It was standing room only in a small Tonsler Park Recreation Center space Thursday night, where city residents and city officials gathered for the monthly Fifeville Neighborhood Association meeting.
Though the room was balmy compared to the sub-freezing temperatures outside, most of the people in attendance kept their winter coats and hats on as they waited for the final agenda item: A conversation with Charlottesville City Manager Sam Sanders about a possible low-barrier homeless shelter on Cherry Avenue.
Fifeville Neighborhood Association president Carmelita Wood invited Sanders to attend after December’s emotional meeting about the shelter, in which some residents raised safety concerns and others railed against the city for considering opening a shelter in their neighborhood without talking to them first.
“I do wish I were here under different circumstances, based on the things I’ve been hearing,” Sanders began. He’d heard the comments, the concerns, and he was ready to address them.
“The best way to do it is to talk through it,” he said.
And for the next hour or so, that’s what they did.
Throughout the meeting, Sanders repeated again and again that no decision had been made about opening a permanent, overnight low-barrier homeless shelter in the city, or where to put one.
Sanders had said that publicly before, most recently in the Dec. 16 City Council meeting. But this time, he gave the public reasons why that decision has not been made.
Why Cherry Avenue?
Sanders proposed a multi-part plan to help the area’s unhoused community members to the City Council in October 2024. The Council asked him to come up with such a plan, he said, because the city needs a permanent overnight low-barrier shelter. The impetus for it, he said, was the tent community that popped up in Market Street Park in fall 2023.
“It felt like our city was in a vulnerable situation that could have gone negative,” Sanders told the Fifeville group about that time. “People were fighting about whether or not people should be allowed to camp in a park where people had never been allowed to camp.” He worried it would turn violent, and that bothered him “deeply,” he said.
Over and over, homelessness service providers have told the Council that the community needs a permanent, overnight low-barrier shelter.
The Salvation Army already operates what is known as a “high-barrier” shelter at 207 Ridge St., meaning that people must abstain from drugs and alcohol in order to stay there. People who are on the sex offenders’ registry also cannot stay at that shelter. There are transitional apartments for families with children on the site.
(City Council recently voted to give $3 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds, which is taxpayer money, for The Salvation Army to expand that shelter, called the Center of Hope.)
Folks who are not eligible for high-barrier shelters for reasons including drug and alcohol use, as well as sex offenses and other criminal convictions, can often stay in low-barrier ones.
People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry (PACEM) runs an overnight low-barrier shelter — but only in the colder months, usually November through March. Churches and other organizations volunteer their rec rooms for the shelter for a week or two at a time, which means the shelter is constantly changing locations.
A permanent, overnight low-barrier shelter was part of the proposal Sanders’ presented to the Council, and he named 604 Cherry Ave. — the site of The Salvation Army thrift store — as a potential location for it.
Why Cherry Avenue? Sanders said that right now, it is the only viable option the City has. He said he’d looked at numerous spots throughout the city, even called owners of empty buildings, and none worked out. That is, until The Salvation Army Charlottesville Corps Officer Major Mark Van Meter offered the agency’s thrift store on Cherry Avenue.
“Can the shelter go anywhere else in the City of Charlottesville? Absolutely. But nobody else has shown me where. And I have put out a request,” Sanders said, emphasizing the word “have.” “This is not as easy to solve as anyone thinks it is.”
But, while the Cherry Avenue site might be the most viable option right now, it might not work out at all, Sanders admitted Thursday.
The Salvation Army can’t be the solution
The Salvation Army can’t open another shelter in Charlottesville without permission from its head office, The Salvation Army USA Southern Territory based in North Atlanta, Georgia. It has not yet asked for that permission, Van Meter said during the meeting.
Another complicating factor is that so far, no other agency has stepped up to run the proposed low-barrier shelter, said Sanders. When Van Meter proposed the idea to Sanders, he proposed the shelter be run by a coalition of homelessness service providers, but said that if no one stepped up, The Salvation Army would do it.
“When I presented in December, I was kind of behind a wall,” Van Meter told the Fifeville group Thursday. “I thought there would be more partners coming along.”
But none have.
If The Salvation Army runs the shelter, the shelter would have to function by Salvation Army rules, Van Meter explained. That means that in order to stay in the shelter, guests would need to have a government-issued form of identification and undergo a background check; they would have to pass a breathalyzer and possibly a drug test. Anyone on the sex offenders’ registry would not be able to stay in the shelter.
“How is that a low-barrier shelter?” asked Matthew Gillikin, a Fifeville resident and co-chair of Livable Cville, a housing and transportation advocacy group.
“There’s a difference between low-barrier and no barrier,” said Van Meter.
Looking at Sanders, Gillikin said, “he just advertised something that is not the same as what you’re advertising.”
“I’m concerned about that, too,” said Sanders. “It could be the trigger that says we can’t go forward.”
A woman who did not give her name before speaking, asked Sanders who else he’d asked.
Sanders wouldn’t name names, because it’s their right to say no, he said. “But I will say, everybody.”
With a worried look on her face, the woman said that if The Salvation Army ends up running both permanent overnight shelters, then there would be people who can’t get into the shelter and would have nowhere to go.
“That’s why I would prefer someone else operate the Cherry Avenue shelter,” Sanders said.
Neighbors debate the shelter
Some of the questions raised in December’s meeting still lingered.
Why not put the shelter somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t in a neighborhood, or in anybody’s backyard, but on the edge of town, a resident who raised the question in December, asked Sanders on Thursday.
“What about Gold’s Gym, the old K Mart?”
“It’s not that easy,” said Sanders. “I appreciate the sentiment. I have tried. I have done as much research on possibilities as I could.”
Sanders admitted that he wished the City could buy a hotel and replicate what PACEM did with its emergency, low-barrier shelter at Premier Circle from spring 2021 to summer 2023. In that time, the organization helped nearly 100 people, many of whom had been homeless for years, off the streets and into housing. PACEM eliminated many of the common barriers to staying in a shelter by relaxing rules about things like drug and alcohol use and background checks. The group eliminated time limits on guests’ stays and offered intensive, onsite case management.
Fifeville resident Ben Eppard posed a question he asked at December’s meeting and at the Dec. 16 City Council meeting: Can The Salvation Army swap the two shelter locations? Could the agency relocate its high-barrier shelter to Cherry Avenue and turn its existing shelter on Ridge into a low-barrier one? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to retrofit the thrift store into a shelter, and just renovate the Ridge Street shelter?
No, Sanders and Van Meter said, for a variety of reasons. Van Meter said that the Ridge Street shelter is part of a larger complex that includes a kitchen, a cafeteria, administrative offices, and transitional apartments for families, and two-thirds of that complex does not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The agency is already working on a complete ADA-compliant rebuilding of that complex that would double its capacity, said Van Meter — plans have been drawn, and there’s an active fundraising campaign.
Van Meter and Sanders gave a few other reasons, including cost.
During the December meeting, a lot of folks brought up safety concerns about bringing a low-barrier shelter — where people who might be using drugs and/or alcohol, or who might be on the sex offender registry, might be staying — to the site. The shelter would be right next to Tonsler Park and adjacent to the Fifeville Trail that kids use to walk to school. The Music Resource Center, a music nonprofit that serves children, is planning to move across the street into the forthcoming 501 Cherry Ave. development.
Only a couple folks pressed on safety issues in Thursday’s meeting, which was decidedly calmer.
“I understand it brings concerns,” Sanders said. “We immediately jump to the idea that sexual predators will show up because we put a shelter there. That’s a broad brush that we should put away. That is not a problem we believe exists in our city, and that has been studied. There is a registry, and there are two people who are unhoused on it. So, I would like to move that out of the conversation, because that is about fear, and this is about helping people.”
Sanders added that, if the shelter were to open on Cherry Avenue, it would be an overnight shelter operating from about 5 or 6 p.m. until 6 or 7 the next morning — times when kids wouldn’t be at the park, he said.
A couple residents didn’t think that was adequate.
Marcia Johnson, a Fifeville resident since 1993, said that when the Tonsler League basketball games are happening in the summer, kids are in the park much later than 5 or 6, and often unsupervised.
One woman, who did not give her name but said that she lives on Oak Street, asked where shelter guests would go during the day. She believes they’ll end up loitering in the park, where she brings her kids to play regularly.
The objections didn’t sit well with former Charlottesville Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy.
“I never in my life thought — just being candid — in my time being here, I never thought that I would hear that kind of sentiment in the community, specifically around here, because this is the place that I always felt was the most welcoming place in the city,” Bellamy said.
“There’s people who y’all see every day who don’t look homeless, but they identify as homeless,” he added, saying that he knows of a lot of folks in the neighborhood who have opened their homes to relatives or friends who would otherwise be homeless.
Sanders promises to answer more resident questions
More folks voiced support for a low-barrier shelter on Cherry Ave. Thursday night, than voiced opposition. But not everyone in attendance spoke up with an opinion.
When addressing the room, Mayor Juandiego Wade said that so far, City Council had received about the same amount of emails for and against the proposed shelter.
Josh Carp, a Fifeville resident, said that he fully supports the idea of a low-barrier shelter on Cherry Avenue. He said that when walking past a shelter with his three young children, he feels completely safe. He feels less safe when he and his children pass folks who are unhoused and camping off the trail at night.
“I’d feel safer with a shelter here, than with no shelter at all,” Carp said.
One resident even talked about having a change of heart since attending December’s meeting and writing a long email to the City Council.
“My husband and I, we’ve been talking about this a lot because we live so close to Tonsler, and we live right around the corner from the possible shelter site,” said one 7 1/2 Street resident.
“And I think we’ve evolved a little bit. I was walking the other day, and I had my nice Starbucks coffee and my nice warm jacket, and I looked down at the railroad trestle under Roosevelt Brown [Boulevard] and there was someone there, in the cold. At that moment, I was like, ‘why not [open a shelter]?’ Where else are they going to go?
“While I’m not thrilled because of all of the issues we’ve struggled with on 7 1/2 Street, with people knocking on our door, negative experiences with unhoused people who are begging, we are willing to listen and figure out how to make this work.”
She asked the City to consider safety measures such as stepping up security in Tonsler Park, and making sure that if someone has a mental health episode, there’s a de-escalation response. She asked if the City could consider doing more trash cleanup.
“I’m not going to get in the way of this,” Beth continued. “But I’m also asking from the City and The Salvation Army to really sit down and have thoughtful planning around how we can keep our neighborhood, and Tonsler Park, this great community asset? How can we keep people feeling safe and help unhoused people?”
As the meeting wound down, a few community members asked for more information, more education. They said they want to know more about who falls into homelessness and why. They want to see studies about the efficacy of shelter programs, and what wraparound social services would be offered at the shelter. They wanted to know more about Sanders’ proposed plan.
“Well, I have my homework,” Sanders said, and asked folks with requests to write them down for him. He stuck the notes in the breast pocket of his blazer.
Gillikin said that Livable Cville has created an “Understanding Homelessness in Charlottesville” document.
Ashley Marshall, Deputy City Manager for Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, said that the City had just published answers to some frequently asked questions about homelessness on its website, including information from the U.S Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and a May 2024 presentation to City Council about the state of homelessness in Charlottesville, delivered by local homeless services providers.
Finally, someone asked when the decision about the shelter will be made.
“I can’t say,” Sanders said, “because I am still listening. The longer I wait, the longer they wait,” he said, gesturing to Mayor Wade as a representative of City Council. “I am motivated to move faster, but I understand that there are individuals who make the decision who might say ‘not yet.’ That is part of our process.”
