Six people at Court Square Tavern

Only six people came in to Court Square Tavern this evening, but I worked a full night anyway. Because it was slow, I cleaned as much as I could. and scrubbed some things that hadn't been scrubbed in a while. As it was Boxing Day, I cleaned up a lot of packaging material in the office.

The six people who came in were all fantastic. At one point, two couples met. They didn't know each other before, but now they do. They have a lot in common. They also got to listen to me ranting a bit, as I am wont to do behind my bar, on my stage.

The third couple was made up of two high school friends who had the chance to catch up. At the end, I asked the one who lives in the area why he picked Court Square Tavern. He said he used to bring people from Europe there all the time when he worked downtown, and that the guest he brought always remembered they would always comment on how authentic it seems. That's what hooked me in from the very beginning.

Next year will be my fifteenth working at Court Square Tavern. That's a third of my life now. I don't work there all the time, but it's a constant to me that grounds me to this place, even if it isn't popular. In fact, I'd argue that it's the obscurity of the place that draws me to still remaining there.

The guy who lives here hadn't been there for over ten years, and so much has changed in that time. I can mark my life by the eras I have worked there. For so many it was a place to pass through, but for me it is one of the only constants I have.

If we had not been open tonight, people wouldn't have met. I love the idea of a place where you can go and meet people, be they strangers or long-time friends.

I do wish that more people came in, not because I want to make money. Instead, I love seeing people interact and communicate in real life. I love being in a space that has been so much part of my experience. So many of my own memories are there now, too.

I'll be there again tomorrow, and on Friday. And then I'll be there on January 2 as well. After that, I don't know. The whole point of a New Year is that you don't know what it will bring.

(originally posted to Facebook, but I wanted to document it here, too. Also, we don't

Recovered Facebook Post #1

Last night I saw many of you in a dream I had where I was at a conference somewhere. There were so many absurd vignettes, including one scary one where I was told one of you is dead. You're not dead, though, and I woke up grateful for that.

In the dream I dealt with angry people, dealt with a close-talker with an enormous face who was really interested in my views on planning and fell in love with someone based on the appearance of a star in her eye. While I was helping with crowd control during the break between two sessions, two bumbling idiots decided to walk into a decorative buffer next to a staircase.

The latter action caused a tremendous disturbance in a small stream that flowed through this room, making channelized nature slightly dangerous.

But what woke me up was the site of a man whose head was opened and his brain had been scooped out clean, and his skull was made of plastic. As he died, he told me what I needed to be careful of. Music from a spy film played as I woke up and wanted to get back to sleep to hear the rest of his pronouncements.

A report on whether the world is ready for carbon dioxide reduction

I just read a report from the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative on whether governance structures all over the world are ready for programs that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Such efforts might be necessary if humanity as a collective cannot lower greenhouse gases in an effort to stop the rate of global warming. 

In 2015, everyone who participates in the climate change agreements brokered by the United Nations agreed to put policies in place to limit the increase to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. 

"The goal is to be operationalized in part through achievement of a balance between the anthropogenic emissions by sources and removal by sinks," reads the opening paragraph of the report, which is not written for a lay audience. 

Admittedly, I skimmed the report. It took about 45 minutes or so. Much of the same information is repeated several times and I'm going to refer to it in the future as it contains much that is important to my current job. I study and analyze land use policies in Albemarle County and surrounding communities. This is an offshoot of eleven years of reporting for a nonprofit media organization.

I'm writing this post because I was going to tweet a link to the report, but I thought I would instead give a little summary. At the moment, I do not have any kind of a writing outlet. I used to write five to seven stories a week. 

The issues I write about are still continuing, and other people are writing for the publication. I'm still attending the same meetings though now I get to speak at them. I have traded one voice for another, but so far I don't seem to be saying anything. 

That will change. In part because I need to do a better job of explaining why I believe what I say when I advocate for certain policies. We need to think a complex civilization like outs interacts with the land. Increasingly we must take into consideration the impact our small choices have on the bigger picture. The stakes are high.

"In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ºC  warned that the impacts of warming at Global Warming of 2 ºC would be significantly worse than those at 1.5 ºC," reads the second paragraph of the report. 

In general, the authors of this report lay out the case that reduction of greenhouse gases will likely not be enough to limit temperature rise. Additionally, a series of somethings will need to be done in order to remove carbon dioxide. There are known in the report and in the scientific community as CDR's and range from planting forests on a very large scale, using bioenergy and capturing carbon, as well as directly capturing carbon from the air. 

"The rapid scaling-up of large-scale CDR options is untested and will require international governance systems capable of addressing a range of sensitive issues and challenges," reads page 9 of the report. 

Source:  Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative

Some questions considered in the report: 

• Who is responsible for paying and implementing potential CDR options? 
• What accounting system should be in place to measure the details of how carbon dioxide is removed?
• What are the environmental impacts of efforts such as planting forests where none have been before? 

Each of these interventions is at a different stage of development, and the report acknowledges there are other techniques as well. I'd recommend anyone with an interest in this issue to download the report and review it. I suspect we're going to be hearing more about this in the weeks and months and years to come. 

What happens next after Facebook?

I just completed a long day at work in my new job. I worked on the Downtown Mall to get ready, and felt charged by the snow falling. It's winter now,  my favorite season, and I wanted to just watch it happening while I prepared two public comments I made at the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors meeting.

I didn't want to put the above on Facebook, but that's the kind of status update I used to feel comfortable rattling off without any thought. When I joined the site, I was a reporter for Charlottesville Tomorrow. I think. I think that was back in 2008 or so? At the time, I had gotten so used to posting on this blog, which I consider public record. What I have written on this site since 2005 or so is a document of my life during that time. 

I stopped posting here on a regular basis a long time ago. I would post items to Facebook, in part because I wanted a larger audience. I wanted to communicate to more people than I could reach here, and I wanted interaction. This blog didn't have the reach, and so I stopped nurturing it for the most part.

I did post on Facebook today that I would consider just writing on my blog again if for some reason I needed to leave the site. I won't go into detail about what those reasons might be, except to state that I have grown less interested in writing candidly to an audience on a platform that I trust less and less with my information.

Even though I'm 45, I still consider myself a digital native. I have been online since the late 1980's when I finally figured out how to connect a modem to the phone line at my family home in Lynchburg. Even younger, I knew that our Atari 800 could connect to the world through things like Compuserve, but we couldn't get a device to work properly. My dreams of being connected to world were dashed for a while, but even then I was aware that there was a brave new world ahead of us.

When the modem attached to the PC, I quickly learned about the bulletin board systems that were hosted by other people in town. In those days, long distance calls cost money, and long distance was anything outside of your city. So in high school, I got to meet other nerds and geeks from across Lynchburg, expanding my universe through a combination of online and offline interaction. 

Thirty years later, I think many of us have the online interaction down, but the offline interaction is lacking. So much of our public discourse seems to be in little white boxes, in conversations that seem like shouting. And all that conflict has seemingly been monetized by corporations that appeal to our basic human need for connection. 

And here I sit at my front room table, writing this and not even knowing if anyone will read it. I don't have to worry that that one person who hates winter will take the opportunity to tell me I'm wrong for enjoyment of the cold. I can acknowledge that I am no longer a reporter, or worry that someone will take that opportunity to take a cheap shot at me. 

I am guilty of writing a headline about something this post is only tangentially about. I don't know what happens next after Facebook. I do know that I will post here more, even if no one is reading. 

I ran my own bulletin board in high school. I called it Dead Letter Office after my favorite R.E.M. album. I did it as an experiment, and somehow that translated into me entering into the field of communications. I don't have any of that archived, but I used to write comedy bits and I had a platform to mess around with language, and to try to be playful. I wanted people to laugh. 

I did tweet just now that I was able to prove that I was part of an interconnected network called FidoNet. I loved the idea of being connected to a larger world, and that was the beginning of my career, which has taken me to a very different place than I ever expected. My life has always played out on a digital canvas, and I was always trying to experiment. 

And now here I am at a time when all of us are connected to the digital canvas. I prefer to think that most of it has been for good, and I don't think we can go back to a time where we all have an opportunity to express ourselves to friends and strangers. We all want to be part of something.

I know I still do. 

I sit here at my front room, alone after a day around people, about to pass through an important milestone in my life, and I like the idea to post something into the digital ether. 

And after I post this? I'm going to go to my journal and write things I'll never post here! 

A trip up the Downs

On the second day of my trip to England, I decided to go for a long walk here in Dunstable, where my fraternal aunt and cousins live. I was well-rested after a long sleep and I was raring to try out the new hiking shoes I'd purchased from High Tor Gear Exchange. I picked up a map from the tourism bureau which offered a walk up Blow's Down, a natural area that's to the south of the down.

After a long walk through the town, trying to read the map, I finally went through a kissing gate and found this sign which described this "mosaic of grasslands and scrub on the steep scarp slopes of the Chilterns." I'd remembered going here when I was a child and again when I was here in the summer of 2013. This time, though, I know a little bit more about the need to have wildlife areas within proximity of urban density.

Here's a close-up of this sign. To me, it's informative to learn how natural areas are managed. People must better understand how our systems work together to ensure clean air, clean water and biodiversity. 

As I climbed the hill,  the middle third of this picture began to widen to reveal a density that people in the United Kingdom don't question. The infrastructure is impressive and I want to know more about how these systems work. 

As I climbed I the band of trees began to reveal housetops. 

As I walked upon the path, I came up to this gate. This was a public path and I and anybody else has the right to go through it as this is a public pathway.  But what was behind the gates, and why were they there? 

Cows. That's why. As part of the grass management strategy, cattle roam sections of the natural area to graze. I don't know what happens to the cows later in their life, but this is their habitat and human strangers such as myself are allowed in to co-exist. This was their spot and it was 

The middle third fills with more houses. 

The Chilterns are largely made of chalk. It's remarkable to see as it is so different from the red clay of Virginia. 

Now you can begin to see the residential density involved here. Note that at least some of the homes have solar panels on their roof, a sight that has become more common in the years I've been visiting here. 

This is near a place referred to on the map as a former chalk pit. Notice how the pathway is all white. Also notice that big structure in the middle of the picture? That's an Amazon distribution site. It's massive. 

What does that sea of houses look like close-up? I zoomed in to give a little slice of life. This is human scale and with a standardized infrastructure. I wish more Americans could see what this looks like on the ground. Or at least from Blow's Down! 

In the distance, I could clearly make out the M1, the major north-south highway in Britain. 

But up on Blow's Down, civilization can be escaped through pathways such as this. There were so many trails and pathways to explore and I only had so much time. 

There were even blackberries. Of course, up on an Down, all I could think of was my favorite book, Watership Down and the character of Blackberry, one of the more clever characters who escaped from  the Sandleford Warren. 

In this shot, you can see a double-decked bus traveling in the distance upon the Luton Busway. More on that later, but I took this picture from one of the many pathways covered in full canopy. 

From this shot, you'd think I was in the American Midwest, but I was less than a mile or so away from an urban community.  From this point, I could see none of that. I was in the wilderness. 

A bus travels on the Luton Busway, created in recent years from a former railway. It has changed public transportation in this region. The fastest trip is more or less guaranteed to be on a bus because nothing else can travel upon this space. Private companies compete to get the contracts to provide the services. 

Even amidst the density, space for athletics is also preserved. I do not actually know who runs the fields depicted in the middle. But look at how efficiently this land appears to be used. Look at how much activity you can see in this image. Natural area, busway, residential, open space, residential, and then a massive "industrial" space used by Amazon. 

I'll conclude this post with this image. Remember that sign at the beginning? It's located more or less at the triangle of green space in the middle of the image. Note the sea of urbanity bisected by this wonderful natural area. There are so many lessons to be learned here. 

July 26, 2018 Transit Experimentation

I'm about to take Route 4 downtown. I'm checking the real time map to make sure the bus is on schedule. I'll begin my five minute walk in just a moment. (bit.ly/2Ka1mYO)

Along the way I found these vegetables made available by one of my neighbors. I would not have noticed this is it I had chosen to drive today.

Neighbors being neighbors! 

I have an uphill walk to get to the bus. Good thing there is a place to sit while I wait for it to arrive. The app says I have another few minutes to wait. It’s nice to sit here and relax a minute.

Down a steep hill and up a steep hill to get here! 

Taking the bus gives you the chance to see Charlottesville up close. I tried to get a picture of this new building.

The building is the new medical center at the University of Virginia

So far, no bugs. Just interesting things to look at on the journey. Also ran into someone I know and it’s nice to have a conversation.

The person I ran into was my daughter, who was on her way home from swim practice

No bugs. Ride took 20 minutes or so. I don’t have to worry about parking. I will do this again and will likely buy a monthly pass. I'd urge everyone who can give a CAT ride a shot to do so. It will give you a different perspective on Charlottesville and getting around Charlottesville. I've been making excuses not to ride. Glad that I chose to ride today.

And now the return journey. Trolley to halfway down West Main where I am meeting someone.

No bugs! 

A trip to Altavista

Saturday July 7, 2018 was one of the most beautiful days of the year. After a week of temperatures in the 90's, the air settled into a calm, pleasant pattern over central Virginia. Perfect weather.

However, Saturday July 7, 2018 was also the second day of quarter-finals for the FIFA Men's World Cup and England was playing. For that occasion, I drove down to Lynchburg to visit my parents. immigrants from Liverpool who have been here for over 50 years now.  There was a certain happiness that came with being with them as England went through to the semi-finals for the first time since 1990.

Of course, I had to watch and see who they were playing so I stayed inside to watch the Russia-Croatia match. At this point in the tournament, I'm losing patience as there are other things I want to do on my weekends! So while those two sides battled it out I began to plot at least a little bit of a trip.

I'm not much of an outdoors person, but I want to be. In my new job, I want to make sure I'm getting out and seeing the landscape all around us. I often don't do things because I don't know how to do them or I've not done them before. I'm a creature of routine and habit, but I'm at a time in my life where everything is new after doing the same job for more than eleven years. 

I was determined to overcome this, though, and so I probed around in my memory for something to do. I vaguely remembered driving to a park along the Staunton/Roanoke River in southern Campbell County, but I couldn't remember the name. So while the match proceeded, I did research to see if I could figure out. I noted that the town of Altavista has an English Park along the river. I thought I would go there. Within five minutes of the penalty kick that sent Croatia through, I was in the car heading south. 

I drove down Leesville Road toward Evington, an unincorporated area along the way. I had not traveled south of the junction with U.S. 29 for many years and I marveled that little had changed except for a few more developments. When I was in high school I used to drive through the area all the time when I was lonely. I turned off the radio and thought about how my life today feels so similar to that time in the late 80's and early 90's.

I made it to Altavista in about 25 minutes and it was exactly as I remembered it. There's a great deal of strip development as you get closer and closer to the town center.  The town center is a lovely spot. According to the Wikipedia article, it was laid out by the owners of a furniture manufacturing company in the early 20th century. Now in the early 21st century, the manufacturing company is gone but the town center has recently been upgraded thanks to a 2013 streetscape project. That project went through further repairs in 2017. 

The clock tower is part of the Staunton River Memorial Library. 

I arrived at about 5:25 p.m. and parked on 7th Street. I figured it wouldn't be too hard to find my way to English Park. I couldn't see the river, but years of living in Virginia have taught me you can spot a river's path by noticing where the downward slope of land ends and an upward slope begins. I decided to walk down Main Street to where it appeared I could get to the river by turning right along a road that headed down.

There wasn't anyone downtown when I was there and I didn't pass any pedestrians in the urbanized area. There were no open shops on my direct path, but I did arrive relatively late for a summer's day. The Schewel's had just closed, as had the antique stores. There was one restaurant, but I wouldn't see it until a little later on in in my journey.  But what really piqued my curiosity was this abandoned marquee.

Seeing this on my way into the town center made me want to stop and get a closer look

According to the website Cinema Treasures, the Vista has been closed since 1985 when a fire broke out inside. The facade was restored at some point, but by the time I visited it had fallen into disrepair again. I'm very curious to learn more and to see if there's any effort to restore it. I bet that would be very expensive. I know that revitalizing places like this can go a long way to restoring a small town community as a vibrant place. I'd like to know if there are efforts to do that here. And would it work?

As I walked on toward the road (Pittsylvania Avenue, in case you're wondering) I noticed there was a lot of car traffic along Main Street. The Cardinal Car Wash at the intersection had three customers, music blasting.

I crossed Main Street at Pittsylvania. I didn't see a sign for English Park, but my memory of the map I'd seen told me it had to be around there somewhere. There was a full house at an outfitting store along the way, so I guessed I was heading in the right direction and hoped for the best. There was a sidewalk for some of the way, but not all.

Even though I grew up in Campbell County so much of its history is unknown to me. For many years, the Lane Furniture was the biggest employer in town and shaped its development. I'm not going to even pretend I know the history at this time, nor do I know the current state of Altavista's economy. But I do know I'm intrigued to know more. It strikes me that more Americans should know about the power of large manufacturers and employers to shape communities.

The small sign indicates that a plastics company currently operates out of this space. Can you tell me more? 

The sidewalk ended soon after I moved further along Pittsylvania Avenue and I was left on my own. I could see the turn off for English Park in the distance and I risked walking along with traffic to get there. There was no clear sign I was in the right place but in the distance I could see a wide field. I could also feel the water.

The Roanoke River, also known as the Staunton River. I'm really not sure of the distinction. There's so much to learn!

The park, it turns out, is a gorgeous expanse of flood plain that stretches for a couple of miles along the river. Immediately south of the town there are playing fields, a playground, pavilions and concrete benches that are inviting to sit on. I took about ten minutes to write in my journal before getting up to walk more. After all, I'd been sitting down for much of the day watching the matches!

A view from the park bench

The trail itself is part of an Eagle Scout project from 2013. Another such project in 2014 planted an orchard. Even though communities can struggle economically, it's good to see that people are still investing time and effort in places. There's so much potential. Trips like this fuel my optimistic self.

3.2 miles isn't too terribly far. I didn't have time to travel through the whole way. 

As I walked, I noticed a pair of bridges crossing the flood plain. One carried vehicular traffic across to Pittsylvania County and the other was a gorgeous railroad trestle. The pairing of both of these magnificent structures together was breathtaking. I'm an admirer of civil engineering and the work it took to get transportation systems in place that could withstand the tendency of the river to flood.  They're also aging and when they go, will they be considered worth replacing?

This shot doesn't even begin to demonstrate the expanse these two structures have to cross. 

In the distance you can see the steel frame of the bridge that carries the highway over the river. I didn't get a good picture of that but I'd like to see it.

What a magnificent structure. As I was there, I got to see a train crossing it. I'll post that video at some point.

I had limited time and couldn't stay for too long so I couldn't make it all the way to the end. One thing missing from the park so far was a good vantage point of the river. There was a boat ramp as I first entered, but I wanted to get down to the banks to actually feel the power of the water rushing by. There were some families with young children who were at one section, but I didn't want to intrude upon them so I didn't walk to that part. So I kept on walking, wondering what various structures were along the way.

The property is within the Town of Altavista and all kinds of questions raced through my brain about how they manage their wastewater, how they get their drinking water. Eleven years of writing about infrastructure for a publication have made me the kind of person who wants to know how things work so I can explain them to others. That's not going to stop any time soon. 

Altavista's economic fortune for much of the 20th century was a direct result of being on intersecting railway lines. A clearing for the abuttment of another railroad crossing provided me the opportunity to scramble down the banks to get close to the running water. 

Finally got close to the water!

Around this point I got a text from my parents telling me they wanted to meet me for dinner in Lynchburg so I had to turn around at this point. I wanted to get to the end. I wanted to see it all. I wanted to sit down with my notebook and capture all of my thoughts. But time flows fast and it's important to manage it wisely. My time with my parents is very important to me. So is taking the time to write this. 

Note the caption on the sign. I believe in public service and view the work I've done to date as me doing my part. Now I want to try to expand upon that however I can. I look forward to returning to this orchard in the years to come. 

Along the way back to the town center, I noticed there was a staircase that could take me (or anyone else) over the railroad so that I could make it back in time to meet my parents. I love when I can take a walking journey that doesn't involve entirely covering the same ground. So I made my way through the northern end of the park, past the playgrounds. At the rear of a large building, there was a young mother playing with their two children while the father worked a metal detector. The building itself is the Booker Building, an empty structure which can be rented out for events. I'm curious to know the history of that as well. It's quite a big building. 

I predict one day I will likely cater an event here!

Who were these people? What's their story? I want a nickname in quotes, too. 

The stairs themselves seemed quite daunting, but I climbed up anyway. I was glad they were not locked because otherwise I would have missed my event.  This structure must have cost a bit and I'm curious to know the funding mechanism that paid for it. 

This was a bit daunting but it did lead to me being able to cross the railway and get a great panorama of Altavista.

So why did I pick Altavista for a quick sightseeing trip? In part I read an article in the Lynchburg News and Advance that morning about a pizza restaurant called Peace of Pie. I had not been to Altavista in many, many years so I wanted to see what was happening. I've spent so much time in Albemarle and Charlottesville and I need new ideas and new places. There's so much more to the Commonwealth of Virginia than my home.

I didn't get a chance to check out the restaurant but I'd like to go back sometime. I'd like to visit more places like this. I want to get to know the people there, understand their hopes and dreams, find out what they think about the future. At a time when much seems uncertain and there's a tendency to eschew hope, I want to keep fueling my optimistic self and find out who's doing work to strengthen their community. Ideas in one place can maybe spread to another. 

I'm a lifelong Virginian, born and raised here to immigrants from England. This is my home and I want to know it more. But as I said earlier about time being a river, my flow today is running out. I am off to go off on another adventure. 

This structure houses Peace of Pie. If you go, let me know how you liked it.

I'm tempted to call up and ask what the rents are. If I was starting a business that allowed me to live anywhere in the world, I can imagine I'd do it in a place like Altavista, which seems to be investing in itself. In this post I didn't get into the trails plan that is underway! 

Not many people out on a Saturday. I'll have to come back during the week some time. 

A city and a self in transition

Deep breath. 

No, I'm going to need another one before I begin the words.

Inhale. Exhale.

I'm staring out at a lot of brick, and my former office is within visible distance of me. I no longer work at the place I helped build. I work somewhere else, or at least, I will work there within the next 24 hours.

At the moment, I'm between jobs, something that seems foreign to me. I am very lucky to have landed another paying position and I'm eager for that to begin tomorrow.

But goodness, there's a lot of brick in my peripheral vision. The entire structure to my right is brick, as is the flooring of the Downtown Mall, as is the Market Street Parking Garage. The material is an architectural staple around here, piecing together many a landscape into a milieu, it would seem.

Another deep breath. I'm not used to transitions. I spent so many years at a desk catty-cornered from where I am now, doing something I was very good at. That time is over and I'm about to do something else, and the jury is out over whether I'm good at it at all. I'm excited. I'm eager. 

A man plays piano in the corner of an outdoor space that makes up the second floor of a building that had a fire sometime in the past. It took many years and a cultural shift in Charlottesville for this place to exist, and here I am, on my final day of limbo between one thing and the other thing. I sit for a second and listen to to the piano player as he sings something somewhat wistful.

No one here cares about the music he is playing. Some applaud politely but he is mostly ignored. He takes this in stride and keeps on going. He's getting paid.

At the moment, I'm on vacation. I'm technically in a moment before I enter into something new and I'm so scared and so afraid that I've made the right choice. But when have I ever made the right one? Or the wrong one? I've just made choices. In the end, it all works out. My lifetime, as everyone else's lifetime, is finite.

Piano player has turned to Chariots of Fire and I smile, aware that so much of this is all a monstrous joke, but yet there are children who have been separated from their families at the border and absolutely nothing is funny anymore. There's a lot that seems wrong at the moment.

Now the piano player is playing an up-tempo version of Stand By Me, and I'm transported back to being a kid when the film was made at a time when I was the same age as River Phoenix, Will Wheaton, Corey Feldman and Jerry O'Connell. I never really had friends growing up like those depicted in the novel and the movie.

The things I make

This is where I sometimes upload things that I make. It is experimental and I don't claim that it's anything that is meant for general consumption. But here it is for anyone who still gets this feed. Not many, I think. I'm okay with that. There are times when I love obscurity and love the idea of being free to do whatever I want with sound. But of course I want these things to be heard. I have well over a hundred hours of stuff that almost no one in the world has listened to. Maybe they shouldn't listen to any of it, but I'm glad to have anything weird I've done out there. I'd like to put out more. 

Anyway. This is supposedly public so I guess this is a first step. It's a small one. But the path must be taken if one is to climb. 

With no idea, links to articles on a particular topic

I'm not sure what this blog is anymore, if it's anything. I do know that I want to make a post today. So this is a list of affordable housing stories from Charlottesville Tomorrow published in 2017.

• City Planning Commission weighs in on affordable housing recommendations
• Council grants $240,000 in funding for four land trust home
• Council moves forward with creation of rental assistance program
• Council briefed on new ideas for affordable housing development
• Albemarle to participate in 96-unit affordable housing project
• Two city panels meet to further discuss affordable housing policies
• City Council funds affordable housing projects
• Council seeks clarity on rental assistance program
• At local forum, experts talk mixed-income housing
• City to ask legislature for ability to require development of low-income units
• City-run housing voucher program stalled