A Tale of Two Affordable Housing Projects
Two recent investigative stories give voice to low-income tenants living in terrible conditions in two very different affordable housing complexes.
As two great local investigative stories have now shown, there’s a dirty little secret about building affordable housing — building them is one thing, and should be celebrated, but caring for and maintaining those properties is another thing.
“I think it (C-Ville’s article) points to one of the shortcomings in our affordable housing finance system, in that there’s relatively little money provided for long-term maintenance and upkeep of properties,” says former Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris, who spearheaded the effort to create the Crossings, our area’s first supportive housing project at Fourth Street and Preston Avenue. “Unlike Charlottesville Tomorrow’s excellent recent reporting on Park’s Edge, here’s a case where the landlord is responsive and trying to do right by their tenants despite a shortage of resources.”
