The Jefferson Madison Regional Library is asking for $21M to restore the Central Library, Seth Rosen reports in today’s Daily Progress, as the building’s infrastructure crumbles around them. It’s housed in a beautiful 104-year-old building (the old post office) and while the structure is fine, some of its components (plumbing, wiring, HVAC, carpeting, etc.) are badly in need of replacement. The hope is to expand the area that’s used to serve the public, better suiting the interests of modern library visitors. The county has earmarked $10.5M in its 2013 capital improvement budget, though that’s not finalized, but apparently the city hasn’t moved on the need just yet. The work isn’t due to start until 2014.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith
Page 190 of 549
Brian McNeill writes in the Progress today about the alarming new study that black Charlottesville-area homeowners are substantially more likely to have a high-cost mortgage than whites. Unfortunately, what McNeill found is mostly stonewalling. The Mortgage Bankers Association says that this is “oversimplifying a complex issue,” which may well be true, but they fail to provide a more complex description that would explain things. Charlottesville-area lenders wouldn’t talk to McNeill. And the Virginia Mortgage Lenders Association both says she doesn’t know and guesses the problem comes from out-of-state firms, which just sounds like wishful thinking. The only particularly useful answer comes from the Virginia Poverty Law Center, which points out that subprime lenders “market themselves to black communities by advertising on hip-hop radio stations and urban-focused television stations,” though even that falls short without knowing whether that’s taking place in Charlottesville and, if so, if it’s happening at a rate greater than anywhere else in the country.
It’s not McNeill’s fault that mortgage brokers aren’t eager to talk about racial disparity in their lending, of course, but it remains that a symptom has been identified, but we just can’t locate its cause.
Local mortgage broker Michael Martin provided a useful comment on the topic, writing in part:
I know there are the scoundrels in the mortgage business. The worst one I know of was a non-white who preyed on anyone, regardless of color. He would get massive phone lists of local people with bad credit, call them and arm twist them into the most outrageous refinances. He made up to forty grand a month this way, mostly to finance a prodigious crack addiction. He would even make deals while in prison, calling from the yard with a cell phone, having his mother show up at closing to make sure the suckers signed the loan docs.
He didn’t care about race. Im his own twisted way, he actually thought he was helping his clients. There were only two things that his victims shared: gullibility and naiveté.
All of which, I have to say, reminds me very much of the “We Buy Houses” scams.
A study of mortgage rates throughout the country has revealed that Charlottesville has the nation’s biggest disparity between rates for blacks and whites, North Carolina’s News & Observer reports. The study (250k PDF) uses 2005 data available under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act for metropolitan areas to compare mortgage rates for African American homeowners to those for white homeowners and found that 43% of all loans to blacks in the area were high cost, while only 11% of those to whites were. That makes blacks 388% more likely to have high cost loans than whites, and that’s using data across all income levels. We’re tied with Durham, N.C. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition writes in the study:
The Charlottesville, VA MSA also ranked the worst in home lending to low- to moderate-income (LMI) African-American borrowers. Of all loans to LMI African-American borrowers, 48.0% were high-cost, while only 15.2% of the loans received by LMI whites were high-cost. This means that LMI African-American borrowers were 3.16 times more likely to receive a high-cost loan than LMI white borrowers.
The report was presented today at the NAACP conference in Detroit.
The city school system has fired the new principal for Greenbrier Elementary before she could even start her job, Dana Hackett reports for NBC 29. The reason, oddly, is that her husband was once a suspect in a San Antonio murder case eleven years ago. Maj. Robert Eric Duncan had been the boss of the father of the 11-year-old victim at Randolph AFB. A military grand jury had filed charges against him in the 1990 murder, under military law, but they ultimately concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence against him. The girl’s family recently requested that the case be reactivated, believing that an investigation into Duncan by a local TV station had provided the evidence necessary to convict him, and the Texas Rangers agreed to take on the case. Presumably this affects Duncan’s wife because the TV station’s investigation showed that she’d provided a pair of conflicting alibis for her husband. All of this leaves Greenbrier without a principal and the Duncans in the middle of moving to Charlottesville. The erstwhile principal is hinting at legal action, but Virginia employment law probably leaves her out of luck.
In this week’s C-Ville, Meg McEvoy has a long look at the local food movement. Like anybody else who’s given it a whirl, she discovers that locally-grown food is almost universally tastier than its flavorless supermarket counterparts and not hard to find. But area farmers complain that state and local laws make it difficult for them to compete against factory farms, so they’ve gotten organized and they’re doing something about it.
The topic of the importance of a strong, self-sufficient local economy and food supply is near and dear to my heart. For more on this topic, see UVa’s 2006 regional food assessment, Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” or Bill McKibben’s “Deep Economy.” Or, on the blogging front, horticulturist Tracey Gerlach blogs about her adventures with producing some of her own food at “Life in Sugar Hollow.”
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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