On Tuesday, Dec. 5, Charlottesville City Council will hold a public hearing on a new citywide zoning ordinance. It’s the penultimate step in a marathon process — the city has been working on a new code to broadly increase allowable housing density for about seven years.
The new draft ordinance includes a few new things. Among them are two zoning districts intended to ease displacement of low-income and longtime residents in certain areas of the city.
One of the districts is residential, the other is commercial.
“Both of these districts are recognizing that we have these neighborhoods located in desirable locations, approximate to Downtown and the university, that have historically provided workforce housing to a diverse population,” said James Freas, director of Neighborhood Development Services. “And there’s interest in retaining that characteristic of these neighborhoods for the future.”
The new districts were added to the draft ordinance in October, replacing the previous “Sensitive Communities Overlay” concept suggested in the Future Land Use Map (FLUM).
The new residential district, RN-A, is similar to the R-A residential district that covers most of the city, with a few key differences that aim to minimize teardowns and flips while increasing the neighborhood’s affordable housing supply.
What’s different about the RN-A zoning is that it allows just one unit per lot. Though, a property owner could get up three units on one lot by preserving the existing building on the site while building a new one. And they could get up to six units on the lot if the bonus units are affordable to households at 60% of the local Area Median Income.
Parts of the 10th and Page, Fifeville, Ridge, Rose Hill, and Venable neighborhoods are some of the areas being considered for this new zoning district. They are somewhat similar to the areas identified in the Comprehensive Plan as “sensitive community areas”: historically low-income and historically Black neighborhoods, neighborhoods that are facing intense gentrification pressures.
More about gentrification in Charlottesville neighborhoods
These two new zoning districts were developed using U.S. Census block maps and data as well as firsthand knowledge of what city officials and residents understand these neighborhoods to be.
The city’s Comprehensive Plan, adopted two years ago in November 2021, identified displacement as a pressing issue for the city. And over the summer, a rate of change report commissioned by the city showed that things like housing costs were changing in the aforementioned areas, at a higher rate than in other parts of the city.
That report is part of what prompted the Housing Advisory Council, the Planning Commission, and Neighborhood Development services to recommend these new zoning districts, Freas said.
The city considered freezing the zoning in those areas where it is today, said Freas. But that wouldn’t change what’s already happening there.
“Displacement is happening today, under our existing zoning,” said Freas. As the city’s cost of living rises faster than most people’s wages, low-income residents are being pushed out. This includes some longtime residents, and young people who grew up here and can no longer afford to live here.
“Part of our analysis was, if this isn’t going to change the patterns, have we accomplished the goal?” said Freas. “If we are still seeing displacement, what have we accomplished?”
Freezing the zoning in those places while changing it to allow more and new builds in other areas of the city, could also decrease the value of property in those neighborhoods. While that could mean that those low-income families could stay in their homes or in the neighborhood, it could also further rob them of wealth-building opportunities, said Freas. (The Mapping Cville project shows how that’s been happening in the city for generations.)
“It’s a controversial and challenging issue.”
Setting up a zoning code to help prevent displacement and ease gentrification isn’t just about residences, said Freas. It’s also meant to address meeting and gathering spaces, and businesses that serve the residents of that neighborhood.
“Think grocery stores, laundromats, what have you. Those institutions are a central component of a neighborhood,” said Freas. “As a community changes over, those resources also tend to disappear.”
So, with the new commercial district, called the “neighborhood corridor overlay district,” the city hopes to incentivize developers to build businesses relevant to the neighborhoods they’re built in. For instance, a developer could get approval for a higher building (a “height bonus”) if it promised to include two items from a list of community amenities in that building.
These new districts do complicate the overall intention of zoning, which is a streamlined procedure for building, said Planning Commission chair Lyle Solla-Yates.
Zoning’s role is to say, you can do this here, but you can’t do that. However, these new districts turn it into a discretionary review process, one that will take time and have a lot of back and forth. That process has both pros and cons, said Freas and Solla-Yates.
The pros? The public can have their say.
The cons? Because of the time and effort involved, the projects the city wants to see — affordable housing, businesses that serve the existing neighborhoods — might not happen at all.
“It wasn’t a slam-dunk decision,” said Freas. “It was a very difficult decision, because the trade-off we’re talking about is very real.”
But, Freas said, changing the zoning ordinance is a starting point, and it needs to dovetail with other efforts.
For instance, the city is now committing $10 million to affordable housing efforts each year.
“It’s difficult for us to provide funding to affordable housing developers, and then not indicate locations in the city where they can build said affordable housing,” said Freas. “That’s the role that zoning plays. These things have to work together.”
Another such effort, one that Freas considers paramount, is having deep conversations with people in these RN-A neighborhoods. He said that such conversations were “very difficult” to have in the context of the city-wide rezoning process. “We needed to come back to this issue.”
Solla-Yates agreed. “There’s a saying, ‘nothing about us, without us.’ I think that’s pretty good.”
The public hearing on the proposed new zoning ordinance will be held Tuesday, Dec. 5, beginning at 4 p.m. in City Council chambers, located at 605 E. Main St. on the Downtown Mall. People can attend in person or via Zoom, but those who wish to make a public comment must attend in person and sign up starting at 3:30 p.m. Each speaker will have two minutes to weigh in.
Council is not expected to vote on the ordinance Tuesday, although it could do so after the public comment session. Freas said they’re more likely to set a date for a vote.
Materials for the meeting are available on the city website. Review the draft ordinance that Council will discuss, on the Cville Plans Together website.
