2021 Virginia Housing Award Winners

Best Affordable Housing Development Award

Hayden Village Center

Senior Services of Southeastern Virginia

The Hayden Village Center, located in the city of Franklin, was developed through a partnership between Senior Services of Southeastern Virginia and Luna Development Partners LLC. This historically restored building is now home to 28 market-rate senior housing units, a large multipurpose community space and a commercial-grade kitchen, as well as I-Ride Transit and a No Wrong Door Virginia (NWD) access center. The Senior Services of Southeastern Virginia has also provided a senior wellness and nutrition center, which offers meals, exercise classes and chronic disease management, as well as their Western Tidewater administrative program, offering long-term care services, Medicare benefits and nutrition counseling. The Hayden Village Center addresses dire community needs all under one roof, thus providing at-risk seniors with transportation, medical care, affordable housing, wellness education, nutritious meals and physical activity. In FY2020 alone, Hayden Village served more than 1,281 older adults ages 60+, bringing more than $667,000 in services to residents in neighboring communities.

Best Housing Program or Service Award

CARITAS Center

CARITAS

The CARITAS Center, located in Richmond, is a national best practice model for meeting the needs of the homeless population in a cost-effective and innovative way by turning a vacant historic industrial building into a vibrant community resource. CARITAS is a nonprofit agency that provides services to the homeless, extremely low-income individuals and persons suffering from substance use disorders. The CARITAS Center was the first to have their recovery services expanded to include women with the opening of the Healing Place for Women, which includes a 47-apartment sober-living community, several new programs for addiction recovery, expanded workforce and life skills programs for individuals with barriers to employment, a women’s emergency shelter, administrative offices and leased commercial space. The Healing Place serves the greater Richmond area and beyond, with a more than 65% sobriety rate one year after program completion – a statistic that rivals the best treatment centers in the country- and is offered free of charge to participants and participants that are unable to work while going through the program.

Best Housing Preservation/Revitalization Effort Award

Culpeper Crossing Apartments

People Incorporated

Culpepper Crossing Apartments had previously been a converted and near-blighted pants factory from the 1930s before it was rehabilitated through a partnership between Virginia Community Capital (VCC) and People Inc. The project transformed the derelict structure into a 28-unit affordable housing complex, located in Culpeper. Funded through Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), Federal Home Loan Bank’s Affordable Housing Program, Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) funds and the Resources Enabling Affordable Community Housing (REACH) program through Virginia Housing, Culpeper Crossing is providing much-needed affordable housing to the area’s families, children and seniors, allowing them to remain in a region of economic opportunity for the next 30 years. All 28 units received replacement and upgrade of heating and cooling systems, cabinetry, appliances, windows, plumbing, electrical, flooring and finishes. Sixteen units were renovated as Universal Design apartments to allow residents to age in place, and five units were successfully retrofitted for full accessibility for people with disabilities. Today, the complex provides safe and affordable housing to 28 households, 10 of which are families with children, all of whom classify as very-low income.

Inclusive Community Award

Jackson Ward (The Rosa and Van de Vyver)

Enterprise Community Development

The Rosa and the Van de Vyver is a unique complex made up of three new buildings and the adaptive reuse of an existing three-acre site in the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Richmond. This project is a multiracial, multigenerational beacon featuring 154 new units of housing. This includes 72 homes for low-income public housing seniors, 46 unrestricted units meeting the neighborhood’s demand for new market rate housing, 36 affordable units designated for workforce housing, including eight HUD VASH program participants, and 6,000 square feet of neighborhood-serving retail to the site.The Rosa includes a dedicated social service space where residents can gather socially and take part in various activities. Social services are coordinated for the 72 low-income seniors, including health and wellness screenings, food distribution and activities that foster social connection. The project has transformed an entire city block into a diverse, mixed-income community. The mixed income program of the project, paired with compelling, context-sensitive architecture across an entire city block, has begun to spur adjacent investment.

Best Regional Partnership Award

Greater Richmond Continuum of Care: COVID-19 Response

Homeward, Daily Planet and Richmond Urban Ministry Institute

The Greater Richmond Continuum of Care (GRCoC) serves as the Continuum of Care (CoC) for the city of Richmond and the counties of Charles City, Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico, New Kent and Powhatan. Throughout 2020 and 2021, the GRCoC network has adapted to meet the evolving needs of our most vulnerable neighbors experiencing homelessness during a pandemic, with Homeward and Daily Planet Health Services leading a coordinated collaborative response to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 while meeting the immediate needs of those who are experiencing homelessness and are at high risk. Homeward began to host weekly calls to update partners and strategize on emerging needs, operating the region’s only non-congregate emergency shelter (NCS) program and serving more than 2,500 unsheltered families since March 2020. To meet the increased demand for services, the Homeless Connection Line (HCL), a multi-agency collaborative access point for homeless assistance, hired additional staff to handle complicated calls, support the diversion specialists and monitor call volume to maximize response time and minimize call backlog. Daily Planet’s role as the primary community health care provider played a crucial role in establishing protocols for minimizing exposure and risk, COVID-19 testing and for caring for those who tested positive. As the need for testing declined, Daily Planet offered vaccination clinics, including in all shelter locations and administering more than 5,600 doses by June 2021. The strong collaboration between homeless services and the health care provider kept the rates of COVID-19 infection among people experiencing homelessness well below the state average.

Best Regional Partnership Award

Northern Virginia Eviction Prevention and Community Stability Task Force

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the eviction rate in Virginia was more than double the national average, and since March 2020 the economic fallout from the pandemic has placed an even greater number of Virginia households at risk of eviction. Recognizing that action was needed across multiple sectors to prevent a wave of evictions, the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance (NVAHA) and Legal Services of Northern Virginia (LSNV) co-convened the regional, cross-sector Northern Virginia Eviction Prevention and Community Stability Task Force to identify best practices to prevent evictions and stabilize households. To expand the regional reach and impact of the lessons, insights and recommendations that come out of each task force meeting, NVAHA and LSNV created the Northern Virginia Eviction Prevention and Housing Stability Toolkit, which outlines policy recommendations, best practices, assistance programs and other resources to prevent eviction. This toolkit was distributed to more than 5,000 advocates, housing professionals, local government staff and human service providers in Northern Virginia. The Northern Virginia Eviction Prevention and Community Stability Task Force and the Northern Virginia Eviction Prevention and Housing Stability Toolkit serve as models for successful regional, cross-sector collaborations to respond to the impact of this crisis within the housing sector.

Outstanding Rural Housing Development Award

SERCAP’s Housing Program

Southeast Rural Community Assistance Program (SERCAP)

Since its inception in 1969, Southeast Rural Community Assistance Project Inc. (SERCAP) has provided low- to moderate-income homeowners with housing rehabilitation services to install complete indoor plumbing facilities into their homes and has provided communities with technical assistance in establishing fully functioning and reliable community water systems. SERCAP’s housing program is a critical part of SERCAP’s services. The housing department works with both rural communities and low- to moderate-income individuals on housing rehabilitation projects, including Indoor Plumbing and Rehabilitation (IPR), owner-occupied housing and rehabilitation services, aging-in-place services, lead hazard reduction, lead service line replacements, Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) and one-on-one housing counseling services. During 2020 and 2021, SERCAP’s housing department completed 15 stand-alone housing projects and served as the housing rehabilitation specialists for four CDBG projects that included an additional five housing projects. Additionally, SERCAP invested over $660,000 into more than 30 water and wastewater technical assistance projects, impacting more than 30,000 individuals in over 30 rural communities.

Outstanding Youth Award – Ty’Quan Mayo

Ty’Quan Mayo from the city of Charlottesville is the 2021 Outstanding Youth Award winner. Mayo has been described as “an exceptional example of what a caring heart and creative mind can do to create a better future for his neighborhood.”

He began volunteering with senior citizens at the Albemarle Rehabilitation Center after visiting his mother, who works there. He has volunteered both during the school year and during the summer months to prepare and serve meals to children in his neighborhood through Friendship Court Kid’s Café. He has also served on the Friendship Court Advisory Committee, which he joined at the age of 12, and he continues to serve on that committee today. He is actively involved with the Youth Leadership Program through the University of Virginia School of Architecture, and that involvement led him to lead a group of his peers in the redevelopment of multiple neighborhood play areas and courtyards. He is a leader amongst his peers and within his community, and Mayo has inspired other young people to follow in his path of working to better their communities. He has accomplished all of this and more, despite the potential setbacks imposed by being raised by a single mother, helping to maintain the household, and attending school full-time, all while facing the systemic barriers put in place by centuries of racially-divisive policies. He has never allowed any obstacle to get in his way of achieving his goal of making his community a better place for everyone.