Williamsburg VOP Chapter building coalition for affordable housing

As they wait for a local housing needs study to prove the need for more workforce and affordable housing in their region, the Williamsburg VOP Chapter is building a coalition of local allies to prepare for the final push on its Inclusive Housing issue campaign.

The Virginia Tech Center for Housing Research is conducting the needs study, with a completion date projected for late September 2007. VOP Williamsburg’s goal is to have a strong local coalition ready to respond with a big public push as soon as the study is released.

The Inclusive Housing campaign would create a local ordinance in which developers would get offsetting bonuses in return for setting aside 15 percent of the units they build as affordable. The housing units would be mixed into the neighborhoods as they are built.

The Chapter intends to expand the list of non-profit and community-based organizations endorsing its Inclusive Housing campaign. At the same time the Williamsburg Area Association of Realtors, a close ally on the issue, is working to bring in large area employers and stakeholders who also see the need for workforce housing in mixed-cost neighborhoods across the region.

Chapter member Kate McCord said, “Building coalitions is smart strategy at any time in a campaign. But in particular, we want to have a broad base of support at this stage so that we can move quickly and use the study’s results to bolster our argument that good housing for everyone is good for the community.”

For more information on the Williamsburg VOP Chapter, contact Ben Thacker-Gwaltney at (757) 570-3005 or ben@virginia-organizing.org.

Taking on housing needs in the Northern Shenandoah Valley

“You can be on top of the world and three seconds later, you can be under it, you know what I’m saying?” Steve, a painter now disabled, out of work and living in a motel in Front Royal, Virginia, was quoted in the Warren County Sentinel.

After getting her psychology degree, Stephanie Boczar moved back to her hometown of Winchester to empower people with disabilities to meet needs like employment and housing by working at Access Independence, a Center for Independent Living. First, though, she had to meet her own housing needs. It took her six months to find a suitable apartment on her non-profit salary. So she really understands the situation of “so many consumers that I work with at Access Independence” for whom “the housing isn’t there.”

Boczar spoke at “Home for the Holidays,” an event organized by the Northern Shenandoah Valley Chapter of VOP to honor the outstanding job being done by local non-profits to meet housing needs — and to challenge local governments to do more.

The event was at the Winchester Salvation Army. Duane Burleigh, resident manager at The Salvation Army “Center of Hope,” said, “In the past year I have met several hundred people whose circumstances and reasons for being homeless are all different. One of the major hurdles a person in our shelter faces, as they try to put their lives back together, is affordable housing.”

The Northern Shenandoah Valley VOP Chapter has been working on affordable housing issues since early 2006. The December 2006 Home for the Holidays was the Chapter’s first public event; it was reported in the local press, and drew people from various housing non-profits together.

The Chapter planned to follow up the event with a Housing Action Forum to spur local governments to take action on housing. But then Chapter members found out that — almost behind the scenes — local governments had been taking action to bring housing funds to the area.

The Winchester Office of Housing and Neighborhood Services had spearheaded an effort to bring increased federal funding to the area by establishing a HOME Consortium. By uniting the six counties and one city of the Northern Shenandoah Valley, this Consortium could bring substantially more federal funding to the area — funding that could be used to meet a wide range of housing needs. Each of the counties had signed on to the plan by January. But, as Board members of one non-profit in the Valley wrote to local government officials, “In its early stages, the proposed Consortium has been put together with little public visibility and, as far as we are aware, little involvement” from their county.

The next step towards the Consortium required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was an Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing. According to HUD requirements, in this process, “the local communities will define the problems, develop the solutions, and be held accountable for meeting the standards they set for themselves . . . all affected people in the community must be at the table and participate in making those decisions.”

To meet this requirement, on March 14-16, the Winchester Office of Housing and Neighborhood Services conducted five “fair housing forums.” All held during the work day, each one began with a 90-minute PowerPoint presentation. Only after these presentations ended was discussion encouraged.

The Northern Shenandoah Valley VOP Chapter was represented at each meeting. VOP member Valerie Taylor noted “the beginning of a big picture look that the study provides” is helpful, and it was useful “to see the statistics on a map, showing concentrations of various groups.” However, she also expressed an overall concern “with the lack of weight our comments hold in this process,” and called the event “elitist.”

The presentation focused on individual discrimination, not government or institutional action — or inaction. VOP member Lana Hurt, parent of a son with autism, noted at the Winchester event that persons with disabilities (a protected class under fair housing laws) “are at serious risk (in fact, are being driven from the area) because the direct care professionals (DCPs) that they need cannot afford to live in the region.” Hurt noted “DCP’s are often coming from Page County or West Virginia. These long drives reduce dependability and increase the cost of already underfunded services.” Hurt suggested this disparate impact on people with disabilities was due to “uninformed policy or lack of creative, targeted” use of funding and resources to provide affordable housing.

The information presented at these events showed that in the Northern Shenandoah Valley racial and ethnic minorities are concentrated in certain areas, lending patterns suggest discrimination, and fair housing referral and complaint systems hardly even exist.

One valuable part of each forum was a presentation by the Fair Housing Office of the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, which provides these services at the state level.

The Northern Shenandoah Valley VOP Chapter will continue to press for community involvement to target housing funds where they are most needed, especially by those most affected by these programs.

For more information, or to get involved, contact VOP Shenandoah Valley Organizer Larry Yates at (540) 436-3432 or llyates@shentel.net.

Petersburg VOP Chapter is busy

“I would not have predicted this would become a hot issue,” Governor Tim Kaine told an audience of grassroots activists in February. But at the General Assembly, thanks to the Virginia Partnership to Encourage Responsible Lending (VaPERL), VOP, and other groups, payday lending was “a hot issue.”

During the Virginia General Assembly session, Petersburg VOP Chapter members joined others from around the state in contacting their legislators asking them to support an interest rate cap at 36 percent on payday loans. The Petersburg VOP Chapter was surprised to learn that during the General Assembly, Petersburg’s Delegate Rosalyn Dance received hundreds of telephones calls in support of the payday lending establishments in the area. Then they learned that, according to the VaPERL, Delegate Dance’s District 63 lists 12 payday lenders located in the area. This does not include the adjacent areas of Colonial Heights and Hopewell. Colonial Heights is in House District 66, which has 10 payday lenders, and Hopewell is in House District 62, which has five lenders.

The Petersburg VOP Chapter has decided to make that “hot issue” a local issue. Members of the Chapter will be working with Petersburg’s faith communities, civic and social organizations, and neighborhood associations. They will be using surveys to get a better understanding of what needs payday loans meet. Chapter members will also target major shopping areas and several commercial districts where lending offices are located.

“People are working, not earning enough in some cases and getting caught in this cycle. It can be difficult to get out from under this debt,” said Chapter member Dorothy Taylor.

The Chapter will collaborate with local groups to sponsor community workshops. They also plan to meet with city officials and state legislators to address this issue.

Bernice Wyche said, “Educating people about finances will give them the tools to make informed decisions. We have to show people how to manage finances and what alternatives they may be able to use.”

For more information about the Petersburg VOP Chapter, contact Cathy Woodson at (804) 261-7497 or e-mail at cwoodson@virginia-organizing.org.

Central Shenandoah Valley VOP Chapter offers alternatives to payday lending, biased policing

The Central Shenandoah Valley VOP Chapter has offered the Augusta-Rockingham area alternatives to the harm that some current practices are causing.

On February 3, the Chapter brought two speakers with direct but very different personal knowledge of the payday lending industry to a community audience at Harrisonburg’s public library.

Laurie Knowles, the director of education at the Consumer Credit Counseling Service in Asheville, North Carolina, talked about the terrible impact of payday lending on some of her clients, which caused her to get involved with the North Carolina Coalition for Responsible Lending. That Coalition has effectively ended payday lending in North Carolina.

Stephen Winslow also spoke. A local writer and teacher, he is a panelist on the political talk show Virginia Viewpoints, and writes for the New Dominion, an online newspaper. Winslow was a manager at a local payday lending operation, and a successful one — until he decided he could no longer morally participate in the industry.

Winslow said, “I will go anywhere, talk to any group, and work with anyone who wants to put an end to this addictive payday lending process.” He has met with Delegates Steve Landes and Chris Saxman and other officials, and is coordinating his work on this issue with the Virginia Partnership to Encourage Responsible Lending
(www.virginiafairloans.org).

The Chapter plans to continue to work to bring this issue to the Central Shenandoah Valley, and also to identify alternatives that will work to meet the needs of people now going to payday lenders.

Another activity of the Chapter is the Police Diversity Training Group, mentioned in the last issue of virginia-organizing. This group experienced a setback in November, when the Rockingham County Sheriff withdrew his offer to work with the group. But the group has now developed an agenda for a training event that they believe will serve the community and law enforcement personnel. They have no intention of letting their work go to waste, and are reaching out to other law enforcement organizations in the area.

For more information on the Central Shenandoah Valley Chapter, contact Larry Yates at llyates@shentel.net or (540) 436-3432.