CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Interfaith Movement Promoting Action by Congregations Together (IMPACT) has commitments from five out of the six Albemarle supervisors at its Tuesday night Nehemiah Action meeting at the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center at CHS, a committee member said.

“It is based in the Old Testament in a sort of airing of grievances around areas of justice,” IMPACT affordable housing committee member John Frazee told Cville Right Now. “And we expect to have this opportunity to present to the decision makers, the people who have the ability to make a change in the way things are run and tell them what our research has told us about areas.”

In regard to affordable housing, Frazee said cities that have made impacts in affordable housing and the unhoused have committed at least $10 million a year to a trust fund, a fund the county created in 2019 but has never funded that much through a budget year.

“What we’ve said is, and gotten some agreement from some supervisors, is that $10 million is really kind of a low bar for the need that we see in the county given the sheer number of people that are one paycheck away from becoming homeless themselves,” Frazee said.

Supervisors, as White Hall Supervisor Ann Mallek noted last week to WINA Morning News, are generally in favor of funding the Affordable Housing Investment Fund to the most they can, but she’s reticent of a 15-cent personal property tax hike in light of the four-cent supervisors approved for this year’s budget.

“What dollars we can put toward that would help speed the completion of Southwood for example, which has been going along for years,” Mallek said.

Mallek noted, “2007 was when they began and they entered the zoning process in 2017.”

But she had a caveat in regard to the specific proposal, “Personally, I’m very concerned that many, many people are burdened by the raises from last year.”

Frazee said Mallek, Sally Duncan, Ned Gallaway, Fred Missel and Mike Pruitt are all expected to attend, Frazee said, while the final boarsd member – Bea LaPisto-Kirtley – may also be on hand.

Frazee said, “When it comes to the dollars, this is where the discussion becomes very complicated very quickly, and IMPACT tries to stay apart from the ‘how’ of it and just keeps reiterating the ‘why’ of it which is there are so many people that need to have affordable housing in the county that are in danger of losing the homes they live in, they can’t pay the rent, they can’t pay their mortgages.”

“We want to put the focus on that understanding that the supervisors have a very difficult job, and we understand that completely, but we can only say that based on our students $10 million is kind of a minimum amount that you would need to have a viable and constructive affordable housing trust fund.”

Nehemiah Action brings the 28 member congregations together once a year at the MLK Performing Arts Center which Frazee hopes will overflow beyond the 1300-seat capacity into spillover areas to make their presentation to elected leaders.

Frazee said not only are they talking about affordable housing, they’ll also talk about neighborhood safety and gun violence, and they’ll talk about transit in the city and county.

But he notes this is not just presentation, it’s called “action”.

“We’ll be presenting these issues to the stakeholders and then we ask the to make commitments, and the commitments we ask them to make they can say ‘yes’ or say ‘no’ to it,” said Frazee.

For affordable housing, Frazee said they’ll be asking supervisors to commit to finding a way to fund $10 million for Affordable Housing Investment Fund every year.

With transit, the objective is getting the wait times down to 30-minutes per bus, part of it being a commitment for more bus drivers.

“And with neighborhood safety, we want to understand that the community, especially the city, is committed to doing all the work that they need to do to understand the problem and make the appropriate solutions,” Frazee explained.

The event is 6:30-to-8:30 p.m. and is inspired by Nehemiah Chapter 5 in the Old Testament where the prophet combatted oppression of the poor.

In the Nehemiah portion of the IMPACT website, they explain, “Today the people of Charlottesville face crises of their own. We have one of the highest eviction rates in Virginia. While the area median income climbs every year, more and more working-class people are pushed further and further into surrounding counties as housing costs become out of reach. Gun violence has risen dramatically since the COVID pandemic and thousands struggle to get adequate mental health treatment. In a community founded by men who espoused ideas of equality yet still enslaved other people, our community must still reckon with the continued injustices that comes from this history.

These are problems that people of faith are called to confront. In order for us to see justice in our community we must be like Nehemiah and gather great assemblies of our own.”