The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Dave Norris Joined Marc Hunt Live On “A Life, Unedited” On The I Love CVille Network!

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

Dave Norris, Father, Former Charlottesville Mayor, Community Advocate, Nonprofit Leader & Housing Champion, joined Marc Hunt live on A Life, Unedited! A Life, Unedited airs live Wednesday from 10:15 pm – 11:00 am on The I Love CVille Network. “A Life, Unedited” is presented by Martha Jefferson House.

Good morning. My name is Mark Hunt, and this is a life unedited. In this podcast, I get to sit down with incredible people to hear their life stories and perspectives without the filters of hindsight. Today, I am very honored to have former mayor, Dave Norris on the show. Dave is a father, community advocate, nonprofit leader, and housing champion. Some people spend their lives avoiding public meetings. Dave Norris spent much of his adult life running them. Over the years, he's been a mayor, nonprofit executive,

housing advocate, community organizer, wedding efficient, and occasional lightning rod for public opinion. Through it all, he's remained committed to a simple idea that communities work best when people show up for one another.

Dave, thank you so much for being here. It's good to be here, Mark. Thanks for having. I really appreciate it. your time. Absolutely. Before politics, you spent years working in nonprofits and community organizations. You founded people and congregations engaged in ministry, an organization that assist people

in need find shelter in winter months. You have served as manager of the Financial Opportunity Center and Housing Hub at the Piedmont Housing Alliance, a nonprofit group that offers... housing, counseling, and community development to low-income communities. You've served as the chair of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority. Board of Commissioners served as Executive Director for Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Central Blue Ridge, and that's just to name a few. You spent much of your adult life trying to improve communities, solve problems,

and how people you've never met. Where does that impulse come from? Well, that's a good question. I mean, I grew up in a family that valued service to others. I remember my grandmother in Oklahoma talking about how during the Great Depression that her parents would bring, they were right on the sort of line of people that were trying to get out of Oklahoma, the Dust Bowl, and that had nothing to their names. Everything they owned was in their wagons and their cars, and so they would often stop at her house, and she would give them a place to stay. stay for days or weeks on end. But, you know, I think over time, just my interest in community

development just sort of, you know, sort of came up through my time in graduate school at the College of William and Mary. I was studying public policy and got really interested in what low-income residents were doing all over the country to take control of their communities through resident management of public housing and through community-based asset development, through other strategies for empowering low-income people. And I was studying that academically. And then when I moved to Charlottesville, I started getting into it personally and directly. And that's what really inspired me to kind of take on the challenges I've taken on.

Was there like a moment that you can pinpoint that you're like, oh, this is what I want to do? Yeah, I mean, my second real job in Charlestville was working as the associate director at Madison House at the University of Virginia, which is the student volunteer. Tier Center. And my job at Madison House was basically the liaison between the students and all the community organizations that they served, which is a great job, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And but just learning from all these community leaders, all these community organizations about the great work they were doing and how students could help them out, seeing the

students get passionate about community service and making change. And for me, it started asking the question, like I always call it going from the house to the wise. So it's not just how do we get more food into the mouths of hungry people? But why are there so many hungry people? And, you know, in a community of such wealth and such resources, why do we have so many people that are struggling, you know? And so I started a little kind of a semi-think tank at Madison House where we were kind of diving into the wise. Like, what's going on systemically, you know, that's causing so many people to be struggling. And there's a lot of answers.

There's no one answer. Right. But at the time, you know, wages was a big issue. UV, I remember there was a campaign to get UVA to pay $8 an hour a living wage, which now is nothing. But they were paying less than $8 an hour for so many of their employees. And so there was a big campaign to get UVA to pay a living wage. There was a lot of push on housing. There was a lot of push on other sectors.

And so that's really got my attention. and fast forward a few years, I got hired to get this new organization off the ground which became Pacham, the people in congregations engaged ministry. I was the founding director. And the thing that was fascinating about working with the homeless community was so many people that were staying in our shelter overnight

who were working, some of them working full-time jobs, but they couldn't afford the cost of housing here. So that, again, started getting me think about the why. Why is it that we have such a disconnect? And I started looking into what the local governments were doing to address this problem. And at the time, the city of Charleston was spending three or four times as much money every year, maintaining our public golf course as they were providing affordable housing, which is a huge disconnect. And so I had a group of buddies we used to get together at Rapture every Tuesday night for beers.

And I would always say, I wish the city would do this. I wish the city would do it. And finally, one of them said, if you're so smart, why did you run for city council? It became this running joke. And I had never run for anything in my life. But over time, they wore me down. And that little group of buddies became my campaign team. Wow.

In 2006, I ran for city council. And nobody really gave me much of a chance. But I think I was talking about issues that people really cared about, that the city government wasn't addressing adequately. And my number one plank in my platform was for the city to create a robust affordable housing fund so that we can actually start to chip away at this problem. And it took three years, but we finally got it done. What was that first meeting like at City Council?

It was very heavy. It was very overwhelming. Like being there in front of the cameras and people looking at you and expecting you to make good decisions. But I had been to a lot of City Council meetings on the other side. I had watched what was happening and learned to it was who. what was what and you know I really dove in and read all the briefing books and met tons of people and you know sat down with a city manager regularly to figure out what was going on and um just became an advocate you know and my again my platform was heavily focused on affordable

housing and developed a proposal for an affordable housing trust fund it took three years to get it passed and we were just pushing and pushing and pushing we got hundreds of people coming to city council meetings and finally got it passed after three years. That's incredible. And now it's one of the largest, if not the largest affordable housing trust fund, local affordable housing trust funds in the country on a per capita basis. So that's pretty proud of that. Well, you must have made quite an impact on your on your peers because they elected you in 2008 to be the mayor. Yeah, that was a very heavy experience as well. I had a wonderful run as mayor. I served two terms. It was exhausting

because I was working a full-time job on top of my full-time job as mayor. But I got almost everything done that I set out to accomplish. You can only do so much in four years or eight years. But it was a very positive experience overall. I was very interested in just community engagement, getting people to come out and share their opinion and get involved and make a better community. I'm curious.

You grew up in a military family. I did. You have to move around a bit and get it. Do you feel like that instilled in you a different perspective from the young age? It's quite possible, yeah. I mean, if I had to really cycle-analysis, I mean. But, yeah, I mean, I think anybody who's involved in the military is, by definition, you're interested in making the world a better place, you know.

And my father was very interested in, or it still is, very interested in politics. And so, yeah, I mean, I think, I'm sure that had something to do with it. But also just seeing the world. I mean, that's like, as a military kid, you know, we lived in Hawaii, we lived in Germany, we lived in Northern Virginia, you know, and I think the broadening your horizons and just seeing how other people live and how the world functions, and it really does get you interested and get you curious about how the world works. Yeah, absolutely. What do you feel like working in the community taught you that your degree did not? The books and the... Yeah.

You know, I think just the importance of people coming out, getting involved, educating themselves, fighting for change. You can read about it, but once you actually see it happen, it's a pretty heady experience. And so very early on in my time in Charleston, I got involved with this new organization called Farr, the Public Housing Association of Residents. And it's a group that's led by low-income residents in public housing, and they've been fighting for 30 years now to make their communities a better place. And so I've been on their advisory board since their inception, and just learning alongside them and seeing what low-income people can do to make change, whether it's advocating for living wages, advocating for better communities,

advocating for public safety, advocating for whatnot. you know better policies and and just going and going to conferences with folks and you know for a few years i actually worked in west haven and in low-income housing and just talking to people it just changes your whole perspective like and seeing how people live and how they overcome struggles and and challenges and it's uh but there's still hope there there's still um there's still um There's great things about places like West Haven. You know, we often think about, oh, it's crime-ridden or it's, you know, it's dilapidated. But people that have a strong sense of community, you know,

people look out for each other. I think that's something that many of us have lost in our communities. And so it's kind of envious in a way. But, yeah, so I like some of the stuff you don't necessarily read in books. Right. No, absolutely. Do you feel like Charlesville is on the way? right trajectory? Well, in some ways, yes, in some ways no. I mean, on housing, we've made great strides in terms of, you know, the housing fund is very robust. We have major investment now

in low-income housing, both the Charlottesville Housing Authority and Piedmont Housing Alliance, and Habitat for Humanity, are all doing major, like, hundreds of millions of dollars of investments in low-income housing, improving those communities. And they're all resident-led. Like if you look at what's happening in Southwood, you look what's happening in public housing, you look what's happened at Kindlewood, where residents are at, not just at the table,

but they're leading these conversations about how their communities can be improved. That's very inspiring to me. Yeah, that's really inspiring. So in that way, we're making a very positive difference. So housing is being transformed, low-income housing being transformed. But we don't have enough affordable housing.

And so many people are still struggling. The people that do the hard work of making this community function, it's very hard for many of them to live here. So they're either having to move 40 or 15 miles away to find housing they can afford, or they're having to settle for substandard housing, or they're working multiple jobs to afford housing, or they're making very difficult choices, you know, financially. And so we've just got to keep working at that.

And there's no one answer, you know, to address in the affordable housing challenges. But part of it's just supply-in-demand-demand. We just need more supply of housing period. To meet the demand, but part of it's also investing in deeply subsidized housing, which the city and the county are increasingly doing and looking at other ways of financing housing. We've got to look at permanent supportive housing to meet the needs of our homeless community. We've got to look at making first-time home ownership more affordable, which the Piedmont Community Land Trust is doing and some other organizations.

So we're all sort of chipping away at this from a variety of angles. We're getting there, but there's definitely big needs. Yeah, that's a lot of work ahead of us. Yes, absolutely. There's job security for people working in the field of housing. And there's many other issues, of course, with criminal justice, education, environmental. I mean, there's lots of challenges, but the good thing about a place like Charlottesville is people are engaged. There's so many people here that want to make it a better community, make this a better place.

I definitely agree. Were there any decisions you had to make as a mayor that kept you up at night? Oh, sure. You know, you're always making decisions and you can never please everybody, you know, and you shouldn't try because you never will. And so, and you're on, like, nonstop, 24-7, you know. So I remember this one time I used to be a member at ACAC downtown. I was there in the locker room one day and this very big man walks up to me in the locker

and buck naked everything hanging out he says Mary Norris I need to talk about a sewer problem in my neighborhood and I'm like can this wait like can we do this another time you need a towel right here's a towel but um so yeah I mean the decisions you make but my goal was always to try to find consensus wherever possible and you're never again you're never going to get to a place where you please everybody. But if people believe and see that you've given them a fair hearing, you've listened to them, you know, I've always, always answering emails to 2 in the morning, I was always answering phone calls, I was always responding to letters.

And if people feel like you listened, then even if you don't vote the right way or vote exactly how they want you to vote, at least they'll respect you and feel heard. And so that's the leadership that I tried to show during my time. was to listen to people and try to incorporate their views. And so I feel like we generally did that. We made a lot of progress during my four years as mayor and my eight years on city council. But there's always work to do.

Always work to do. Absolutely. Would you say there's one thing you're most proud of? Well, I think creating the housing fund was, that was the number one item on my platform when I ran, again, it took three years. It's now the largest such fund, or one of the largest such funds in the country on a per capita basis. That's made a huge impact.

We've created a lot of other housing infrastructure, so the Housing Advisory Committee, we created a full-time housing manager position in City Hall. We worked on incentives for developers to be part of the solution. So that was a big focus for years, was housing. We eventually, we sort of laid the groundwork for redevelopment of the project for development of the project. public housing by working on a residence bill of rights for public housing like we we attacked it from a variety of angles so that was we're continuing to see the fruits of that but also just infrastructure in general across the board we invested heavily in parks parks expansion which i'm very proud of we helped build a new fire station we renovated the

downtown mall you know we got a lot done and there's all again there's always more room always more room to grow but i feel like we made good progress. Interestingly enough, sort of out of the blue, the biggest sort of headline-grabbing issue of my last couple years on council was the water supply plan which I had no

anticipation that that was going to end up monopolizing so much of our time and my time. But, you know, working in city council, I call it the inbox effect. You know, you're always responding what's in your inbox, you know, and that one was huge in the inbox.

And we came up with a really, I a really clever plan for addressing our water supply and it was a compromise between a variety of positions that passed city council unanimously and then the whole thing fell apart but and we ended up clear-cutting like 60,000 trees at Ragged Mountain natural area which is just devastating but um but um anyway so you don't always win the battles you know right well it turned out it's still beautiful fortunately. Yeah. People often romanticize community service. What is the hardest part of dedicating your life to helping other people? Just not having enough time for yourself, really. I mean, it's a sacrifice, you know, but, you know, you manage that. But for me, like eight years was

enough. Like, after two terms on council, two terms of mayor, it was enough. It was exhausting. There's no way I was beat by the end. Because I wasn't doing enough to recharge. my own batteries, you know. Right. And, and, but, you know, I think it was worth it. I had a good time with it. There's a lot of good things about it, you know, and you get to meet a lot of fascinated people.

Sure. I got to meet President Obama three times, Michelle Obama twice. I got to meet Snoop Dog. I got to meet, you know, I got to meet the Dalai Lama. Wow. Just really cool people that when they come through town, you have the chance to greet them That's incredible. And also just going to a lot of community events and seeing people doing fun things.

And so my one and only in four years as mayor, I only gave one key to the city, which was to the first person in Charleston to win a gold medal at the Olympics, a rower. So I felt that was appropriate. Yeah, definitely, absolutely. But yeah, so there's good things. about it. But yeah, it's exhausting. Oh, I can't even imagine. Especially working in another full-time job. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and most mayors are either retired or they have a spouse that supports them, or they have a practice they can take a step back from like a doctor or lawyer or chiropractor or what have you. But yeah, I had no such.

You know, I grew up in a military family, so I didn't have wealth growing up, and I never had wealth. And so it was a lot. Can't even imagine. What do you feel like the public doesn't understand about housing insecurity and poverty and homelessness? That's a great question. So there's a myth out there that, like if you

look at the homeless population, for instance, there's a myth out there that they're all just coming from other places because Charlestville is this heaven for homeless people. First of all, it's not true that Charleston I have from those people. But the

reality is that the homeless population of Charleston historically, going back to when we started Potcham

in 2004, is much more local than the population of the whole. And not to say there aren't

people who are out on our streets who didn't move here recently, but for the most part,

it's a homegrown problem, and so it requires homegrown solutions. And I've

advocated strongly that we need to focus more on housing. And people are talking about spending over $10 million to build a homeless shelter, which is not really going to solve the problem.

It's a very expensive Band-Aid, and it's not well-located. And my argument is less focus on getting people into housing. And there are strategies that we know that work to do that. It takes a little bit more work. But in the long run, you know, you look at the crossings at Fourth in Preston, which was the first major investment out of our affordable housing fund. fund when I was in office. And when we built that and opened the doors in 2012, chronic homelessness in Charleston

went down over 60% in one year because of that one building. We've got dozens of people, long-time homeless people off the streets and into housing. And it's their small efficiency apartments. There's nothing glamorous about it. But it's a place they can call their own. They can shut the door at night and sleep in their own bed. you know, and there's a dignity to that. Absolutely.

And the organization that runs that's called SupportWorks Housing has a success rate that's just insane. Like it's over 95% success rate, meaning over 95% of the time when somebody moves out of one of their units, whether it's the crossings or they have properties all over Richmond, Hampton Roads, they're going up the ladder.

They're not going back out on the streets. And what makes that even more fascinating is when you think about, like, how they choose who to house, They have this survey. They go out on the streets and do this survey, and they identify the people that at most at risk of dying out on the streets

have the most need, that have most severe disabilities, have most severe addictions, whatever it is, mental health challenges. That's who they prioritize. And that's who they move into housing first. And when you consider they're dealing with the hardest to serve, and yet their success rate is over 95%.

It just shows that that model of housing works. Right. So we need to build more of that. We're finally after 14 years building the second crossings now up on 29 which will hopefully be opening this year that's going to make a huge dent in the problem but we have we can't wait 14 years right

we have to keep at it and look at other housing strategies as well shelter is a short-term band-aid it's not going to work it's not really going to do much for homelessness downtown for instance right so you know I think housing has to be the solution I'm an abolitionist when it comes to homelessness We do not have to accept homelessness the way we do now. Right.

And we can do more to make some real change. What have people that you've served taught you about resilience? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Going back, I know I keep talking about Pacham, but like just the level of hope and the level of like just, you know, the people just look out for each other. and there's a sense of community there. And I'll never forget, when I was running Pontcham,

my daughter was celebrating her, I think it was her fourth, no, her sixth birthday, fifth or sixth birthday, anyhow. And I was taking her out for her birthday dinner, and I had to swing by the shelter to drop something off or whatever, and they were all having dinner.

And I had her in my arms, and she had her birthday dress on, And, you know, there's a table of guys, and they're all kind of dirty, and they look rough, and they look tough, and a lot of them are alcoholics, and, like, just down and out. And one of them looks up, and he says, Chloe, you look so pretty today. Why are you all dressed up? She said, it's my birthday. And this guy turns to all of his friends around the table and says, okay, boys, you know what we need to do, and they all sang happy birthday to my daughter, and she was beaming, you know. And I can tell you story after story of people that they may not have as much material wealth,

but they have a deep sense of social wealth, you know, commonwealth. And that carries them through some very difficult times, you know. And so, but what I always love to see is what happens on the other side. So it's not uncommon that somebody will come up to me even now in Charleston and say, you know, I was down and out I was addicted, I was dealing with mental health, whatever it was, and you gave me a place to stay

and a place to get stable and from there I've changed my life, you know, and not everybody does but the success stories are really powerful. That makes it all worth it. It makes it all worth it. The guy that now runs a car detailing

company in town, he had been one of our long-term homeless guests at Pottcham and got out and That's incredible. Just got back on his feet, you know. And so that's resilience and that's just hope. And it's sad that not everybody gets there. But people have the potential of change.

Yeah. Yeah, that's incredible. So you mentioned your daughter. And now that as a father, what does fatherhood taught you about yourself? Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, it's a tough one. It's a very tough, I don't want to get into all, but I've had some real ups as a father and I've had some really profound downs as a father. I have one child who's not with us anymore.

And that's a whole other story. But we have a mental health system in this city, which is just decrepit. It's just, it's actively harming people, Regent and Community Service and Board. And it just needs to be destroyed and rebuilt brick by brick in a way that's more compassionate, more human focus, more prevention-oriented, and saves money. We can do all those things with the better. And it's possible to live with a mental illness and have a decent life. Not here, in Charlottesville, Virginia. It's really difficult because of organizations like Region 10, which are actively destroying people's lives.

And my son was one of those people, and his mother was one of those people. and his mother was one of those people. And so that's a whole other, I don't want to get into that. But I will say for my two surviving children, it's taught me a lot just about, you know, I just love seeing the world through their eyes, you know. And I try to expose them to other ways of living in other countries and other parts of the world.

And my daughter now lives in England, and she's living her best life in England and has a great job. Living the dream. She's living the dream. My son is 15. He's here in Charlottesville. He's been able to travel. I've taken him to Ghana to Iceland to England, you know, all over America,

to Alaska. And I love just seeing them experience, you know, new worlds and new ways of living and new foods. and so I hope they're both going to continue to grow as people. Yeah. If you want to get that travel, it's hard to, as it's impossible to carry it up. Exactly. Exactly. So you recently were in Ghana.

Yes, yes. What were you going to for? Yeah, so in my side gig, I have a side gig as the volunteer director of the Charlestful Winneba Foundation, which is we helped promote the sister city relationship. between Charlottesville and Winneba, which is a university town in Ghana in West Africa. I love it over there. It's my home away from home. I've been there 26 times now. Even in fact, about a house there. I built a house, a beachfront cottage there. It's a great place. The people are so warm and welcoming and friendly. The food is good.

It's just a beautiful area. The culture is very rich. The history is very deep. And so it's just, I love it over there. And so every year we bring groups from Charlottesville who want to experience Africa, want to experience Ghana, go visit our sister city. We'll be doing another one next May through the Charlottesville Winnow Foundation. Maybe you can come join us. And we package everything, your airfare, all your meals, all your lodging, everything is included.

And it's very life-changing experience. You know, usually they're 10 to 12 days. days. We always schedule it around. Winneba has this big annual festival, the first Saturday in May, so we always scheduled it around this festival, which goes on for four or five days. But the centerpiece is the first Saturday, May, been going on for hundreds of years. And the whole town comes, it's just barely controlled chaos. They know how to throw a party there. It's off the charts. And so it's several days of just marching and drumming and dancing and eating and revelry. And how's the food?

The food's so good. And it's all fresh. They don't eat processed food like we have here. It's all, you know, here you pay extra for farm to table. That's just the norm. You know, so everything's farmed to table. So, but yeah, it's a lot of rice. It's a very rice-based diet.

So if you like rice, if you don't like rice, you're going to be in trouble. There could easily be three types of rice at every meal. Like, you know. But it's good food. the music, the drumming, everything. And so, yeah, but more importantly, we have a lot of projects that we work on over there. So we support schools, orphanages, libraries, hospitals,

the fire service. Like, we do a lot working with people in Winneba to help make Winneba better community. And, you know, they're always looking for ways to reciprocate, you know, so it's been a very positive collaboration and exchange over the years. We've had people from Winneba come to Charlottesville. It's a lot harder

for them to come here, but we still welcome them here on occasion. And the friendships that have formed, and the relationships and business relationships and, you know, arts exchange. I mean, across the board, we've had almost 300 people now from Charlottesville that have been able to visit Winneba.

And it's been wonderful. Incredible. Yeah. That's so incredible. So, some generic questions that I ask everybody at the end of right. What do you hope that your children learn from watching the way you've lived your life? Well, that's a good question. You know, I want them to aspire to make the world a better place, you know,

and I want them to, again, just sort of spread their wings and see more of the world, you know, and see how other cultures work and how other people's work. and to read a lot and just educate yourself about, not just about the world, but just, you know, other everything. Yeah, so I think it's important for everybody to, you know, try to make their world a better place. Even if it's just their own home or their own neighborhood,

it doesn't have to be, like, working 5,000 miles away. Right. Because we can all make a difference. Everybody can make a difference, you know. And so, and my daughter loves animals, and so she's always trying to figure out ways to help animals. So everybody can do something good

to make the world a better place. And so it doesn't necessarily mean running for mayor. To be on a small scale. That's right. Well, my final question, years from now, what do you hope that people remember about you? Well, that's a good question. I would just think, how do I want to be remembered?

I guess just somebody who, you know, made a positive difference, you know, and tried to get people involved in making a positive difference. I don't know. I mean, yeah. I think you've definitely been successfully. You left a large positive footprint on Charlottesville. Dave, thank you so much. Absolutely.

Thank you, Mark. Amazing. Always a pleasure. My name is Mark Hunt. This is a life unedited where I get to sit down and have conversations with remarkable people like Mr. Norris here. Thank you. Dave, thank you. All right.