The Charlottesville City Council heard a report from 3TP Ventures — a community planning consultancy firm — and Neighborhood Development Services on possible changes to the City’s Affordable Dwelling Unit Monitoring and Procedures Manual at a regular meeting Monday. The report suggested increasing the fees private student housing developers pay to support affordable housing in the City.
3TP also suggested eliminating the City’s controversial half-mile radius rule, in which private “student housing” projects can be constructed and pay a reduced fee to support affordable housing. Some community members expressed concern, however, with the possibility that 3TP relied on unsound formulas to assess the feasibility of these and other possible changes to City policy.
In its review, 3TP and NDS considered the current system for calculating developer fees to support affordable housing and the merits of the half-mile student housing radius. Under Charlottesville’s current Inclusionary Zoning rules, housing development projects in the City with 10 or more units must set aside 10 percent of units at less than 60 percent of the area’s median income, according to Kellie Brown, director of neighborhood development services for the City. When a developer does not wish to include affordable dwelling units as part of their project, or wishes to make less than 10 percent of units affordable, they must pay a fee to the City to make up this difference…