Planning Commission Work Session   9/22/2026

Yeah, let's go ahead and get started.

So yeah, I guess we have no public, but welcome to tonight's work session.

Thank you chair.

Yes.

At the presentation at least.

No, no, thank you.

Yeah.

If there's, if there's nothing else first, I'm happy to jump in and get started.

So my name is Tori Kanalopoulos.

I'm a long range principal planner with NDS.

So I will start off by covering the agenda.

So we'll do a quick review of the Seville plans together process, and then talk about comprehensive plans generally, including the five-year review expectations from a Virginia state code standpoint, the draft process and approach for how the city is looking at reviewing the 2021 comprehensive plan, some existing initial

Analysis, and then the project objectives for the five-year review.

Yes, I will pause a couple of times.

And then also if there's a question that you really don't want to forget, please feel free to jump in because this is a lot of slides to cover.

So I think that might be easier.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So starting with Seville plans together and next slide.

So this was a community process for updating the future vision for the city focused on equity and affordability.

So in March 2021, the first part of the project was adopted as the affordable housing plan.

Then came the comprehensive plan in November 2021.

and then the development code which was completed in December 2023 and then went into effect in February 2024.

So I do want to acknowledge that while I will briefly cover this process, it was much longer than what I'll be covering here.

So I'll summarize the two plans that came out of the process and the ordinance that was formally adopted, provide a little bit of context and background before moving to the main focus, which is the five-year review of the comp plan.

Next slide.

So the first part of SEVA plans together was the affordable housing plan.

So this was a priority topic that then informed the comprehensive plan and development code.

It was built on the 2018 housing needs assessment, which analyzed significant amount of data.

But one of the key pieces that came out of that was looking at the supply and demand side of rental housing found an under supply related to demand at both the highest and lowest cost ends of the market.

So the plan resulted in strategies for funding, governance, land use, tenants rights, and subsidy.

And some of the land use recommendations included increasing the total supply of housing, allowing housing in areas with access to transit jobs and other opportunities, and also reducing the risk of displacement of lower income community members.

Next slide.

Next was the comprehensive plan and the five guiding principles from the plan are shown here on the slide.

So these were intended to identify community priorities and then tie them together for the goals of each chapter and provide an overarching framework for the whole plan.

So guiding the goals, the strategies, and the implementation.

Next slide.

There were also six priority areas identified for implementation.

So that included housing, access to opportunities and resources, addressing the impacts of climate change,

addressing transportation, the natural environment and community engagement and communication.

So those six priority areas are accompanied by 30 priority strategies for implementation.

Next slide.

There are also objectives for future land use and a future land use framework.

So that provided guidance for the future land use map categories and related strategies.

Acknowledging the city will grow incrementally over time and the future land use map serves as a long-term roadmap to provide options for where that growth and change might occur.

These also helped guide the new zoning map.

So they included housing, housing that is near amenities and services.

Looking at the potential of vacant and underutilized properties, using a regional approach, improving multimodal transportation, protecting the natural environment, and then also tying into economic sustainability and access to jobs.

So while land use is a key aspect of the comprehensive plan, it's not the only area for setting policy and land use policies need to work in tandem with other programs, policies, and plans to implement the comprehensive plan vision.

Next slide.

And then finally, the development code, which was informed by guidance and recommendations in the comprehensive plan.

So this is a very brief summary of some of the changes from the previous ordinance, but the major highlights include allowing more missing middle and multifamily housing by right, removing minimum parking requirements, updated affordable housing requirements, and then more focused on form and urban design.

So the zoning map and districts were guided by the future land use plan designations and policies.

And the development code and zoning generally are major aspects of comprehensive plan implementation and the affordable housing plan implementation, but they're not the only aspects.

And in the next section, we'll also talk about some of the other areas of plan implementation.

Next slide.

So now we'll look at the draft approach and scope for the city's comprehensive plan and briefly cover some kind of general expectations for comprehensive plans.

Yes.

I don't know if it's going to be appropriate to ask the question later.

Slides number eight is nine under guiding principles.

You talk about regional collaboration.

I candidly am not getting a sense that there's been a really, really strong collaboration between UVA, Albemarle County, and Charlottesville.

And I don't get a sense that the leaders of those three organizations are really talking, except that

and Lupeck is not a decision-making group.

It's just a soliciting organization.

We don't get to decide how to approach things.

What are we doing to work closer?

I mean, I know you guys do a lot of great stuff with portable housing, but what are we doing to influence that?

What are they doing to influence the work we're doing?

Yeah, well, I would say the probably most immediate area for collaboration will be the multimodal plans that each locality will be pursuing.

So both the county

and the city will be starting their multi-modal or transportation plans in the near future.

We've already had separate processes and plans, but working together on them at the same time and having some overlapping opportunities for collaboration and community engagement.

So at the staff level, there's- And what I think you're talking about is more transportation that is more of a housing strategy.

And so that's really what I'm trying to understand.

Like, what are we doing to strengthen the collaboration between UVA and the county and us, and frankly, Green County, Lubana County, Nelson County,

Yeah, and I know Madeline Metzler, our housing senior planner, has been working on Madeline Metzler, the housing senior planner.

She's been working on the regional housing study update that's been going on so I don't think they're quite ready to share the findings yet but I know at the kind of city and surrounding county level there has been collaboration on data gathering and hopefully on the next steps as well so that's been kind of going on in the background as well but also the comprehensive plan is a good opportunity for collaboration Same question for transit

Because my understanding is that they're separate.

Every time I've asked the question the answer has been yes.

We are separate or yes together?

Yes together.

Is that true?

We'll see.

I asked the question.

Thank you.

On the housing front, it's my understanding that the shelter has been, now that it is up and running, has been a good sort of shot in the arm to

Really get those regional conversations going.

A lot of the city's unhoused population comes from outside of the city and outside of even Albemarle County.

And how do we get those outside jurisdictions involved in this housing ladder that we now have the very first rung of, and then the state just provided us funds for the next rung up from the low barrier shelter and that's being worked on.

So I think it's really.

I think it's been there, and I think now that we have this shelter, it's really created sort of a, hey, we're really doing this now, so how do we have that conversation more regionally, even outside of the county?

Cool.

Thanks.

So looking at broadly what a comprehensive plan is, so we'll start with this kind of overview generally, and then zoom back into the city's process.

So comprehensive plans establish a 20-year vision with recommendations to guide growth, development, and public infrastructure, amenities, and services.

They have recommendations for how and where localities should grow, supporting local economic development, protecting natural and historic resources, and then guiding decisions on providing public infrastructure.

So recommendations in the comp plan are used to guide initiating and evaluating plans, policies, and programs, developing the capital improvement program, evaluating and developing local ordinance changes, and then the review of certain applications.

Next slide.

So the comprehensive plan supports the city's vision statement to be a place where everyone thrives by guiding how and where projected population and employment growth should occur and then the delivery of the infrastructure amenities and services to support both current and future community members.

There are requirements in state code that are included, such as transportation planning and networks, community facilities and services, long range recommendations for the general development of a locality, and the construction and maintenance of affordable housing.

There are also sections that are recommendations rather than requirements, such as considering resilience and considering social determinants of health.

And then it's up to localities to decide how they want to meet those requirements within their comprehensive plans.

And it should also be noted that while there's the main comprehensive plan document, all of the plans that are adopted as part of the appendix are also considered part of the comprehensive plan, such as the climate action plan.

Before we move on.

So there's these nine topics here.

Yes, I did break a couple of them out separately, just to kind of show what's usually broadly included.

So out of these nine topics, are there any that we have, we're doing exceptionally well right now?

I mean, we've had some, um, kind of recent progress reports, I guess, on the Parks and Recreation Master Plan.

Um, and then especially on the affordable housing topic, um, that was presented to council, I believe on September 8th.

So there are some areas where we've been more clearly kind of tracking and reporting on progress.

I think we would need to dig more into the details to know how well we're doing with the comprehensive plan overall by topic.

I think there are some clear areas where we've been reporting and some where we need to do more.

I'd be curious to see in any future updates we get on this about what staff's feelings are on progress on all of these topics.

Regarding the CIP, we have sort of a challenging CIP process.

It's largely staff-driven, and when there is staff capacity to create a really strong project, that will come through.

When there isn't, it won't.

So that is a limitation.

So one opportunity we could see from this plan is to get a more holistic picture of what the needs are.

And that could help us to see the gaps of well, how can we push staffing to meet those needs?

Thank you.

So from a state code standpoint, localities need to review their comprehensive plan every five years, but then state code leaves it up to each locality to determine what level of changes, if any, are needed to their plans.

So a locality may decide that no changes are needed based on their review or an entire rewrite may be needed.

It's also a good opportunity to look at if there have been new state code requirements that are applicable since the last comprehensive plan update.

and also a time to look at how conditions are changing, if there's issues that are new since the last plan, if the priorities of the community need to be updated, revised population employment projections.

And then as we just talked about progress on current plan implementation.

Next slide.

So the process for the comprehensive plan review is still being scoped, but this is an initial outline provided below.

And there will be opportunities for community participation throughout the process and then work sessions and public hearings with the planning commission and council.

So right now we're still in the scoping stage and then also a little bit into gathering existing conditions data.

Um, and then identifying challenges, opportunities, and issues to address.

Then we would move into updates where needed to plan recommendations, especially the strategies.

And then if there are updated priorities for implementation,

Also coming up with a process to track and report on progress so we know how we're doing and where adjustments are needed.

And then moving forward, a processing cadence for comp plan reviews, expectations for those, and then small area planning.

Next slide.

Starting in early 2027.

So this is still scoping, gathering data, getting ready.

I've talked with a couple of counselors about this issue.

Yes, there will be a corresponding work session to this one, which will likely be in late October with council.

So it'll cover the same slides.

I have a thought.

This is not related to this exactly, but I just want to, before I forget.

There are a number of these types of plans that are going before us and then city council at different dates.

in work sessions.

And I guess I'm wondering if they would ever revisit just doing it together.

I think I'm seeing the urban forestry plan three times.

I mean, not that I'd, I just, I feel like the discussion between different entities would be useful rather than like two months later, they see it and then we're like, what did we talk about when we saw it?

So I'm just up for discussion.

Maybe not,

Well, and also just staff's time.

I mean, at least for the parks plan, I'm hearing it, you know, the parks and recs getting it on the tree commission.

We got it.

It's going to go to council.

I think it's coming to us.

That'll be, yeah.

I mean,

And I know you're looking at it in different ways, but it would be useful, I think, to have everyone who's interested in the room.

We could definitely look at that, especially for specific issues.

Yeah.

So then looking at how the city is approaching the comprehensive plan review,

Again, evaluating and responding to challenges, opportunities, and emerging issues since the 2021 plan and subsequent development code.

So recent community feedback shows support for previously identified values and goals such as housing affordability and multimodal transportation, but differing opinions on the best ways to achieve those outcomes.

So in talking about recent feedback, that's of course outside of the comprehensive plan review because that process has not started yet, but that would be places like council meetings, neighborhood association meetings, the neighborhood walks, specific projects like the Rose Hill repaving and Fifeville traffic calming and other venues.

So larger projects close to core neighborhoods have drawn concerns, especially regarding the potential for displacement and neighborhood change.

There's also limited information to date on development code implementation since the code has only been in effect since February 2024 and applications have had limited time to fully move through the process.

There's also continued community interest in other topics that relate to and support land use and housing, including transportation, protecting the natural environment and historic resources and parks and recreation.

So I'll note a few other things on implementation.

So with any major zoning or other code change, it takes time for developers and builders to learn, understand, and pursue development and for development to fully move through the process, along with factoring in the typical market and other constraints that occurs both locally and nationally.

So there's a couple studies that the Urban Institute did that show some examples.

One in Portland found that multifamily projects took about eight years to be completed after a major up-zoning was approved, so moving all the way through the process.

New York City found that the effects of their up-zoning were fairly small in the first few years and then grew

about six to 12 years more significantly after the upzoning.

So it will be different everywhere, but it does often take some time to see the effects.

And then locally, legislative grandfathering has meant that some projects have or are continuing under the previous 2003 code.

So some of the projects under that code include Aspen Heights, the Verve, the Bloom, 501 Cherry, and then many of the 100% affordable projects like Kindlewood and First Street,

There are also close to 20 projects that are not under construction, but that could still potentially move forward under the old code since they're not expired or withdrawn yet.

Some of the projects that have moved forward under the 2023 code include 843 West Main Street or LV Collective, The Mark, 915 East High Street, and then several projects that are more in the nine to 16 unit range.

And then actually, sorry Patrick, you can go back up one slide.

So then looking at the parallel plans and projects that are going on along with the comprehensive plan that covers some of the other topics besides land use.

There are multiple housing studies that either will or have been going on.

There's the Missing Middle Housing Working Group.

There's multiple projects under the Environmental Review Project, the Parks and Recreation Master Plan implementation is moving forward.

And then there's also the Economic Mobility Action Plan and the Citywide Mobility Plan.

So this is an opportunity to coordinate across those projects.

And then noting that reviewing the affordable housing plan would follow the comprehensive plan update.

And next slide.

So updated data and existing conditions analysis is important for informing this project and responding to those emerging issues.

So after this slide, the next section covers some of that initial existing conditions data.

So these are some of the questions that staff has been considering, have not answered all of them yet, but have at least started to gather data on them.

And there will be other topics that will be very important to gather data on, but these are some important ones as kind of the starting point.

I mean it looks good I think as we all know the last week and then tomorrow these public forums where we're getting a lot of community input on these new developments seem like you know useful to just you know I've been taking notes and listening and so I'm very interested in the affordable housing

Peace and where there might be adjustments, and I know that takes time, but we're kind of at a moment.

It's really in the new, you know, it's like in every, not everyone's, it's in certain neighborhoods' minds.

And as you mentioned, the core neighborhoods, I do think that's a great focus since that was sort of like a dotted line of like, how do we protect this?

And, you know, so there's room for,

Maybe adding other kinds of protections or overlays.

Were we going to learn about TIFs at some work session, I think?

I'd like to just offer a caution.

The last comprehensive plan process, we were very consciously avoided neighborhood groups because they are uneven.

They're weird people.

They are the construction of individual points in time, generally opposition to specific projects that may or may not be relevant to this comprehensive planning process.

So certainly share information with them as you would with anyone else.

You can get quoted for weird people.

That was an essential part of the comprehensive plan last time, was desegregating the data based on who is talking to us.

So like income, race, a really important one turned out to be renter versus homeowner.

The big ones.

It may be that there are new ones that will be relevant to this process that I don't know about.

But one of the challenges previously was keeping that sort of same discipline through the process.

And we failed.

It was hard to do.

It was worth it.

We didn't keep that rigor.

And one challenge with that too can be, especially

With, you know, kind of surveys if people don't necessarily want to answer questions, but doing the best job we can understanding who we're hearing from is definitely important.

Um, so then looking at the existing conditions data that we have so far, um, the first two slides, the information was provided by local demographer Hamilton Lombard as part of the state of the community presentation.

The Charlottesville metro area is one of the most expensive metro areas in the United States.

And since 2000, home prices in the Charlottesville metropolitan statistical area, or MSA, which is a census designation,

and includes Charlottesville and then the counties of Albemarle, Flubane, Green and Nelson.

Those home prices have increased more than any other Virginia MSA except the Washington DC area, but relative income housing is more expensive in Charlottesville than Northern Virginia.

Because housing prices are high in our area, but median incomes are also higher than surrounding localities, the area draws in employees that then live further away where housing is more affordable.

And then while there are higher paying sectors, including health and biotech, there are also a large share of workers that are employed in relatively lower paying industries, including arts, entertainment, and accommodation, and also education.

Next slide.

So an increasing share of the region's workers live outside of Albemarle County in the city of Charlottesville.

So of the 352 U.S. urban areas that have 100,000 or more people, only the Boulder area has a higher percentage of daytime population change from in commuters and our area is the second highest.

So that looked at primarily the city of Charlottesville and then the urban ring right around Charlottesville.

So people commuting into both the city and then the urban surrounding county right around the city.

So from 2010 to 2023, the urban area added almost 11,000 jobs, but only 3,000 of those were filled by residents of the urban area.

So we provided a third of the homes for the 12.

There's not a percent job.

Seems like not a very good ratio of

This goes to your point, Hosea, about regional collaboration on housing.

The city can't do this on their own.

We don't have the footprint to be able to do this, even if we wanted to.

It's going to take a regional approach.

If I'm remembering correctly, I believe the change is about 30,000 people but that's coming into both the city and the urban ring.

So looking at where development and redevelopment have been occurring.

So we started by looking at the past five years and then anticipate adding onto this data and also creating maps that are more interactive and more of a dashboard format, but this is an initial step.

So we are working on gathering the older permit data, but it gets more challenging the further back we go as the data quality and the unit type labeling also get less consistent the further back we go.

But this is some initial existing analysis.

You can see the kind of approximate distribution of units there.

So for some of the multifamily projects that would include some early sections of South First Street, Kindlewood and Sixth Street, also the Sunrise-Carlton development.

So those were the fully affordable projects.

They would, yes, for completed.

This predates those, yeah.

Yeah, the dashboard, yeah, I think it was like close to 3,500 sort of current units under... 314.

How much?

3,314.

I think half of that's, but these are units.

So some of those units have four bedrooms.

So that number is actually, if it were to be a bed count, it would be a much bigger bed count.

May I ask a question about, just because we're on the topic of student housing, something that came up over the past couple of weeks in the discussion about

The LV project was how they're paying half of the in lieu fee because they're a student project.

Is that something we could look at as an amendment or through this process?

Because it did seem

Like maybe that distinction between student and, you know, we had the radius for a while, you know, these different things.

Yeah, what happened to, there was going to be some more study on that.

It got, it was pushed down the road.

So that's actually a criteria that was part of the affordable housing plan.

And I think there was some loophole that Kellie pointed out that they had nothing, they only went up to three units and they built four, five, six, seven, eight beds per unit.

Looking at this map, I'm trying to map the small area plans we've done against it.

And I suspect that generally where we've done a small area plan, we don't see many dots.

There seems to be a negative correlation just looking at the map from my eye.

If I'm right, I'd like to know more about that.

Remember, these are completed units.

True.

So a future map, I think, is.

They're going back like 10 years.

It could be reverse psychology.

Next slide.

Then looking at the development dashboard that we were just discussing, this is

filtered to only be looking at projects under the 2023 development codes.

This was just a snapshot as of August.

And this is pulling from permit data.

So there are some kind of smaller and non-residential projects that get pulled into the map.

So things like building modifications or bus stops, because they have a permit associated with them.

But you can see the kind of approximate distribution of projects that are under construction approved or under review on the map.

And then up top, it shows the projects that have been completed and that are in progress and under review.

And those are based on permits.

So each project would have an associated permit.

One of Danny's questions was if the dots could be different sizes for different sizes.

Is there any value, because a lot, the bulk of the large developments are not under the 2023 development code.

They sort of snuck in under the 01.

I find interest in the 12 additional dwelling units.

Is that a detached small unit in somebody's backyard?

Probably a mixture of that and individual house lots.

Should not.

OK. We can defeat those.

It's hard because some of those, though, could be someone putting multiple units

in a backyard, not just one.

But it's an example of, I'm seeing middle housing being added to the city, and there is examples of successes of gentle density of something in somebody's backyard where you might not actually know that something was added back there, but there's an additional home in town for people to live in.

Are single family attached to townhomes?

Because two family dwelling... A single family attached is, it's fee simple, right?

Two families typically on one parcel.

These are terms and

This is the other hard part is we don't use these terms anymore.

Under our old code, it's two family was two units on a property that was owned by one person or they could have been condoed.

A single family attached speaks to duplex and town homes, single family detached speaks to a typical family home.

Can I ask a question that I probably should have asked two slides back?

And are we, how friendly are we to manufactured housing units?

That's more the HUD certificate.

I mean, you can do it.

Or we haven't done any.

Yeah, I mean, you have to have the HUD sticker, which is apparently very hard to get, because you have the national HUD and then you have the Virginia HUD sticker.

They just don't rarely come in.

Okay, got it.

Okay.

I don't know enough about this, but nerderly looking at webinars and stuff.

So one of the things good that the federal government may have done in the recent housing bill was supposedly to loosen those restrictions and encourage more manufactured housing because they generally cost less.

But I think we'd have to see if that in any way applies to our particular city.

But I've noticed that in a lot of the strategies that that's a line item, like increased policies to allow more manufactured housing.

And I don't even think they mean necessarily mobile homes prefabricated, any sort of less expensive brought to site kind of

I'll find out more about that.

That seems to be a common one, you know, how there's like usually a list of the current ideas of how to increase affordable housing and that seems to be on there.

Slide.

So then, looking at affordable housing units specifically, we estimated how many had been completed from 2009 to 2026, so about 561.

The majority of those were built in three neighborhoods and then

For the affordable units that are in the pipeline, so not yet builds.

Those are also in three neighborhoods.

Um, primarily two of them overlap, so north downtown and Ridge street.

So these are, um, gross, not net affordable units.

So it's plus one unit, even if it replaced an existing affordable unit.

The projects that are under review are the ones that are likely to move forward and have a known number of affordable units.

So there might be some other ones that are more uncertain, but they're not included at this point.

So these also include projects that are fully affordable and then ones that are part of a market rate development.

It's a mix.

So it's, um, some of them are ones that had to be affordable from a project standpoint, but then some were just projects that are fully a hundred percent affordable.

Okay.

Yeah.

So just anything that's, yeah, that meets the definition of affordable.

I don't know what the answer is, but spatial equity jumps to mind when I look at this slide.

I think there's a spatial equity element here, but I don't know what it is.

But we know what it is.

I've got a guess.

What do you mean by spatial equity?

I have heard concerns from people in our, I'm forgetting what our term is, historically lower income or historically African American areas, that they're getting a lot of these and other places are not.

That's been a concern that's been flagged to me.

Well, a number of these are redevelopments.

and they're also in proximity to services.

Next slide.

So then looking at the in lieu fee side of it.

So the total affordable in lieu fees for completed projects from 2009 to 2026 was about 2.7 million.

Then looking at projects that are under construction, it's about 11 million and then projects under review, about 8 million.

For the projects that are under construction, that is pretty much the Verve, the Bloom, and Aspen Heights.

And then for all of the projects that have had in lieu fees, it's been a combination under the 2003 and 2023 development code.

And there's been a combination of special use permits, rezonings, and then just the affordable requirements based on the zoning ordinance.

So a variety of sources that all of those came from.

So do we have, that's basically the prior slide, but for the 2023, do we have information on how many inclusionary zoning, more specifically meaning

Do we actually have it?

Well, and I don't think any have actually fully gone through the process to get to the point of having finalized data.

Sure.

All right.

Next slide.

So neighborhood change and addressing displacement are priority issues in both the comprehensive plan and affordable housing plan.

There are

multiple ways to estimate which areas might be at greater risk of displacement.

And then also to measure where neighborhood change has been occurring.

So this is a list of potential options that can be used from a data standpoint, including cost burden household demographics, household income, and other potential indicators.

Um, one challenge is that in, um, you know, the smaller kind of geographic breakdown that you get into with census data, the margin of error.

gets challenging to address, but these are still useful indicators that we can take a look at.

And this is just an initial list.

So we would anticipate community input to help finalize what data we should look at for risk of displacement.

And that goes into the next slide, looking at how the current comprehensive plan considers which areas might be at risk of displacement.

So the plan also recommends revisiting the methodology for identifying communities at risk with each five-year plan review.

So this is a good opportunity to revisit the topic of sensitive communities and what kind of data we're using to identify which areas might be a greater risk of displacement.

And speaking with people working on poverty issues, a crucial question in terms of getting out of poverty, good or bad in this area, is do you have reliable transportation?

And for a lot of people, the answer is no.

And then the answer on the good job is no.

You mean areas adding to this list of

census data about whether they have transportation needs.

I know that CARTA, the study they're doing has some data points on transportation related stuff like zero car households and stuff like that.

So the next two slides have some initial data on change, on community change, and we'll be asking for community input to identify other data points.

But these two topics were key components that were looked at for the affordable housing plan and the comprehensive plan.

So this shows change in income distribution, looking at 2019 and 2024 data.

So the 2019 data is shown in light blue, the 2024 more recent data shown in dark blue.

So this is consistent with the regional findings that we looked at earlier with income distribution shifting towards higher incomes.

The data does include University of Virginia students that live in the city, so that can sometimes skew some of the lower ends of the data, but does seem to show that there's a combination of potentially overall incomes going up, but also

It would be interesting to see this also adjusted for inflation.

Same thing.

You can look at doing that.

Next slide.

So looking at change in housing costs, about 40% of all Charlottesville households are considered cost burden, meaning they're paying more than 30% of household income to earn housing costs.

So that's about 21% of homeowner households, and then about 55 and a half percent of renter households.

And then for both the change in median rent and median home value,

Yeah, this is just overall median rent, median home value, and everyone that lives in the city.

How does student income get?

If they don't have income, is it zero?

Or do you see the parent's income?

That is a great question.

I am not sure offhand how that gets reported.

OK. How does this look for the rest of the world?

For example, 40% of the people who live in blue van

Seems high compared to the regional data.

So the city is looking at the comp plan, comp plans of other localities to help inform best practices.

So that includes Charlotte, North Carolina.

So these are just a couple of slides looking at one aspect of their comprehensive plan update that they did a few years ago.

They developed an equitable growth framework with a variety of mapping and data analysis tools, including a population's vulnerable to displacement overlay that they used as kind of an initial step in their comp plan.

So they looked at areas where residents and businesses might not have access to daily needs, choices for housing, employment, or safe and healthy environments.

So then they use that to inform comprehensive plan recommendations, potential locations to study for future planning efforts, and then tracking progress.

Next slide.

Just a cursory look.

It looks like over half, the national average is over 50% is cost burdens.

Yeah.

There's a bunch of, I guess in 2024, there's a lot of reports coming out of the government saying that we just jumped over 50%.

Next slide.

So then just a couple of slides to summarize the objectives for the five-year review kind of based on what we've looked at so far.

So these first objectives are kind of the basic requirements.

So they're more staff and state code focused, kind of some cleanups and refinement.

So looking at what we need to do from a state code standpoint, updated data,

Any updated requirements and then aligning a comprehensive plan with plans that have been completed since November 2021 like the Climate Action Plan and Parks and Recreation Master Plan.

Next slide.

And then the next slide has the more substantive potential changes for the comprehensive plan five-year review.

So looking at the current plan strategies and priorities and where changes might be needed.

So that's where we would look at any potential major policy or other changes.

Um, and this will be a key area for community and planning commission and council input.

We also want to establish a process for regular tracking and reporting on plan progress, establish a framework and approach for small area planning, and then coordinate across all of the other projects that will be moving forward at the same time.

So there are over 600 strategies in the current comprehensive plan and 30 of those are priorities.

Some number of them are probably already done, are definitely already done.

Um, and it's a little bit tricky too, because when you're measuring progress, there's actually quite a few of them that I would put in the ongoing bucket where they're kind of

general direction or policy and they're never done.

So it might be helpful to kind of sort them by what they are as well.

Are they- Which ones are goals and priorities that change over time and which are actual- Like a specific project or ordinance or yeah versus just kind of a policy of how to do things.

Okay, next slide.

So moving to the questions, staff has three questions for the planning commission today to help inform the scope of the five-year comp plan review.

So although it's early in the process and there will be additional topics and issues that will be identified through the planning process, staff is looking for a baseline to start from, including to help identify what project resources may be needed and have a general direction to start the project.

Staff is anticipating a plan review and not a rewrite, which means starting from the 2021 plan goals and overall approach, and then identifying during the review where changes to strategies and priorities may be needed to achieve the desired outcomes.

So we want to confirm that approach with the planning commission and then the council.

The five-year review is an important time to check in on progress and where adjustments may be needed.

Typically the 10-year timeframe would be the full plan rewrite.

And the five-year review would be for making changes if needed to achieve plan goals.

We're asking these first two questions together since it's two ways of asking a similar question.

So we would ask the commission to discuss these together before moving on to the last question.

So based on the information covered in today's presentation, a comprehensive plan implementation that's occurred to date and the project objectives, staff is looking for planning commission feedback on whether changes are needed to the comp plan.

Land Use Vision and overall approach.

And if so, what should those changes address?

So not asking about the how to achieve the plan goals yet.

So asking if changes are needed and then the how or the strategies would come during the plan review process.

With the code cleanup?

Jump back up one slide.

So this is actually more policy.

Right, where I keep telling y'all when we're not doing policy on the code cleanup stuff, this is more policy.

So the code cleanup is coming from that standpoint of our comprehensive plan is right, our goals are right, our policies are right.

We need to change some of these actual development code sections to be more in line with that.

So it's really steering away from policy.

There is a gray area.

I know we've kind of talked about that before.

Yet so are the work on the code cleanup is really just about refinements, clarifications and refinements.

Updating your comprehensive plan is about policies.

Are we the right policies?

Who wants to go first?

I don't think we do need to make

The Future Land Use Map

See how stuff could turn out and I may get in trouble for this and obviously we need to listen to the community, but I think there's the Development is kind of an easy target for blaming The issues around displacement and gentrification and property values going up it

because I mean it's easy to see that like in 10th and Page you know there's all this development that's popped up in the last 10 years and property values have skyrocketed and then there's been a lot of turnover in the neighborhood but it's it's not clear did that development cause that to happen or was it going to happen anyways and I'm kind of

leaning towards the it was going to happen no matter what.

And I'm not sure that backtracking right now is going to fix that problem.

So that's one thought there.

The other thought is whatever we end up deciding, though, with these core neighborhoods and the RNA zones, which I would like us to solidify that and figure out, because it was a Band-Aid.

And just let's make an actual real code for these areas.

whatever we decide uh it would be nice if we could stick with it over the next five years as opposed to we've been kind of wishy-washy i mean i know we just like we haven't changed anything but there's been a lot of kind of verbal wishy-washiness about it and kind of like oh is this really what we want um so it would be nice if we could get something that's actually

You know, council and client commission can really stand behind.

That's easier said than done.

Yeah.

I generally agree with keeping the vision and the policies with what is in the current plan.

As you mentioned, Rory,

A lot of the upzoning takes years before you really start seeing any work come out of it.

So is there things that we can do more near term that can help close that gap?

And I know the city is doing some good things around property tax.

I'm not sure the actual, uh,

mechanism but helping people pay their property taxes if that becomes a burden or helping people pay rent vouchers if that's a burden.

I think you were working with OSE and I guess you've taken over the 10th and Page, Rose Hill, whatever.

It was a small area plan now, I'm not sure what it is, but you guys switch focus from zoning to more of finding other solutions.

I'll build on that because

I think, again, often in these meetings, the gray area is coming through in some of the discussions.

And I think the new zoning is an easy target.

But I think the developers coming in are like the process of them coming in where they've already spent millions of dollars designing their project, and then they have to do the one community meeting

where it's already a done deal, I think has been difficult.

And so maybe looking at that process and also working with communities, and maybe not, but there's something around that that's been difficult.

And then also working with communities in advance, and maybe they are the ones that are designated or anyone.

to think about what kind of agreements or what they would want to see if a developer came.

Because there was a lot of, at least in the recent LB meeting, the developer was offering some things that no one knew about.

And then it was very awkward that they were like, well, maybe this is happening.

Maybe this money is going here.

Maybe we're starting a fund.

And it seemed very like they were trying to offer something.

The neighborhood did not quite understand that because it wasn't public, you know, it wasn't like an open discussion.

So like working with the neighborhoods before to be like, oh, you know, if this does get developed and they, you know, and you want to talk with them, what are the things that you're looking for?

Maybe that's the small area plans or just thinking ahead to those moments rather than

It just feels very awkward at the moment.

So thinking about that process more than changing the zoning necessarily, but just like, what is the process for when these big developments come in?

And also, I think you already alluded on the maps to looking at where those vulnerable sites are, because I think, you know, the biggest lots that were adjacent to these neighborhoods are going to be filled.

you know just kind of looking out for those moments so that I feel like the neighborhood leaders have been doing a lot of work but it's not always clear what they can do and so not having the out-of-town developer coming in and saying like oh we're gonna create this new font or you know it was like it was a bit odd the way things were going down

So that's one thing I would just add to the sensitive communities.

In their toolbox of things, how would they like to work with someone coming in and offering to do a community benefit agreement?

And is there someone at this, I don't know who in the city would be at the table or how that gets negotiated.

It seems like

This one is sort of by the seat of the pants situation.

And it's, you know, it's moving through, but maybe just adding that to the list is community benefit agreements with developers.

That's a kind of a touchy issue because it has to be private.

We can't be involved into potential zoning violation

I know Tori's been doing some research lately on how communities are using that.

So far it's been out of state.

people.

Of course, other states have a lot more flexibility than we do.

So anyway, it's something to put into the mix, but it's it's one with caution.

I have a few things.

So we spent a lot of effort last time on zoning as an anti-displacement tool with repeated assertions that it's not an anti-displacement tool to the extent that it is, there's a million tools that are better.

And we should, to the extent that we want to deal with displacement, we should be using other tools.

We've not done a great job on that.

So really drilling down on that issue I think would be helpful.

because we heard a lot of anxiety about displacement then and I'm hearing it now.

I'm hearing that that's what the public wants us to focus on.

I'd like to see that.

I appreciate our creativity and really we've worked hard on this, but zoning is not doing that.

The sensitive communities boundaries, I think I heard this from you, but our demographics have changed.

The land use has changed.

So updating those boundaries based on current trends and needs I think would be helpful if we still want to do it.

And I think it's been useful, at least as a spatial guideline about here's where the stuff is, be careful.

I think it's good.

The university area has changed quite a bit since the last time we did this.

We've got some major new developments on both the private and university side.

I think that's worth a very close collaborative look.

It's clearly an area of serious interest and I think serious opportunity.

So to the extent that we're doing major changes to the map, I think that's a good place to focus.

Preston and Cherry.

Yeah, I've heard a lot of feedback about challenges with our zoning.

I think they were well intended, but they were very much last minute.

And it's not a perfect system, which we didn't expect it would be.

I don't know what the best solution is, but it's probably not what we're doing.

I just had a quick comment.

Please.

One of the issues I've noticed is that hard line between sensitive community and corridor.

So maybe there's something there that we could work on.

Because I think that's where the rub is.

So community benefit agreements.

We have a lot of controls and restrictions on what we can do on mandating stuff.

We have remarkable freedom on spending.

We could offer carrots.

We could offer free candy.

We could say, hey, if you want to do a community benefit agreement, we have a pot of city funds and we will match you two for one if you want to.

We could do things like that.

I appreciate your displacement comment.

Again, I know I represent the University and I'm not loading the room in some of these comments.

I'm just trying to think, I think there's some great comments brought up, but this feels like we're a bit of a, still at a crossroads.

It feels like it's been a prolonged crossroads for quite some time here.

It came in 2016 and in 2017, I feel like everything kind of changed.

And so, you know,

I agree, I don't think the comp plan has to be, I think the contents are active, you know, are great.

I was curious if the team looks at other best practices, like are there other municipal comp plans that you feel are kind of like heads and shoulders above, I'm just looking at Denver's right now, or looks like Greensboro, like I was just curious if there was sort of an aspirational goal or there's been some adoption of some comp plans that we feel like, you know, maybe we could use that as a guiding principle.

I feel like one of the best things that we could get out of a comp plan is to have clarity of kind of the shared vision so that as people change, you know, people are at the risk of leaving and new people come in, there's still sort of a backbone that can help weather change, either at the council level or the neighborhoods or anything else.

Like, I feel like it can be a sort of a north star, so to speak, to keep us on track.

I feel like that's one of the things that's been a challenge in the last 10 years.

I feel like there's been a lot of

That's happening at the university, it's happening in the county, it's happening in the city.

And so, you know, I think that idea of how can we have that and what I'm getting with that is Ross brought up that great point about maybe this comp plan can start to baseline if we have these six buckets that are these sort of aspirational goals, maybe we can start to establish a measurable

Baselines, so that moving forward, those six goals, which I have a hunch probably won't change.

Again, looking at these other municipalities, they all more or less have the same buckets.

But maybe we could start to actually figure out what the guidelines are to see, are we actually making any headway on any of these buckets?

Which ones are we doing great on?

Which ones have we done nothing?

So again, I'm not sure what that

I mean, I would think we wouldn't want to do this and not think about that and wait.

I think it's about maybe being very clear about where are the tools, like Lyle's saying.

I think historically we've leaned on a development code tool to try to enact change, but maybe this is another place where there are municipalities, maybe there's other levers that can sort of, I don't make an impactful benefit in a shorter horizon.

I think

That's all I had.

I was curious, this is kind of just an open conversation, Jose, do you guys have experience when it felt like the city and the university and the county were kind of working together in a way?

Because I don't know if I've had that experience.

My understanding is there were meetings that used to exist that no longer exist.

And I know with the relative new leadership at UVA, with the strategic plan going on there, with this comp plan going on, with all of these other surveys, it does seem like a great opportunity to kind of get heads together as documents are being drafted.

Could it be written in there?

We don't get to do as long as possible.

We just get to sit there and let's do what folks are doing.

We do have a standing invite from the county to do a work session with their planning commission, but I don't think.

And I just thought, you know, I think you, you and whoever our leader is, our India's leader needs, you, their chair, India's leader,

So we emailed each other.

I'll point back to what I think common interest would be for at least the rest of the county is what's happening around the urban ring.

And as it relates to transportation, as it relates to affordable housing, and as it relates to employment.

They wrapped up their comp plan update last year, but the next step is looking at activity center planning.

So it's kind of like small area planning.

And I think they're starting with kind of like the Places 29 North, Airport Road area with all the major employment coming there.

But future studies I think would look at like Pan Tops and some of the areas that are more adjacent to the city as well.

I think, I guess since theirs is fairly new and adopted, it seems like it makes sense for the Charlottesville one to sort of funnel off of, at least build on what's in there.

I think that kind of leads into the last slide.

I think we've kind of talked about a lot of these already.

But looking at what are the main challenges, opportunities, and emerging issues to address with the comp plan review.

So this is kind of the initial list based on everything we covered today that staff has put together.

Some of these were also

at least talked about with the previous comprehensive plan and intended to be revisited later.

So they include, as we talked about, concerns for displacement and neighborhood change, multimodal transportation, addressing barriers to housing development, especially missing middle housing, while also protecting the natural environment and ensuring a high quality of place, aligning the comp plan with new and updated plans,

Looking at limited and smaller scale commercial uses in residential districts and then providing more opportunities for community engagement related to how the city makes decisions and what tools are available.

I mean, maybe a bullet.

I don't know if it's even worth a bullet, but

Like some structure around the collaboration with the region or just, you know, I don't know if there's an annual meeting, you know, maybe there's something that could be baked in no matter who's in what position.

You know, that's just like an annual day, a meeting of UVA Albemarle and City Earth.

Maybe just a bullet about that.

I struggle with those bullets because we're such a small piece of picture.

Well, yeah.

Because you kind of want that bullet three times.

I think I'm going to do a little digging into that and try to figure it out.

I think they're a subgroup under the COO.

Who are these agencies?

and J.J. Davis.

And I also know the foundation has also sort of looked into that.

It has a problem with UVM.

And that's part of what I'm going to try to do after this meeting is start to like poke around and figure out where we can sort of just figure out what that group is.

My guess is it would probably be

Or maybe it's an adjustment to Lupeck.

I mean, that would be one option is, you know, could that sort of grow a little bit since it's already established?

They would have to revise the mission because they become a little more open than they'd like to be because they're pretty closed.

I've gotten my knuckles wrapped a few times by talking too much about

But I do have, I just want to make sure I got all of Danny's questions.

So I want to make sure we don't forget that.

Um, okay.

So I think we remember something we talked about again.

I'm just quickly scanning this and I know it's in our buckets.

Sorry, Carl.

You know, I know this have clarity on resiliency.

I just know that was a key aspect after what happened in Nashville.

And I just think since 2021, that was like a real sort of wake up call.

And I don't want to lose sight of it.

I know we have other fires currently burning, but there could literally could be a fire burning.

No, it's a good reminder too that the adaptation resilience plan will be adopted as part of the comp plan.

I think resilience is one of them, but anyway, just being very clear about that.

Something that was valuable in Charlottesville Friends Together was some targeted conversations with people who were sort of most at the receiving end of some city policies who generally don't show up to meetings to talk about what their issues were and how they map to what we're trying to do with this very large, long-term conceptual process and paying them.

which is effort and expensive, but the information is valuable.

So some of Danny's comments were he was suggesting to make the data available to the public because some members of the public may want to do their own analysis.

He asked, how were affordable units defined prior to the new zoning code?

I'm not sure which slide that was referencing.

The summary list of affordable units completed between 2009 and 2026.

Is there a yearly breakdown?

How many affordable units have been created because of the inclusionary zoning?

Again, he said there's interesting data in the presentation and he suggests publishing it in a machine-readable format so that community members can do their own analysis.

And he thinks our vision and goals are still relevant, whether you're pursuing our issues and we're down to implementation and the goals themselves.

He expects that we're going to receive a lot of feedback on the zoning code and controversial developments from the public and he's asking how are we going to handle that.

I think that's a good question.

Yeah.

I think we all got it.