CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) — Representatives from the low barrier shelter workgroup struck a positive tone following its work session with the Charlottesville City Council on Wednesday.

“I’m glad that there is going to be more participation from the city in a more detailed way,” Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless (BRACH) Executive Director Shayla Washington told Cville Right Now, “about how we’re planning these meetings and moving forward, how the council wants to be updated on what we’re doing. So that’s a really positive direction.”

The session was called by City Manager Sam Sanders, just a week-and-a-half after the annual State of Homelessness Report was presented by the workgroup, also known as the CoC (Continuum of Care), at the city council’s May 4 meeting.

The comments after the presentation devolved into a much lengthier discussion on the low barrier homeless shelter as well as the current encampments in the city, both of which were the focus of Wednesday’s work session.

After the May 4 meeting, in which councilors expressed concern over the current state of the encampments as well as the progress on the low barrier shelter project, Washington told Cville Right Now the group needed more direction from the city in order to move forward.

Washington said she now believes the group will get that.

As part of that involvement, Councilor Jen Fleisher volunteered to begin attending the CoC’s meetings, a development Washington said will be “great” for the group.

“She seems really invested in the work,” Washington said of Fleisher. “And I think she’ll be a great sounding board for us from what the city wants versus what we need as a CoC to communicate that back to the site.”

The next steps for the CoC will be to develop an operational plan, which Sanders made clear needs to be developed faster. Both sides agreed to a deadline of Aug. 31. Given the tight timeline, Sanders said its fine if the plan does not initially include some of the finer details of the shelter’s operations. He said it wasn’t his normal approach, but he’s doing it to save time.

“If we could confirm as much as we could confirm as quickly as we possibly could, that’s the request,” Sanders said to the CoC. “Because with that information, then this engine can turn as well.”

While the first half of the meeting focused on the planning process for the low barrier shelter, the second half focused on the more immediate issue of current encampments at Free Bridge and Zero East High.

Both city officials and CoC representatives described a dire situation, with a lack of trash receptacles and portable toilets, as well as potentially dangerous propane tanks. Charlottesville Police Chief Michael Kochis brought up the propane tanks when discussing a fire that occurred at an encampment over the weekend.

The encampment at Free Bridge is also in a major floodway, further raising concerns among the city and CoC as hurricane season approaches.

At one point, Sanders described the current situation at the encampments as “unacceptable.”

The question is where people will be sent if the encampments are disbursed or people are turned away. Representatives from the CoC expressed these concerns multiple times, with Owen Brennan, Executive Director of The Haven, suggesting an alternative encampment site.

He specifically suggested Holiday Dr. as a potential location and said the work group is already looking into the policy. Some councilors instead asked about the possibility of an indoor shelter with the upcoming summer. Washington said afterwards finding a location indoors was the CoC’s “biggest next step,” and a challenging one given the low vacancy rate in the rental market.

But the discussion as a whole drew the ire of a group of concerned citizens in the back. One woman, who held up multiple signs during the work session, held up one that read “Displacement is violence, not help.”

Michael Payne has been one of the most outspoken councilors regarding the encampments, bringing up the issue at the May 4 meeting and again expressing his concerns on Wednesday.

He told Cville Right Now after the meeting the council’s plans for permanent supportive housing and a low-barrier shelter will take several years, and that in the interim, the encampments need some type of intervention.

“We have to impose some level of structure and rules if people are being de facto put into encampments, which is what this city’s de facto policy has been,” he said. “Because, in my mind, that’s not compassionate to the folks who are out there, either. Because their health and safety is even more at risk.”

Overall, the council and CoC walked away from Wednesday’s work session with a better sense of the situation, but with plenty of work to be done.

Among the requests made by the CoC to the city during the session, one of the biggest was a full-time project manager. Brennan expressed the need for the position at numerous points and said it was needed both to help develop plans for the low-barrier shelter as well as ensure an immediate solution to the encampments was delivered as quickly as possible.

Washington agreed, citing how the nonprofits in the CoC are “strapped with capacity.”

“Having a project manager who can manage or who can really focus on Holiday Dr., the encampments, and moving these projects forward rather than adding to our already full plates would be a really huge relief for us,” she said.

Payne expressed his support for a project manager after the meeting.

“What we heard tonight is there’s just a lot more capacity [needed],” he said. “I mean, even long-term, once we open the year-round low barrier shelter, how will that be staffed 24/7? 
Right. That’s gonna require a lot more staff and funding. So no matter what, we’re gonna need more staff.”