The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Dave Norris And Neil Williamson Joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller On "Real Talk With Keith Smith!"

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Dave Norris, newly-appointed Executive Director of Charlottesville Area Association of REALTORS Foundation, and Neil Williamson, President of Free Enterprise Forum, joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller on “Real Talk With Keith Smith” powered by YES Realty Partners and Yonna Smith! “Real Talk” airs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 10:15 am – 11 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Real Talk With Keith Smith” is presented by Charlottesville Settlement Company, LLC, El Mariachi Mexican Bar & Grill, Fincham & Associates, Inc., Free Enterprise Forum, Intrastate Service Co, Pearl Certification and YES Realty Partners.

Good Friday morning, guys. My name is Jerry Miller, and thank you kindly for joining us on Real Talk with Keith Smith. It's great to connect with you on a beautiful Friday, the first Friday in, guys. My name is Jerry Miller, and thank you kindly for joining us on Real Talk with Keith Smith. It's great to connect with you on a beautiful Friday, the first Friday in March 2024. And ladies and gentlemen, some positive news to report here on the set of Real Talk with Keith Smith. The five-year anniversary of Keith Smith's brainchild. Can you believe it? We've made it to the five-year marker. There were some times where I didn't think we would make it to the 11 15 a.m marker of that given day but here we are five years later and that is cause for celebration think about all the shows whether it's on the boob tube streaming whether it's on

social media or youtube very few hit the five-year milestone and that is a testament to keith smith's hard work judah wickhauer our director and producer, testament to his hard work as well. He is literally multitasking right now. I think he's setting up a date for Southern Crescent this evening with drinks with what I hope is a beautiful lady of his choice. If we could go to the studio. Whoa, whoa, whoa. He's been going on dates.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Very excited for him. That was the breaking news you needed to start with. It's the app that all the young kids are using these days called Bumble. Dave, you've just been relegated to second place. So we need to talk about that. Can we go to the studio camera? Remember, the four mics were being utilized right here.

Jude is saying, thank goodness I don't have to talk about this. Can we go to the studio camera and welcome a cast of characters? Keith, five years. Maybe that's why we're going to talk about this. Can we go to the studio camera and welcome a cast of characters? Keith, five years. Maybe that's why we're going to talk about it so he can't respond. That's exactly right, Keith. Five years, you know, it's just, you know, brainchild. I mean, thank you for the kind words.

Not so sure any of those things fit into the description of me, but thank you. You know, reciprocated back. This was not my brainchild. This was yours. So credit is where credit's due. And you brought me along. So thank you.

Thank you for doing that. And we're excited about today. I'm excited to have Dave and Neil sitting to the right of me. Really excited about Dave and what he's going to talk about with the Carr Foundation. Those who have listened to the show

over the years know that I haven't been shy about pushing or hoping Carr would get into the affordable housing fight, and it looks like we're in it in a big way. So, uh-oh, got raised eyebrows on that. But thank you very much. So I want to let you kick off and introduce yourself and take it from there. Sure. Well, thank you, Keith. And first of all, happy anniversary, five years, huge accomplishment.

And I'm thrilled to be here to help you celebrate and talk about this new undertaking. Actually, the very first person who ever told me about the Carr Foundation was Keith Smith. So thank you for opening my eyes to this initiative. And I'm really pleased. I'm now two and a half weeks into serving as their first executive director. And it's just a wonderful team, the foundation board, the CAR staff. I do have to work in the office next door to Neil Williamson. So, you know, it's not all roses. A bed of roses.

But, no, I'm kidding. But, no, as you say, it's an attempt and an effort by CAR and the broader realtor community to get in the fight, get in the arena when it comes to promoting and advancing affordable housing here in our region. And that's going to be through making strategic investments in innovative affordable housing projects. It's going to be engaging realtors and the broader community as volunteers. People are always saying, well, what can one person do to make a difference when it comes to affordable housing? Well, we're going to give them ways to make a difference. Third, it's about raising awareness of affordable housing issues here in the region.

And fourth, and certainly not least, it's being an advocate and a champion for good policy when it comes to affordable housing. And hopefully we'll be working hand in hand with Neil on some of those issues. So I'm really thrilled. It's got so much potential to make positive impact in our community. And thank you again, Keith, for introducing me to the organization. It was my pleasure. When Greg Slater said, do I know anybody? I said, I got a guy. I got a guy. Bill, you want to jump in? Sure. I think I want to make a little clarification. Dave

Norris has been engaged in the affordable housing community here in Charlottesville for a long time. And in very transcendental ways with Carr. When Dave was mayor, Carr the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors petitioned and ended up getting a person to serve on the housing advisory committee for the city. It is no small shakes. Bob Hughes served for I want to say about half a dozen years and S. Lisa Herndon has served.

S. Lisa Herndon also served on the Seville Plans Together Comprehensive Plan, Affordable Housing Plan first, and then the Comprehensive Plan, and then the Zoning Ordinance. So I would suggest that CAR is taking a much more public step forward, but has been engaged in affordable housing issues well over 20 years that I've been associated with the organization. So thank you for clarifying that, and thank you for correcting me on that end of it. So it's the public-facing side of it that I was referring to, that we take more of a public outcry or a public approach.

Public and organized, right? It's an official 501c3. Yeah. And this has been a long time in the making. It has, and Carr also took a huge public step last year associated with the zoning ordinance by endorsing it and supporting it with a $125,000 advertising campaign advocating for the passage of the new zoning text amendment. A branded website. Branded website. With reasons why upzoning is good for the community.

I was impressed with that as well. May not have necessarily agreed, but was very impressed with the effort. It included letters to the editor, which is old school, but also patch calls and digital advertising, as well as social media advertising and over-the-air advertising. It was a well-integrated campaign that proved that the realtors are leading the charge on finding solutions to affordable housing. Now, you may agree or disagree that this will have an impact. I will say this. The previous zoning ordinance was not having a positive

impact. That's fair. That's very well said. What do you think on that, Dave Norris? I totally agree. In fact, one of the opportunities that the Carr Foundation is potentially going to be looking into is how do we now, now that this effort has proven successful and Neil is a humble, but he's very much involved in that effort he just talked about.

And so the next question is how do we then help property owners, small developers, other real estate sort of professionals to take advantage of the new zoning ordinance and to make sure that it does generate additional supply of affordable housing. Because, you know, one of the pushbacks was, well, it's all well and good, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee that much new affordable housing is going to be built. The tools are there, but are people going to take advantage of those tools? And so in our foundation board meeting last week, we talked about that could be one role that this new foundation plays is how do we educate folks and make it accessible and actually help this new ordinance to live up to its potential. John Blair

giving the panel props and congratulating you on five years. Thank you. So back on the public facing thing. So that was the point that I was trying to make and I fumbled the word. So thank you for clarifying on that more of a public facing approach on it so is that going to be the part of the responsibility of the car foundation is be a little

bit more public facing well as neil said it's been public facing to a certain extent but this is really taking it to another level right and um and the part that's sort of new to car sort of i mean they've had a real estate a workforce housing housing fund that has helped a number of people, teachers, police officers, et cetera, buy their first homes here in the community. But they really want to ramp, we really want to ramp up on the investment side,

on the funding side to invest strategically in, as I said, innovative housing solutions. And creating that fund and managing that fund is something new and different for CAR and I think has so much potential, whether it's getting involved. You know, we had a meeting just last week. I don't think this is a trade secret, but we had a meeting just last week with

some of the stakeholders in the community land trust effort. How can we be part of that? How can we help more renters become homeowners, even in their own neighborhoods? There's an initiative underway right now, largely thanks to Keith Smith, in the Prospect Avenue neighborhood, where folks who have been living in Blue Ridge Commons or Blue Stone, Greenstone, on 5th. It used to be Blue Ridge Commons. Yeah, that's the one I remember. Low-income housing, a number of longtime renters in very low-income housing who never thought in a million years they'd be able to buy a home here in Charleston, particularly in today's real estate market, are now becoming homeowners.

I will tell you, I've been doing this for 35 years. There's no greater feeling than handing a set of keys and they're just in tears. Right. And they're generally not in tears or excited for themselves or excited about the opportunity to pay it forward. There you go. And that's usually what you hear is, you know, they're excited for themselves and never thought that they would get into the ownership world or own a home,

but to have the ability to give that opportunity to somebody else. So how is the foundation going to help, right? Let's face it, we're going to have to raise a lot of money to do it. That's a big part of it. So how is that going to happen? Yeah, so certainly we'll be raising money. The car has capitalized the foundation at a certain amount, but we definitely need more because there's a huge need out there, as we all know. Realtors know it perhaps as well as anybody because you're out there every day talking to people about housing. We did our first land trust house at Lake Monticello at $215,000. I had 50 real estate agents call me in two days with buyers.

That's amazing. That's amazing. Feed's already blowing up. This is from Jonathan for Mayor Norris. Mayor Norris, you mentioned innovative housing strategies in your car foundation. What exactly does that mean? That's a great question. So we've already talked about potentially getting involved in a bigger way in supporting the land trust. You know, but it's not just about

home ownership, too. If you look at some of the innovative approaches and projects that are coming down when it comes to revitalizing public housing, when it comes to building permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless, when it comes to, you comes to across the board. This is a town, there's a lot of civically engaged non-profit leaders here, particularly in the housing arena, who have a lot of good and innovative ideas for addressing our housing challenges. For the realtor community to now step up in a big way with funding and volunteer support and advocacy and engagement and awareness raising, it's going to help move those efforts forward.

And so I don't want to, you know, we haven't decided at this point as a board, as a foundation, exactly which projects we're going to invest in because we're still in the very early stages. But there's certainly a lot of opportunity out there. And I just talked to, part of my job over the last two weeks has been reaching out to other real estate foundation, real estate association related foundations all over the last two weeks has been reaching out to other real estate association-related foundations all over the country. I was talking to one out west a couple days ago, and they, as a realtor community, got involved in a tiny homes project in their community as an innovative solution to get people off the streets and into housing.

So there's any number of ideas out there, and I'm excited to have the chance to sort of do a scan and talk to folks and engage with folks who are on the front lines and figure out how we can be of support to their efforts. Well, and the thing of it is that the Carr Foundation board, in selecting Dave Norris as their first executive director, really bought into an institutional knowledge of not just how it works, but who sits where, and relationships that Dave has had over the last 15, 20 years. And so when he picks up the phone and calls and says, hey, it's Dave.

I wanted to talk to you about X. I got these folks out west that are saying tiny houses. Has that got any legs here for what you've seen? These are relationships that, quite honestly, I commend the board for choosing Dave because he has seen some things here and been innovative. I remember when the crossings came through and I had all kinds of misgivings about it. You can see the documentation.

But I now see people wanting crossings too. And so I think that the idea of hiring a leader is a goal for a foundation. And I believe that the Carr Foundation Board did a great job in selecting Dave. Richard Allen Fox watching the program. I love Richard. Dave Norris and Neil Williamson doing a great job in selecting Dave. Richard Allen Fox watching the program. I love Richard. Dave Norris and Neil Williamson doing a fantastic job and an incredible wealth of knowledge between these two men. I have a question for you.

Would the CAR Foundation ever get into actual home ownership itself? I don't see the CAR Foundation at this point actually building or managing housing itself. I think we're going to play more of a catalyst role and an advocate role and a funding role, but not necessarily doing it ourselves. There's so many great nonprofits out there who are building housing, who are developing housing, and not just nonprofits. It runs the gamut, for-profits, government. And so I don't necessarily see this, and Keith, you've been involved in the discussions with the foundation much longer than I have. I don't know if that ever came up early on. No, and I would encourage folks to go onto the website and download the strategic plan.

A little shout-out to Spark Mill out of Richmond. They did a wonderful job. But I'm thumbing through this. And goal number two is equip residents of greater Charlottesville area for affordable housing and home ownership through education and resources. Right. So I see from my perspective, I'm not on the board, so I'm just speaking from my opinion. I see more of an educational funding.

Look, there's enough. We're kind of in the nonprofit capital of the world, right? So there's enough housing nonprofits in the space to go ahead and deploy those dollars and make it work. But there are many nonprofits doing many great things. The foundation seeks to have a different role, I believe, and seeks not to replace anyone but to augment those efforts. And the idea of some folks, since I run a nonprofit, say there are too many nonprofits in Charlottesville, and some folks say there are too many coffee shops in Charlottesville. I think I've said both.

I think you have. And I believe it's the marketplace of ideas and the marketplace of ground-up coffee. But I do believe that each one of those shops serves a purpose. If they don't, they go out of business. So I'm a big believer in nonprofits having a mission, having a strategy, and moving forward with that directly. In my experience, working with more for-profits, when they look to do affordable housing, they are looking to leverage six, seven, eight sources of funding in order to make it work. And it is really a challenge to do and having another arrow in the quiver,

because there's this guy out west who said that it's not a magic bullet. We're talking Robert Liberty, our boy. Robert Liberty needs some licensing rights revenue. I've officially got licensing rights. I have an email that says I can do this. Ray Cadell says that's some serious housing brain power right there. Ray Cadell, we love when you watch the program. Tripp Stewart, the real estate investor watching the show. Olivia Branch, the queen of Keswick, watching the program. TV station down the road, watching us here on Real Talk with Keith Smith.

Questions are coming in. There is no silver bullet. There's a silver buckshot. The questions are coming in fast and furious. All right, Jerry, cut to the chase. What's Norris' take on upzoning? We're two weeks in. Will anything amount of merit?

I certainly believe so, certainly hope so. I think additional density is important, not only for a number of reasons. Obviously, you don't want too much density that's going to overwhelm a neighborhood, and I think they struck a good compromise with the zoning ordinance that it allows a lot of creative urban infill housing which makes the city more walkable. It also increases the supply of housing and ultimately housing affordability is a situation of supply versus demand. We need more supply in order to help even out, if not ultimately bring housing prices down. So particularly for the hardworking families that make this community

function. Bill McChesney on McIntyre Road says, fellas, you talk about tiny houses. Well, they're selling for half a million dollars right now. Luke Cole, I've been Facebook DMing with him, is the listing agent for the home in Lewis Mountain, the rancher that just hit the market for a million dollars. It's positioned by Mr. Cole and his seller as an upzoning opportunity. Six potential units on this piece of property, Keith, if memory serves correct, with an asking price of a million dollars. Well, it can go higher than that if you put into the affordable housing density in it. If you do the affordable housing piece. If you do the affordable housing piece.

Look, I'm still digging into the actual rules here. That's what's going to actually govern this and how this is going to go. We talked about this the other day. I was hoping to see the difference between a minor and a major to be three and over. Turns out to be only two residential units. That's going to put a heavy lift from a technical perspective on anybody who's trying to do over two units on a unit. So you're going to have to hire professional engineers.

You're going to have to go through the whole site plan process as if it was a larger project. I was hoping to see something a little bit more friendly or on a lower density. But that provides the neighborhood some protection that

the project that moves forward will follow the rather prescriptive setbacks and the other things. You aren't going to have someone who's doing this sketch on the back of a napkin for three units overstepping their bounds. I recognize that that increases costs for landowners, but it also increases protection for the neighborhoods. Correct. But what it does do is it kind of makes that particular project a little expensive. And that does it pencil out. Right. And the sweet spot

will be much closer to eight to nine units. Roughly. Well, an example, on Tuesday I was at the courthouse for a tax delinquent property that went out on 217 Oak Street, I believe it was, for the land trust. And we had a cap of 200. It went for 300. We spent a lot of time, because this came out just in enough time, to get SHIMP Engineering in and take a look at it and did a missed utility. And we could not fit any more than four units on that property. So therefore, that's where the 200 came out. So it's going to take some time, right? And usually, nobody really wants to... It's like buying a new car, right?

Nobody wants to be the first model out. So this is going to take a little time for people to kind of go through, get the staff to kind of understand exactly what the zoning ordinance is, the developers and the builders and the property owners. It'll take some time to cycle. So what I'm hearing is it's going to be an evolution, not a revolution? It is going to be an evolution. And that's certainly what we've seen in other cities that have adopted new zoning. As you know, I'm part of stuff between out west

and that's exactly right. It's a living document. It started getting tweaked a little bit. But this is a long haul, not a short haul. Well, speaking of that, in 60 months when you're celebrating your 10th anniversary, I fully anticipate you will see a revamp of the inclusionary zoning because it's going to take that long to figure out that it doesn't work.

What does that mean? Inclusionary zoning requires if you have greater than nine units, you have to dedicate 10% of your units to service 60% area median income for 99 years. This will put a chill on major multifamily. Not completely freeze it out, but it will place a chill on it. And I believe that in five years' time you'll see some pullback on that. That's the reason our phone is ringing off the hook at the land trust, by the way. Well, and a lot of people right now tell me in the civil engineering field, there's a lot of desire for nine unit buildings.

This is a great question right here from Caroline, who watches a lot of our content. How does the Carr Foundation serve as a liaison between the various governments? It's affordable housing and housing affordability is not just tied to one jurisdiction. Great comment. Yeah, and again, as I think Neil said earlier, we're not here to duplicate things that are already in place. You know, Keith's been leading the charge already for a number of years now with the Thomas Jefferson Regional Housing Partnership, which is that liaison.

Which, by the way, you just got a seat on. You just don't know it yet. Thanks. But that's essentially what i think caroline's talking about is a liaison it's a group that you know it brings together it's a forum that brings together local government representatives and other stakeholders to sort of coordinate efforts and and kind of uh built on the four pillars of what i call a healthy housing system which is the local governments the for-profits and non-profits and the people we serve. So you would be there as part of the non-profit.

Yeah, so we'll certainly be part of that, and part of those conversations are the CAR president, Ann Burroughs, has said publicly she wants CAR, you know, through this foundation and just in general, she wants CAR now to be at the table whenever affordable housing is on the agenda, and I'm excited to help CAR get there. Comments coming in quickly here. Neil Williamson, he has covered upzoning. So here's a great comment. There's another Keith in this town, and he's watching the program. Really?

Yeah. Which one? He says this. You know this one. Got it. Yeah, you know this one. Neil covers the upzoning and the zoning documents closely with the Free Enterprise Forum. Can we unpack this more and how this applies to actual development in real time and create tangible results as opposed months to 36 months before a significant project works its way from the concept phase to application all the way through.

That is unfortunate and is reality. Until then, it will be fodder for Jerry's talk show. I know. It's been great for the talk show, so I'll be honest here. It's been great fodder. Do you want to touch on any of that, Dave? No, I mean, Neil's been much closer with the zoning issues than I have, and I think he's exactly right. But again, not to repeat myself, but this ordinance provides a tool, right? The question is, and it provides, specifically provides a tool to

potentially generate more affordable housing. The question is, are people going to utilize that tool? And that's where I think the Carr Foundation can play a role. Yeah, so we're moving from a hand saw to a circular saw, right? And it takes a little bit of time to actually learn how to use a circular saw and get the skill to go ahead and do that. And Neil's 100% right. I mean, I think you'll see, and I've said this before, you know, the low-hanging fruit. This is going to be the duplexes, the auxiliary dwelling units. You know, there's a whole utility component of this that we haven't really dug into on how that process is going to work. But it's going to take time, and folks are going to try to get through some of these eights and nines and sixes just to see how this process works. And it'll get, I use the word tweak, but it will be ratcheted one way or the other. Lloyd Snook

said that very thing sitting in your chair. This is a great question. Neil, I want to throw this to you here. Can the Carr Foundation help bring potentially the University of Virginia to the table with helping with housing affordability. I'll add or piggyback this. Michael Payne has been more vocal of late with the pilot, the payment in lieu of taxes idea that we've seen with other university or college towns that have the endowment that UVA has. For example, Harvard, Cambridge, and Boston come to mind. Anywhere you want to go on that topic.

Well, I think I do not carry water for the university, number one. And I did not get into the university, and I'm still bitter. Where'd you go to school? I went to school in Southwest Virginia. Okay. The Radford University. Radford University. The idea of pilot really focuses on private universities much more than public universities.

And I believe that the president has a very good point in that regard because they are a state-funded university. That being said, over the last couple of days, I've been trading e-mails with Pace Lockney from UVA, who is heading up their affordable housing initiative. They are doing some pretty exciting things with three different sites. I want to say it's up to 1,500 units. The Discovery North Fork Research Park just got a rezoning, passed through the Board of Supervisors three weeks ago, and that will include affordable housing. Tim Rose, the

president, longtime president of the UVA Foundation, said he would really wants to do more than what is currently the county minimum of 15 percent, but that's what the rezoning has to go forward as until they line up a lot of other things. So I firmly believe you're going to see UVA, which is a completely different place than where they were five years ago. This is a complete, I have had conversations with the top people at UVA. Keith goes to these closed-door meetings with members of the UVA staff talking about actually providing land for affordable housing. This is a whole new day with under President Jim Ryan than it was under the previous administrations. It wasn't me.

It's a regional housing partnership, and it took about 10 years to get UVA at the table, and we're much like Real Talk at its fifth-year anniversary. Regional housing partnership is awfully close. Dave, you want to jump in? I just want to echo what Neil just said. When I was the mayor here, I had a meeting once, I'll never forget it, with a very senior UVA official who said to me, to my face, Charlottesville's problems are Charlottesville's problems. And we're here to educate students and do what we do. You guys take care of what Charlottesville needs. And I think it's completely changed, as Neil just said.

It's an absolute 180. And, you know, you do have 1,500 units coming. The three projects are now defined. One has just been rezoned, so that has been lifted off. When you start joining us at the Regional Housing Partnership, you know, UVA is at the table. Senior leadership is at the table and having that conversation. They are public meetings. Sometimes somebody chimes in on that, a little gentleman to my right who does seats available all the time.

Somebody has to go to those meetings. That's right. Well, then the other thing I will give UVA credit for is there were multiple out-of-state developers that were trying to get the bid, so to speak, to be the lead developer for at least the first of those three projects. First two. First two. First two. And UVA said, we want a local partner to be in the lead role.

So Piedmont Housing Alliance, I'm not breaking any news. This has all been public. But Piedmont Housing Alliance is now in that role. And I think that says, yeah. I was on those committees, but I had to recuse myself because once Piedmont came in, which connected it to Land Trust, I said, look, I need to recuse myself from these discussions. But it's important to note that I always have this pushback about local versus out of town, et cetera. It was a competitive bid process. And they chose the best bid.

It happened to be local. That was probably a plus, but it wasn't a prerequisite. Love using that word. Well, part of the requirements, Neal, was their ability to engage with the local community, right? And PHA is definitively suited better than that than some outside firms. I would agree that that put a strong plus. However, there are other elements to the proposal that had to be considered,

and it was a competitive environment. And as the free enterprise forum, we believe competitive environments create better product. So it's not just PHA alone. PHA is partnered with other entities that are outside of the they're the lead organization. But this is just not them on their own

strength. They're partnered with folks that do this from around the country. Folks, commenting quickly, we have folks that want the panel's take on the city's effort to get this lawsuit against Upsonic dropped immediately. This one's come in. This is a good one.

Can the panel offer its take? Maybe I'll throw this to Neil to start. Can the panel offer its take on city buying land in the area and becoming in the ownership business of real estate? Let me first start with the lawsuits. There is no one in this community that loves when citizens sue government more than me. I don't care if the lawsuit has a basis. We live in a place of checks and balances. That's how our government works.

City council, with their attorneys believe they've done the right thing. Good. Citizens believe they haven't. Okay. Where do we go to solve that problem? We go to the courts. That is how the system works. So I applaud folks that bring government accountability through the courts. I think that's great. That being said, the idea of the city buying land, I think we need to look across the country at options,

including land trusts and land banks, and how that works and works well, and how we've proven in certain areas it doesn't work. It doesn't work well. And over the late 60s, early 70s, there were some huge problems that we built ourselves and I think we need to learn from those lessons because if you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. There are tremendous amount of discussions and Dave will chime in because you're probably part of them at one point, of developing the land bank concept. But this one tax delinquent auction I was at was the first one in seven years.

So the likelihood of having a lot of property in the city of Charlottesville to put into a land bank from that perspective is not huge. Richmond has anywhere between 3,000 to 4,000 at any given moment that are either vacant or tax delinquent. Well, I mean, last year they've purchased two fairly or are about to purchase one and then have, is it under contract, Wendell's on High Street? I mean, two fairly prominent parcels of land are about to go under the city's purview, High Street, Wendell Wood by the Rivanna, and then the Avon Levy. I don't think those are providing, especially not the wood property, affordable housing. No housing.

Yeah, they're providing no housing. That's going to be converted into a park. So back to the silver bullet versus silver buckshot kind of thing. This is all these different pieces of the puzzle that have to come together to go ahead and make this. The non-profits, the foundations on it, the private sector, the public sector to go ahead and build that. I've publicly said I think the land bank should be in the purview of the regional housing partnership, not either a land trust, and I as the

chair have publicly talked about that, or even the city, where it goes to this third party where different counties can put properties in and they can go ahead and manage it. That's my opinion. Yeah, I think the most successful land banks and land trusts in the country aren't necessarily, you know, government vehicles, but government can certainly play a role. And it should be, I hate to use this straight phrase, but it should be a public-private partnership because the concept is sound.

And that's the purview of the regional housing partnership. You can carve off a PPEA and kind of do that. Interesting point, the Maggie Walker Land Trust in Richmond is actually the land bank for richmond henrico and chesterfield i believe and that's a non-profit and that is a non-profit um how about the uh model um that keith and anthony of woodard properties have put together with the fifeville neighborhood association building or bringing a project to market is that a model that can be scaled or

utilized by the Carr Foundation as a proof of performance, if you may? Are you talking about the Cherry Avenue Park? Yeah. Yeah. And again, the Carr Foundation itself wouldn't be in the business of owning or managing or building and developing property ourselves. Again, we're playing more of a catalyst role. We will be playing more of a catalyst. But I would say that model, I think, has a lot of potential and a lot of promise. And it's the idea that you had a project in the heart of Fifeville on a very prominent corridor that could have been a huge sore spot for the neighborhood, for the city at large, and they worked it and worked it and worked it and came to a resolution that seemingly everyone's happy with,

which in Charlottesville is very unusual a shout out to keith and anthony i personally was trying to buy that property for years to bring it into the land trust model i could never raise the four million or whatever it was chris k bash friend of the program had that listing for an eternity yeah and so you know hats off to them i've had conversations with them and working with with the pha and the city to go ahead and move forward. It'll be a very interesting project when it starts going vertical. Neil, you want to touch on that one at all? I think each development team brings a different flavor to projects they move forward. There are times when the resident-driven projects take a lot of time to make happen.

And you can understand why there are certain times that doesn't work. But there are other times when it does work that it's magical. And so when I think back to when Habitat acquired Southwood, think of the hurdles they jumped and the millions, literally millions of dollars that they got from government to make that happen. That was a catalyst. The government money was a catalyst to make that happen. And there were performance agreements that quite literally, and I hear people all the time say, well, nobody's going back to check. Not true. The checks on these performance agreements that Habitat's putting forth, and folks, before I go too far, Habitat is a developer.

Don't be – Habitat is a charity and a county to meet the performance metrics that are required in order to achieve getting the monies. They each got a million dollars from each of the city and the county in order to move this forward. So I think it's really important to recognize that those things do take time. And as I mentioned, there are always layers of funding. And I see the Carr Foundation coming forward as a new catalyst. If I can get that, that'll get me over the hump to get to the next phase of this development. And then I have a commercial part that may be at market rate to subsidize the below market rate that the funds from those commercial ones, from those market rate units, help fund the next phase. So I think this is an innovative time for the foundation to be taking wing. So if you don't mind, Dave, I've made multiple comments about, you know, the

non-profit capital of the world. That being said, the project that Habitat has done has never been done in the United States by any Habitat organization. So our little town of Charlottesville, our little region of Charlottesville, and I have these conversations with folks out west, are on the map that Habitat really, and the developers, but they really took the bull by the horns and are doing a project now. Other habitats around the country are trying to emulate. So yeah and they actually beta tested it down here in Wilton, sorry, Carlton, Belmont Carlton neighborhood with the Sunrise community which was the very first mobile home community I believe in the

whole country that was redeveloped without any displacement and again that was sort of they created a model there that now they've blown up. They took it to scale. Took it to scale. And, you know, I hear people say, well, some of these homes over in Southwood are going to be selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But that's because they've created a mechanism and sort of a formula that's not entirely dependent on the public purse. But if they can internally generate some subsidy, that helps to bring the cost of the other homes down. It's, I think, a very effective way of helping to provide for more affordable housing. Do you want to add to that? No, I just wanted to get out the point that, you know, for our little region, we are in the center

of this fight as far as density goes, as far as zoning goes, and as far as nonprofits go. The land trust, which I chair, we brought a concept I have out to Seattle that has actually been implementing using exilary dwelling units as rental units. And I don't want to get into the maps of how that works, but that now, because of this, can be done in our region. This is a good one for Dave. Right up your alley. Grayson watching right around the corner. He lives in north downtown, watches all our content.

Does Dave think the current council is the most open or receptive to housing affordability that he's seen in his time in Charlottesville? That's a great question. I think they've been, generally speaking, very receptive, very supportive. If you look at the amount of investment each year in the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund, it's on a per capita basis. It's one of the most robust, if not the most robust, local government housing funds, certainly in the state, if not beyond. And this council has consistently supported that. You know, when we created the affordable housing fund during my tenure, it was, you know, a couple million dollars, and now it's

well over 10 million, and that's been great to see. So they've been very supportive in working with a variety of partners to help attack this issue. I'd be hesitant to say they've been the most supportive of any council, but they're certainly up there. I might add to that that I think that when you do such comparisons, you've got to remember the Pocahontas rule. Oh, the Pocahontas rule. You know the Pocahontas rule? I don't know the Pocahontas rule, but I can't wait to learn it. I've read it. I've read your Pocahontas rule. The Pocahontas rule is you can't step in the

same river twice. And so the environment that this council is dealing with is very different than the environment that Mayor Norris was dealing with. And so I think you have to take everything understanding that it is a different time. The cool thing about the Free Enterprise

Forum is that on any given day, you'll see many pop culture references. Like on the homepage right now, I'm seeing the Lorax, Mr. Rogers, the Soup Nazi, a reference to Star Trek, the Greene County treasure residing with her photo over Greene County. That picture from Star Trek is one of the few pictures you'll see of Scotty wearing Judah's red shirt. I see that. I see that. In fact, Judah now has got a smirk on his face and appears to be going to the Free Enterprise Forum

for a new, absolute unique visitor on his Google Analytics, which is very exciting. Colombo is on here. You know, the other thing about the Free Enterprise Forum is if you ever want a real... Just check out Neil Williamson's socks sometimes. So it's pretty spectacular. The sock cam really did die an early death here at Real Talk.

I'm on the executive producer. We'll work on it for you. Yeah, you are the executive producer. What numbers are you actually crunching over there? I'm crunching on how you – The habitat? No, no. I'm crunching on if I buy a piece of property in the city of Charlottesville and put three units on it, what is it actually going to cost us?

So I'll let you guys chat for a minute, and we'll talk about it because I want to round it back to exactly how much money you really need to raise. I mean, I want to throw a personal question to the viewers and listeners. Erin King, welcome to the program. She's watching over at Feast. Thank you kindly for watching. Jeff Kamraff, the car wash – is it Empisario? Is that the word? He's watching the program right now. Lisa Custolo on Cherry. Randy O'Neill is a blast from the past. He's highlighting some history, which I won't get to with Dave. Lottie Murray, welcome to the broadcast. Thank you for watching us. Jeremy Rose watching from the Jeremy Rose Agency. This is a question that I'm going to highlight personally. 2022 HUD median income per household, $123,300.

When the 2023 numbers come out in April of this year, it's going to certainly be higher. We learned from Weldon Cooper that the surrounding area around Charlottesville is all upticking in population. And the folks that are coming here are coming with a lot of wealth. Bloomberg dubbed Charlottesville a top 20 hybrid remote work area in the entire nation. So how do the affordability efforts, and you guys are doing yeoman's work here, and I applaud you, how do they keep pace with, lack of a better phrase, the free market or capitalism and the wealth that is just coming here so quickly, guys? Well, I'll just say first, and I'll hand it over to our free market specialist here, but you have to be intentional about it. The market itself is not going to just generously provide affordable housing, especially deeply affordable housing.

And so that's where you have to be intentional in bringing stakeholders together, bringing partners together. Neil said quite accurately it often takes 8, 9, 10, 12 different sources of funding to make an affordable project happen, affordable housing project happen. And if you're not intentional about it, if you're not working on it every day like Keith's been working on with the regional housing partnership and the land trust, it's just not going to happen on its own. And, you know, as I said earlier, to a certain extent, it's a question of supply versus demand. And so we have to increase supply of housing. Neil has a great quote, which I cite all the time, about we need housing at all prices. I'm paraphrasing.

More housing everywhere for everyone. There you go. Hashtag. Hashtag. But when you talk about, for instance, the crossings, the crossings never would have happened through market forces. It just wouldn't happen. And, um, so that took, but there were market forces involved in it, but it took a lot of partners coming together to make that project work. And I, I do think we can continue to make an impact. It's never enough, honestly, but, um, we have to keep because, again, otherwise we're going to become one of those cities

where the people that do the hard work, I say this all the time, the people that do the hard work of making the city function, making this university function, won't be able to afford to live anywhere near here. You almost have to fly to qualify now. It is true, and the market shouldn't be the one to handle deeply affordable housing. If the community has a desire to have deeply affordable housing, the community should be paying for it. Well, I think the community does.

I agree, and they're putting money towards it. They're doing so privately through the foundations and through the nonprofits, but the market forces don't. Now, if we had a realtor who had been in this business for like 30 years or something. Maybe since 1987. Maybe. They will tell you that sometimes you see product mix change. Literally right now in new product,

we're seeing, especially out in the Crozet area, a lot of over-unders and townhouses coming on because that's where the market's going. And that is what the market should be doing. It is dealing with those things that the market can deal with. The market adjusts very quickly. Very quickly. And when we had that time of great unpleasantness,

you saw the builders that survived made changes on the fly to their product mix. And I'm a firm believer in the tapestry, in the quilt of different products to serve all kinds of incomes. And if you get in on the housing ladder in an over-under situation, two over two, you could be there 10 years and all of a sudden have a great amount of equity to get to the next step. Well, that's what's happening. If you start, we'll probably talk about this next week. I'm going to focus a little bit on new construction, but you're seeing, you know, in Altmar County and particularly, you know, townhomes are like the... It's been a complete flip. It's been a complete flip. Five years ago,

you couldn't sell a townhome. Now everybody's doing it. But it's a cost thing. So as you guys were chatting, I did some quick numbers on a listing that came in today on 714, I guess, South 1st Street. For $300,000, I rounded it up a little bit. Super tiny lot,.09.

So looking at it real quickly on GIS, you can probably put three units in it. That includes demoing the existing unit in that. You have to bring about $800,000 worth of subsidy to make this work because you cannot sell those units over 200 grand. And otherwise you blow past the 80% or the 60% that you're trying to do.

So back to your point that this comes from very different sources. If I donate $100 to you, that's $100 that goes to help this. Jerry generates $100 to somebody else. It goes to that. And as a nonprofit, we'll start looking to everybody, government and also private sources, to go ahead and do that. But that's a huge heavy lift i mean you've got to bring 800 6 to 800 grand probably closer to 800 to produce three units that's a lot of money to find a lot of money to find yeah and that's where sort of doing projects

at scale is um but this is only three i don't consider that scale no that's my that's my point it's like we need more. Yeah, yeah. What are some examples of fundraising efforts you're going to utilize? Well, it's funny you ask, because we haven't had our first meeting yet since I've started of our fundraising committee. I'm meeting with the chair, actually, right after this, so to get that ball rolling, to start mapping out what

the fundraising strategy is going to be. Right now, again, it was capitalized by some monies that Carr had raised many years ago for the Workforce Housing Fund. And as those monies have rolled back into CAR, that's the initial capital they've used to sort of seed funding for the foundation. But part of my, again, I've been talking to foundations all over the country and they've given me lots of good ideas for ways to raise money, whether that's through corporate sponsorships, grants, fundraising events.

A lot of them have a little statement or a little, what's the word I'm looking for, sort of on bill on the dues statement for the members of CAR itself. CAR has 1,300 members between real estate agents and affiliates and et cetera, and give them an opportunity to be part of the solution. And on their annual due statement, be able to designate a certain amount of money. That's a very easy fix. Exactly. Very low bar.

Right, very low bar. And one of the foundations I talk to, they get 85% of their revenue every year from just on-bill designations. Wow. And now that you have that, you know, so I mean, this land trust thing that Yonah and I are listing and selling, we gave back our commissions to help the buyer of this units not pay closing costs. And most real estate agents that I know, if not all of them, if given the opportunity, will donate, will help because they're trying to do the right thing. So giving them that opportunity is an excellent step forward. How about this question for Neil? What are your

thoughts on Natalie Oshren, Counselor Natalie Oshren's comments about the road diet? Well, first off, I want to say Natalie Oshren did prove to be the swing vote on what I consider to be a no-brainer decision. Back about now a month, it seems like, when the zoning ordinance was passed, they asked, well, what are we going to do with the applications we have in hand? And they said staff's recommendation was anything that came in before August 31st, which was the first date they advertised the public hearing for the Planning Commission, then they would be considered under the old ordinance. At the time, Councilor Puryear said, what's the staff recommendation?

That's what I want to do. The vote was 3-2, and that was what was going forward. There are six or seven applications that are in that, between the time of that advertisement and the enactment. By the way, the ordinance changed dramatically. I don't know how you expect a civil engineer to meet an ordinance that does not exist. So there were going to be legal challenges, in my opinion. Council took up the issue again, and Natalie Osherman was the swing vote, saying, no, it should be the date of enactment, which was December 18th, which makes perfect sense to me, and I applaud her for doing so.

With regard to the road diet, there are parts of it that make sense and parts of it that don't. There are key corridors in Charlottesville that need transportation to flow well. They don't need to be choked down. That being said, there are neighborhood streets that don't need to be four lanes. And so there's the opportunity to utilize that right of way for protected bike lanes and sidewalks. And there is a political will to do so. But we have to do it from a transportation standpoint

concerning all modes of transportation, including cars. Cars are not evil. So it's interesting. Some of the cities that have done that, not that values are not going up here to start with, but it actually increased values when they started

re-looking at changing traffic patterns and adding bike and pedestrian. It's happening on Barracks Road right now. It could happen right here on East Market Street. Jerry will have nowhere to park. That was a good one. I was waiting for the first thing right there.

It's been turned into a meme on me, which I really very much appreciate. I think I mentioned my parking trick one time on the show, and Dave chastised me in months past. Years past, remember? Yeah, sure. And I brought that up. And I appreciate his chast...

Is chastation a word? I appreciate that very much. This is coming. This is a good one here. So Neil and Dave obviously are fantastic on any show here. I'll throw this to you, Neil. Do you think that the mix that council has with ideology is one that is diverse or very much aligned right now? I would suggest that in both council and the Board of Supervisors are aligned but different.

There's a spectrum. Okay. I firmly believe that Lloyd Snook and Michael Payne agree about a lot of stuff, but there's probably some pretty core stuff on either edge that they are disagreeing about. And if everybody agreed, wouldn't that be horrible? That would be horrible. We should have different ideas, and we have a marketplace for ideas. And that's what council does.

And it certainly provides good fodder for talk shows. You have plenty of material to work with here. I know. It's very nice. It keeps the hamster wheels moving over there. Look at that. A little slow. I got one tiny little hamster in there turning around.

You know, I've done it on the show with Lloyd sitting next to me. A shout-out to him again. You know, he took the show with Lloyd sitting next to me. A shout out to him again. He took a ship that was kind of faltering and put it back standing forward and going forward. So I applaud him for that. But that vote that Natalie took was a very interesting vote.

It told a lot to me about how I think this city council is going to go forward. And real quick, for those who are not developer geeks, why was this really so important from a developer's perspective? Well, from a development perspective, it changed if it went through these six or seven properties that had been gone through the engineering and all of the process of getting the project in front of the city as an application. We'd have to go back to the drawing board and rework all of the numbers based upon the new ordinance, which would include, and this is why Mr. Payne was so in favor of it, 10% affordable housing. And so it really did, in Councillor Payne's view, cost the city affordable units to make that determination. My view is different, but that's okay. And in the end, it was a 3-2 vote with everyone voting the same,

and Natalie being a new person there, ended up voting with Juan Diego Wade and with Brian Pinkston. Or actually, I think it was... I can't remember who the third vote was. I just was put back on my heels that Natalie voted on it. That was something I didn't expect to see. But I was taking it from the approach of that's going to be indicative, I think,

of how city council is going to go forward. In addition, in a meeting this week, the... sorry, I don't want to do acronyms, the Metropolitan Planning Organization, MPO, meeting, Ms. Oshren ended up, Councilor Oshren participated remotely. And you have to say why you're participating remotely. And she said, because I couldn't get out of work early. Isn't it nice to have people that are actually working on council? I mean, we have lawyers.

We have others. I mean, I've seen many times Brian Pinkston's taking Zoom calls in his car so that he can take a coffee break from his real job. Too often we have put these positions of city council and board of supervisors in only the retiree can do it. I will say city council seems to have folks on council mainly that are working jobs. They do now. Albemarle County is different. Albemarle County is more retiree. Even the current council, I mean, Jim Andrews is retired, right?

Yes. Diantha McKeel is now retired. And Malik. But if you look at the current council in Charlottesville, all five are working. Yes, that's true. Yeah. But we haven't always had that. That's true.

And I think that sometimes we default to the lawyer model, which I love lawyers. I'm not one. But too many lawyers, not always a good thing. There you go. Back to those six or seven applications, they ran the risk of not happening at all because this is hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars. I know most of them.

But I think if you sit down and had a conversation with them, I think you'll get you affordable. You just need to have a conversation with them. Any exciting... Go ahead, Neil. with them, I think you'll get you affordable. You just need to have a conversation with them. I would love to say that that's the case. I would say that the idea of applications moving forward in accordance with the existing law is absolutely accurate. Period. I've been doing this for a long time. I've never heard that before.

It was the first time I ever heard the moment that it became law is when the first day starts. Anything that's in the system, and again, that's usually how this works, right? If you see something coming down the road, you want to get it in there, get your site, get entitled. The rush to the courthouse. You rush to the courthouse and you get it entitled so it doesn't have to change. Mr. Norris over here has a fundraising meeting on the very near horizon, so why don't we offer some closing thoughts for the panel. Dave Norris, the newly minted executive director of the Carr Foundation.

The show is yours. Well, again, thank you for having me on. Again, I'm two and a half weeks into the job, so I'm still drinking from a fire hose, but I'm excited about the potential of the Carr Foundation to make a positive impact, working with all the partners, including folks around this table, and to harness the resources, the time, talent, and treasure of not just the realtor community, but the broader Charlottesville community to focus more energy and attention and money on addressing affordable housing. So I'm excited and look forward to coming back in the not too distant future and actually reporting out on

concrete outcomes. Always welcome. Absolutely. Neil Williamson, my friend. Folks, I start January every year as a fundraising year at zero. Please hit the donate button at freeenterpriseforum.wordpress.com We only exist because of the funds that are provided by the community. We go to the meetings that you don't

want to and we let you know when something happens. So please support Free Enterprise Forum. Neil Williamson's fantastic. Keith Smith. Dave, right person at the right time. Thank you very much for taking on this role. We're going to give a shout out to you, Neil, on how to donate again, but how can we donate? So we're working on that. That's what this meeting about it is going on. Got it. Nice job,

Smith. But certainly you can go to the CAR website, car.com, C-A-A-R.com. There's a link at the top. You can click and find information about the foundation. Do you have contact information there? Not yet. We're in the process of building our own website for the CAR Foundation. So right now you can find us through CAR. But anybody can email me at Dave at carfoundation.org, that's C-A-A-R foundation.org. I'm happy to hear from folks.

And if you haven't done it, donate to Free Enterprise Forum. He is in the room doing the work, and it's fun to watch him. He has a lot of fun. But thank you for all the hard work you do, Neil. Eight or nine people asking where the entire show is archived. It's archived at realtalkwithkeysmith.com or wherever you get your podcasts or social media. Judah Wittkower, the director and producer. The I Love Seville Show is up at 1230.

Thank you kindly for joining us on the five-year anniversary of Real Talk with Keith Smith. So long, everybody. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.