Leontyne Peck

Leontyne Peck

Biography

Leontyne Peck is a member of Piedmont Housing Alliance’s board and specializes in African American history and family genealogy. She works as an administrative programs assistant for Fluvanna County.

Audio

What’s your experience been as a PHA board member and working there? What do you think of the housing voucher system?

What does the city need to do to address its poverty levels and affordable housing crisis?

How does racial equity play into PHA’s work in Charlottesville and Friendship Court? Do conversations about reparations need to happen?

Community-wide, what would those reparations look like?

How does that pertain to rentership versus homeownership?

Do you think intentional mixed-income communities work?

What role do the surrounding businesses play? Can they be expected to respond to the needs of low-income residents?

You worked with Montpelier in crafting their new exhibit on the legacies of enslavement — are there lessons from that experience, and working with descendants of people who were enslaved, that translate to this redevelopment project?

How does genealogy and the study of history intersect with poverty?

Should the name of Garrett Street be changed because Alexander Garrett enslaved people?

What is the stigma attached to people who receive a Section 8 voucher for housing?

Citywide, what can or should be done to raise the living wage or reduce the cost of housing?

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.