Brian Haluska

Biography

Brian Haluska is the principle planner for the City. He has worked as a city planner since 2004 in Neighborhood Development Services. He is the lead planning official directly overseeing the redevelopment site plan for Friendship Court.

Audio

What stuck out to you from the Housing Needs Assessment report done last year?

How does adding mid- and high-level housing stock affect the overall market, and potentially open up more affordable housing?

What are the tools the city needs, to incentivize additional housing stock at more affordable levels?

How does zoning affect affordable housing? Who’s in charge of changing the city’s zoning?

What is form based code? How does that affect affordable housing?

What can you tell us about the two 9-story buildings about to be built around Friendship Court?

Those buildings are going to be mixed-use right? What sort of businesses do you think will be there?

Do you think these businesses will have any job opportunities for low-income residents at Friendship Court?

Do you see a disconnect between the businesses that surround Friendship Court and the low-income residents who live there?

What lessons do you think the City could learn from the community engagement process that PHA did with Friendship Court’s redevelopment?

Does every neighborhood need to take on its fair share of affordable housing?

Does the City use a racial equity tools to analyze its housing stock?

Is the Friendship Court site plan for redevelopment the most complex plan you’ve ever dealt with in Charlottesville?

What’s an example of the Friendship Court site plan’s complexity?

How do the fluctuating rates of return with Low Income Housing Tax Credits and the fluctuating costs of construction affect a project’s plan?

What, in particular, do you like about the Friendship Court site plan?

What do most people not understand about developers and making a profit?

Reducing construction costs, land costs, parking minimums — how do these affect the price of rent for each housing unit?

The Reimagining of Friendship Court

INTRO

By Jordy Yager

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.

1860

I hereby give unto my son John B. Garrett and to his heirs forever, my negro man Montgomery.

— Alexander Garrett’s last will and testament

Brian Haluska

Biography

Audio

The Reimagining of Friendship Court

I hereby give unto my son John B. Garrett and to his heirs forever, my negro man Montgomery.

Alexander Garrett

That said lot shall not be sold, or leased to or occupied by a person of the negro race, but this shall not be construed to prohibit the keeping of negro servants on said property.

A working-class neighborhood

A lot of people say they come in here just because it smells so good.

Allen’s Store opens

The poorer areas of Charlottesville produced the greatest resistance to the housing authority.

The city declares areas “slums,” creates a housing authority, and votes to raze Vinegar Hill

A survey of presently available housing shows clearly that sufficient low-rent housing is not available now, and none is being constructed by private builders.

Urban renewal in full force

Just behind the warehouses and two blocks south of Main Street in downtown Charlottesville lies a 40-acre tract known as the Garrett Street section. It is home to 170 families, most of them Negroes.

Residents oppose razing of Garrett Street area

You are employers, you are key people in the planning of our cities today. You share the responsibility for the mess we are in terms of the white noose around the central city. It didn’t just happen. We didn’t just suddenly get this situation. It was carefully planned.

Re-examining the role of architects and planners

The structure is divided vertically into two units, each of which has living room, kitchen and full bath on the first floor and one bedroom on the second floor. Rent is $15.00 per week unfurnished for each unit.

Bulldozers move in on Garrett; residents move out

Garrett is sold for $205,103.60

Elsie Church, resident manager who moved to Garrett Square from Edenton, N.C., hopes to see classes in nutrition, single parent parenting, and energy conservation held in the community building when it is completed.

Garrett Square opens

The area was a slum area within our city that needed to be treated.

War on drugs meets poverty

It’s a place they can go and we can’t do anything to them.

Private armed security is hired in Garrett Square

Police have been arresting drug suspects at a record clip since 1989, and nine out of every 10 cocaine suspects who have been convicted of felonies have been black. However, national surveys, including a 1988-90 Public Health Service report, show that more whites than blacks use cocaine.

Separate Justice

I think this is great, that they show they’ll help take care of us.

Residents protest

Explain to the residents here: How is this fence safe? Who is it protecting?

The fence goes up

It’s not the fence. It’s the style of the fence and the way they put it up…If it comes down this time, it stays down this time.

Fence is partially dismantled

There’s something wrong with that kind of policing. If it’s going to be effective policing, you have to get to know [residents] and they have to get to know you.

Security concerns mount for residents

It was built in ’78 and this is 2001. Do I have to say any more? That’s a long time to go without having things checked that’s important. If you can live through renting from these folks, you can live through everything.

PHA buys Garrett Square

I feel confident that 15 years from now, people won’t recognize the south side. The blocks will be filled in, it will be mixed-use. I ultimately think it’s going to become the SoHo of Charlottesville.

Garrett Square renovations

It’s discriminatory. Nowhere else in Charlottesville do you have that sign. What it really does [is cause people who are already powerless to feel] inferior and helpless.

Garrett Square becomes Friendship Court

That fence makes the community think we’re a bunch of criminals down here. These are good people, hard-working people.

Racial profiling and stigmatization

We want more attention paid to our property than the normal police service would allow.

More police protection

It’s getting pretty pricey all around us. So obviously this is a very valuable piece of property.

Redevelopment—for whom?

Residents have a low capacity to improve their socio-economic status and this adversely affects morale.

PHA: Status Report

Council apologizes for Vinegar Hill

I encourage you to be skeptical, because you are going to hear a lot of promises, but where are the assurances that those promises are going to be kept?

Council adopts the S.I.A.

Truthfully, our vision is the vision of the people who live there. So we don’t come to this with a preconceived notion of what Friendship Court will be. Instead, we come with a faith in the people who live there and their ability to imagine what the future could be.

PHA to buy Friendship Court, city funds $350K for redevelopment, PHA hires staff

This does not feel like a resident-involved process, which is what we were promised.

PHA releases its first master plan

We’ve worked really hard to make sure that all of the residents feel comfortable. We’ve thought about our seniors, we’ve thought about our families with people who have disabilities, and just wanted to make sure that everybody’s comfortable. And I feel good, I feel good about it.

Resident advisory committee makes big changes

A final master plan is completed