Charlottesville’s new zoning code, passed in December 2023, is remarkable for a number of reasons. First, it is highly comprehensive, incorporating a wide variety of policy levers that other cities have considered to increase housing density and affordability. The code eliminated both single-family zoning and parking requirements, making Charlottesville the third city in Virginia to implement either reform and the first to do both. Additionally, the 2023 ordinance legalized single-room occupancy units everywhere and allowed homeless shelters in all mixed-use zones. It also increased the allowable density for housing built across the city, and established a new inclusionary zoning program that requires developers of new residential buildings with more than ten units to make a share of those units affordable to low-income families.
Equally remarkable is that the zoning rewrite was rooted in and shaped by a need to address the city’s legacy of racially discriminatory zoning. In August 2017, white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville for a rally that culminated in the murder of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal and civil rights activist who attended with other counterdemonstrators when she was killed. The rally shook the city and resurrected ugly spectres of Charlottesville’s past–including its well-documented history of using racial covenants and single-family zoning to segregate residents by race. Deputy City Manager for Operations James Freas oversaw the planning process and traces the city’s bold changes in land use policy back to that event. “In many ways [the Unite the Right rally] challenged the city’s sense of itself…and caused [us] to revisit what our priorities were coming into comprehensive planning.”
Not only did a desire for racial equity propel Charlottesville to reexamine its zoning, it also informed the process for crafting reforms. As the city debated increasing the development potential allowed under the zoning code, both planners and advocates feared that in historically Black neighborhoods, new development pressures could displace residents. Door-to-door outreach led to an experimental solution: Core Neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are protected by a special overlay that allows additional units on existing lots only when the original structure is maintained. The overlay also provides additional incentives for keeping new units affordable.
The process
Virginia requires cities to review their comprehensive plan every five years in order to determine whether an update is needed. The city had recently begun a typical update process when the Unite the Right rally brought racial equity to the forefront of local politics. In the weeks following the rally, groups like the Public Housing Association of Residents (PHAR) drew links between the city’s failure to “truly oppose Nazis, white supremacism, and terrorism against communities of color” and the lack of affordable housing. And in October 2017, activists belonging to Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) interrupted a meeting of the planning commission to demand more affordable housing.
The activism crystallized the need to understand the historical roots of housing inequality and confront the persistent disparities. Lyle Solla-Yates, a planning commissioner, began by taking a closer look at the origins of Charlottesville’s zoning code. “I had assumed that our zoning was, you know, written for public benefit, with thorough research and everyone involved. But it was [originally] written during the Jim Crow era by a segregationist engineer [named Allen Saville] living in Richmond. Knowing that… changes your understanding of the rules.”
In the wake of the rally, city leaders decided to embark on a much more rigorous process than the state requires for updating a comprehensive plan. The process, called “Cville Plans Together,” would now encompass an affordable housing plan, the comprehensive plan, and an eventual zoning ordinance. By linking all of these documents together–using the same consultants, creating an overarching timeline, and ensuring that each piece spoke to a coherent vision–leaders hoped to engage residents in creating new policies that would be genuinely transformative.
Residents agreed that more affordable housing was needed, but were deeply divided about where to create new housing opportunities. “The affordable housing plan passed unanimously with…no controversy,” recalled Matthew Gillikin, co-founder of Livable Cville, a volunteer group that formed during the planning process to advocate for affordable housing, sustainable transportation, and inclusive neighborhoods. “Everyone’s like, yeah, affordable housing, we gotta do that. [But] when the [future land use] map dropped…suggesting that there will be increased density allowed citywide, including in affluent white neighborhoods…there’s a big fuss.”
Part of that “fuss” stemmed from the fears of well-to-do homeowners, who organized via their neighborhood associations to resist perceived threats to the low-density, purely residential character of their neighborhoods. In response, community members and advocacy groups who believed strongly in the need for comprehensive housing reform began to organize a broader “pro-housing, pro-racial justice, pro-climate coalition” that included “low-income housing advocates in Charlottesville who [had been] ignored for decades.” Led by the Charlottesville Low-Income Housing Coalition and Livable Cville, the coalition identified key policy priorities through research and listening to impacted communities. They created documents explaining the changes proposed in accessible language, organized community members to advocate for these reforms at public meetings, and worked to publicly signal that there was an active constituency for change.
But concerns also came from residents in racially and economically diverse neighborhoods who worried that these reforms, intended to spur new housing development, would lead to gentrification and displacement. Residents and local housing advocates voiced fears that increasing allowable density in neighborhoods where “the houses are smaller [and] the land is cheaper” could attract profit-seeking developers, who might pressure families to sell their homes in order to flip them or replace them with higher-cost housing.
The concerns appeared well-founded. Due to their proximity to the University of Virginia’s grounds, historically Black neighborhoods like Fifeville and 10th and Page had already seen rapid appreciation in home and land values and experienced dramatic income and racial change. In a development feasibility analysis, the city’s consultants estimated the rate of change in new development–that is, the likelihood that a property owner or investor would convert a single-family parcel into a multi-family parcel–under the proposed zoning code and found it would likely be much higher in these neighborhoods than in wealthier and less diverse ones. Given that promoting racial equity was a central motivation of Charlottesville’s reform effort, the prospect of displacing minority residents in the name of housing affordability was troubling.
Charlottesville addressed this tension with a compromise. The diverse neighborhoods believed to be most vulnerable to development-driven displacement received a special designation, “Residential Core Neighborhood A (RN-A).” This zoning classification permits only one unit per lot unless the existing structure is kept. But if all of the units are affordable as defined by the code, as many as six units are allowed. So while a homeowner in a Core Neighborhood could add an accessory dwelling unit on their lot, they could not tear their home down and replace it with two market-rate units. Policymakers hoped that this could protect the existing affordable stock and prevent displacement, but also worried that the city would be limiting wealth-building opportunities for homeowners of color.
Reducing or delaying allowable density increases in communities particularly vulnerable to displacement is not unheard of–it was included, for example, in a failed 2020 senate bill in California. But it remains untested. To gather feedback that could inform reform efforts, Charlottesville’s planning department “did a lot of outreach to…people who don’t usually participate in planning processes,” says Freas. To that end, it invited groups like PHAR and the Charlottesville-Albemarle chapter of the NAACP to workshop chapters of the comprehensive plan. More recently, it hired community members to knock on doors and set up booths at community events in order to gather their neighbors’ perspectives on the zoning reforms, especially about the Core Neighborhoods proposal. While not unanimous, the feedback suggested that residents were more concerned about displacement than maximizing wealth-building. Gillikin also believes that the designation of Core Neighborhoods was key to securing the buy-in of neighborhood leaders and “politically essential to making all this work.”
Early impacts
The Charlottesville City Council adopted the new zoning ordinance on December 18, 2023, and it went into effect on February 19, 2024. As of late 2024, not much new housing had been built and few projects currently in the pipeline would be subject to the new zoning code. James Freas attributed the lack of change to the macroeconomic environment, including much higher interest rates than in previous years and rising building materials costs, as well as other non-zoning rules that make housing construction difficult. “Removing the zoning barriers made all of the other barriers far more apparent,” he said. For instance, Freas believes the city’s burdensome stormwater requirements render new townhouse and cottage cluster development functionally impossible.
Although it’s too soon to determine their impact, and despite a pending lawsuit to void the zoning ordinance, practitioners and advocates remain optimistic about the reforms and their implications for Charlottesville’s future. This is the first comprehensive revision of Charlottesville’s zoning code since 2003, and Freas is looking to establish an “annual clean-up and review” of the ordinance. As he describes it, the zoning ordinance should be a “living document,” regularly changing to facilitate development and respond to the most commonly requested exceptions.
Advocates for the change also see it as a signal that Charlottesville’s residents and leaders are committed to equitable and affordable housing. “I think 2017 forced a lot of us to look into the soul of Charlottesville, and into our history…there was a shift in whose priorities are the city’s priorities,” says Matthew Gillikin. “I think [we saw] that affordable housing advocates who had been at it for decades suddenly had power and leverage and what they said suddenly mattered. And so we said that affordable housing is something we’re going to take very seriously.”
Even so, some remain concerned about the long-term impact of the Core Neighborhoods proposal. “I have a lot of anxiety about this,” said commissioner Solla-Yates. “When you downzone Black homeowners, but not white owners, you are reducing wealth creation for [some] but not [others]. It is inequitable in that way.” It is also unclear whether zoning is an effective anti-displacement tool. “There are many good tools for anti-displacement, but they generally cost money,” he added. The city has pledged to return to 10th and Page and other Core Neighborhoods to conduct small area plans that can identify and support pathways to wealth-building.
Conclusion
Charlottesville’s original zoning code was rooted in the racist history of the Jim Crow South and used as a tool of racial separation. The recent citywide reforms meet that history head on, attempting to promote racial equity by creating opportunities for density and for affordable housing in every neighborhood. Charlottesville’s effort suggests several useful lessons. First, it may be practical to combine comprehensive planning, affordable housing planning, and zoning reform under one consultant and one overarching timeline, as Charlottesville did in “Cville Plans Together.” Doing so can ensure that priorities translate from vision to implementation and help the community stay engaged throughout multiple processes. Treating the zoning code as a living document, finding ways to hear from new voices, and being responsive to paradigm-shifting political moments are also key takeaways.
In crafting its new zoning code, Charlottesville directly confronted thorny issues related to housing density and affordability, racial equity, displacement, and wealth creation. The result is a novel approach that combines citywide increases in allowable density with incentives for affordability and protections for vulnerable neighborhoods. Local policymakers and advocates will carefully track the outcomes of this experiment in the months and years to come.