Angel Turner
Biography
Angel Turner was raised in Charlottesville and is a homeowners services associate at Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville. In 2015 she moved into the mixed-income neighborhood of Burnet Commons III with her son Zechariah.
Audio
Why did you move to Burnet Commons III?
Was the location of the neighborhood a factor in choosing it?
It’s been three years since it was built and you moved in, so what do you think? How has it been?
Do you know everybody in the neighborhood?
What helps make a mixed-income community work?
When did Burnet Commons III first start to feel more like a neighborhood than just a group of houses?
Is there any issues that are still being worked out there, anything still in progress?
Should disagreements between mixed-income neighbors be resolved between each other as much as possible, and not involve an outside agency?
Do you feel like it’s your neighborhood?
What advice do you have for future residents of Friendship Court, either current ones or people moving there?
How have you seen Charlottesville change since you were growing up here?
Where would you like to see Charlottesville be as a city in ten years? When your son grows up?
The Reimagining of Friendship Court
The redevelopment of Friendship Court is slated to be the largest new construction of low-income housing undertaken in Charlottesville in more than two decades. The plan alone is groundbreaking, having been directly created by current Section 8 residents in partnership with Piedmont Housing Alliance. City staff calls it the most nuanced and complex plan they’ve ever encountered. It ambitiously attempts to balance promises of zero resident displacement with the city’s broader affordable housing needs, while also calling for hundreds of new, likely higher-income, residents to move in, as residents hope to de-stigmatize the lasting effects of poverty born out of generations of racist government policy and neglect.
This year will be the make-or-break year for Friendship Court’s redevelopment efforts. Millions of dollars in city, federal, and private funding stand between the massive plan and the highly anticipated 2020 groundbreaking. And while the green lights have begun to align and most residents are excited, the plan has its critics — those who call for greater levels of resident autonomy, greater security measures to guard against social and cultural displacement, and greater reparations for past wrongs.
In crafting this project, we’ve tried to tackle all of this and more by separating the longer narratives into five major questions:
Part 1: What is the plan?
Part 2: How did we get here?
Part 3: Does mixed-income housing work?
Part 4: Who does Friendship Court belong to?
Part 5: What’s next?
But we also wanted to give you access to as much of our reporting as possible, so we’ve created a timeline that details the history of this area, dating back 150 years, through the use of more than 130 maps, documents, archived articles, and photographs. Similarly, we wanted you to actually hear each of the two dozen long-form interviews we conducted, and not merely the portions we’ve included in the individual stories. So we’ve included more than 300 audio clips throughout the story: in the articles, the timeline, and on each person’s profile page. Our hope is that with all this, more of the picture will begin to emerge, and that, as we stand ready to make powerful and significant changes in the city, we all can help craft the solutions.
