building so that it would become unlivable, residents would not want to renew their leases, and the company would be able to either sell the building for massive profit or renovate it and rent it at market rate. If that happened, residents said, they would have few other options for independent living in Charlottesville.
Throughout the spring of 2021, Midway Manor residents, their relatives and nonprofit workers who assist residents in various ways told several harrowing stories about how the conditions in the building — especially the prolonged elevator outages — were affecting residents’ health and wellbeing.
Carey was left without access to important medication during one of the elevator outages. She is unable to use the stairs, so when both elevators were out, she couldn’t get down to the mail room to retrieve a box of refrigerated medication, she told Charlottesville Tomorrow at the time. Carey did not say what the medication was for, but she said it was important to her health. One of her neighbors, who was 90 years old at the time, noticed the box and brought it up the stairs to Carey.
Volunteers from Loaves & Fishes Food Pantry had to use the stairs to deliver 24 30-pound boxes of produce and meat to residents who could not make it down to the lobby.
Another resident described arriving home from a surgery at the University of Virginia hospital and discovering both elevators were broken. In order to get to her apartment, she crawled up the first flight of stairs on her knees while pulling her suitcase behind her, she told Charlottesville Tomorrow. Once she got her suitcase up the stairs, she had to go back down once again to get her rollator.
The elevators weren’t the only problem. Other residents reported wobbly cabinets, leaky and non-functioning heating and cooling units, and more.
Midway Manor Associates ultimately ended up renewing that affordability contract for two years, until October 2023, but residents’ relief was short-lived: Standard Communities bought the building for $16.5 million in January 2022.
Standard Communities is a California-based company that has a history of buying and renovating low-income and market-rate housing communities across the country. When Standard bought Midway Manor, it made big promises to residents about the building’s future — a comprehensive renovation and continued affordability.
When a year passed with no renovations, residents started to doubt the company’s intentions, particularly as Standard dodged both their questions and Charlottesville Tomorrow’s for more than a year.
The reason for the delay, Charlottesville Tomorrow found out, was that Standard had trouble securing the money it needed for the renovation.
Standard renewed the affordability contract, meaning rents at Midway Manor will remain affordable until at least Dec. 31, 2049, according to documents Virginia Housing shared with Charlottesville Tomorrow.
The renovations finally began in July 2023, and overall, residents are pleased with how it’s all turned out.
One resident speaking by phone last fall said the building is “so bright, it feels like walking into heaven.” She did not want to give her name for privacy reasons.
“I don’t hear anything anymore!” said Mary Carey, adding to her list of what she likes about the renovations. “These walls are soundproof.”
Kahn rattled off a long list of repairs during a Zoom call with Charlottesville Tomorrow in December 2024.
“It goes beyond what you see with your eyes,” Kahn said about the renovation of Midway Manor. “The stuffing is there too.”
The work included new electric, new plumbing, new HVAC systems, a new roof with solar panels that helps offset the building’s electricity use and repairs to the building’s facade.
Each apartment is almost entirely new inside, said Kahn: New windows, doors, floors, paint, light fixtures, electrical and USB outlets, window blinds and base moldings. New kitchen cabinets, countertops and appliances. New bathroom tubs, faucets and showerheads, vanities and other fixtures. The bedrooms all have emergency pull cords connected to a 24/7 dispatch service.
Every apartment got a new HVAC unit and thermostat. This is particularly exciting to Carey, who is delighted that she can easily control the temperature in her apartment — and that the new unit doesn’t leak all over the living room rug like the old one did.
Additionally, a handful of the apartments are fully accessible for residents who use wheelchairs and other mobility aids, said Kahn. A few more are designed specifically for residents with hearing and visual impairments.
Residents’ apartments were renovated one at a time, with each resident moving to an empty apartment in the building while theirs was being worked on.
Carey said the work on her unit took a few weeks, and a staff person helped coordinate the packing and moving. It all went smoothly, she said as she looked around her brand new living room in October 2024.
Common areas received some much-needed attention during the renovation, too. The windowless hallways got a fresh coat of bright paint and new emergency lighting — yet another thing that Carey was relieved to see.
The stairwell, lobby and mail room were redone. The community meeting room where residents have socialized and held holiday parties has new furniture, including chess and checkers tables. There’s a fitness room, too, with exercise equipment specifically for seniors.
Midway Manor residents like to sit outside when the weather is nice, and they wanted more access to the back patio and yard behind the building — something many didn’t have previously, as the only way to get to it was by broken brick staircase. Standard replaced the uneven patio and the brick retaining walls, and built an ADA-approved path to a new gazebo. There are some raised garden beds out there, too.
Though the renovation process was mostly smooth, it wasn’t without hiccups, Kahn said. When contractors were working on the downstairs common areas, they clipped a wire that affected the new keyless entry system at the front door, locking residents out of the building. When that happened, every single resident’s keyless entry device would have to be reprogrammed, and staff stayed until 9 or 10 p.m. at night to make sure residents coming home could get into the building and get their device reprogrammed. This happened a few times.
The renovation cost $7.35 million total, which broke down to about $75,000 per unit.
Funding for the project came from a variety of sources, said Kahn, including bond financing, tax credits, and Standard itself.
In 2022, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority okayed up to $23 million in bonds to help Standard buy the property, commit it to long-term affordable housing, and complete an extensive renovation. In doing so, CRHA essentially told potential bond investors that it trusted Standard would pay them back for their investment. (Read more about the bond financing and the tax credits that Standard used in this story from August 2023.)
“You can think of the bonds as the mortgage for the property,” Kahn wrote in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow on March 25, 2025. “There are approximately $19 million in bonds outstanding for Midway Manor. The developer — Standard Communities — and an investor provided the additional funds needed to complete the transformation of the property.”
After almost two years, the renovations are nearly done.
As of March 26, the building was still pending final inspection from Virginia Housing, a quasi-governmental organization established by the Virginia General Assembly in 1972 that works to ensure quality affordable housing for communities across the state. Standard worked with Virginia Housing on the tax credit program it used to partly fund the renovation.
There are a few outstanding items that still need to be addressed, but none of them are affecting the safety of the building or residents’ quality of life, Kyla Goldsmith-Ray, a spokesperson for Virginia Housing, told Charlottesville Tomorrow.
“This rehab has really modernized the property and has been a positive outcome for all residents,” Goldsmith-Ray added.
That was the goal, said Kahn.
“Residents can age in place as part of the community that they’ve been so instrumental in building,” he said.
Some additional community-focused things could be coming to the building, too, said Kahn. Standard is considering hiring a staff member to focus on service coordination, making sure that residents who could benefit from services like Meals on Wheels or wellness check-ins can get them.
“Those things exist, and sometimes they’re hard to access,” said Kahn. “We now have this tremendously accessible, beautiful, renovated, inviting space. Let’s make use of that. Let’s make sure the community can come here. What’s better than at-home servicing?”
While residents are generally satisfied with the renovations, some have a short list of things Standard still needs to fix: The intercom system still doesn’t work for every apartment, they said, so some residents have to come all the way downstairs to let their guests in. It’s not a problem for everyone, but it’s difficult for folks with mobility challenges.
“As with any building system, there can be issues that require repair at times,” Kahn wrote in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow on March 19. “It is up and running.”
Residents say there are still some issues with the elevators, too, and that compounds the problem with the intercom for residents who can’t use the stairs. Four residents who recently spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow said the elevators still break occasionally. The problem is usually fixed quickly, and both haven’t been out at the same time in a while, but residents worry it’s only a matter of time before both will be out, especially given the history.
Standard paid to have major repairs done on the elevators in 2023, before the other renovations officially started, Kahn said, and the company is aware of the ongoing issues.
“As with any system, occasional issues may arise, but we have elevator professionals engaged to ensure repairs, when required, are made as quickly as possible,” he wrote.
