The U.S. House of Representatives is one of two chambers of Congress (the other is the Senate). The powers of the House of Representatives are outlined in the Constitution. Here is an explanation of what those powers are. Representatives are elected for two years. There are 435 districts in the House, of which Virginia has 11.  

Virginia’s Congressional District 5 covers Charlottesville and reaches all the way down to the North Carolina border. This year, it is the only district in the state holding both Republican and Democratic primaries. 

In the Republican primary, John McGuire III is running for his second term. He is challenged by first-time candidate Melanie Lucero. 

Charlottesville Tomorrow designed a questionnaire for the candidates based on responses we received from our voter survey. 

We were able to reach Lucero by phone, but have not yet received a response to the questionnaire. We made multiple attempts to contact McGuire via phone, email and Facebook and were able to speak with campaign staff. But McGuire had also not submitted a response as of Wednesday, June 17.

We will continue to update our Voter Guide as we receive responses from candidates to the following questions:

1. Housing costs: Many 5th District voters who responded to our voter survey expressed concerns about how home prices and rents have risen significantly across central Virginia. What do you believe is the federal government’s responsibility, if any, when housing becomes unaffordable for working families?
2. Data centers and energy: Data centers are expanding rapidly across Virginia, raising concerns about electric bills, water use and the need for new energy infrastructure. What role, if any, should the federal government play in addressing those concerns?
3. Immigration: Some employers in agriculture, hospitality and other industries say they rely on immigrant workers, while some voters support stricter immigration enforcement. How should the nation’s immigration system address both of those concerns?
4. Congress and executive power: Congress was designed to act as a check on the executive branch, regardless of which party controls the White House. What responsibilities does Congress have when it disagrees with a president’s actions, and where do you believe the limits of presidential authority should be?
5. Are there any other pressing issues you would like 5th District voters to know about?

Related links

• 5th District will have both a Democratic and Republican congressional primary in August (Cardinal News, May 28, 2026) 
• Who’s running in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District in 2026? (VPM, Dec. 15, 2025)
• Congressional candidates figure out next steps after redistricting (C-Ville Weekly, April 29, 2026)
• John McGuire vs the 5th District (C-Ville Weekly, May 20, 2026) 
• CSPAN interview with John McGuire (CSPAN, Feb. 13, 2025) 
• Melanie Lucero says any Republican can win Virginia’s 5th – except John Mcguire  (The Daily Progress, June 11, 2026)   
• Melanie Lucero profile (29News, June 4, 2026)  
• Campaign finance report for John McGuire from the Virginia Public Access Project
• Campaign finance report for Melanie Lucero from the Virginia Public Access Project

The post Q&A with Republican primary candidates for Virginia’s 5th Congressional District appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

The U.S. House of Representatives is one of two chambers of Congress (the other is the Senate). The powers of the House of Representatives are outlined in the Constitution. Here is an explanation of what those powers are. Representatives are elected for two years. There are 435 districts in the House, of which Virginia has 11. 

Virginia’s Congressional District 7 covers counties in central and northern Virginia, including all of Orange, Madison, Greene, and part of Albemarle Country. Governor Abigail Spanberger held this seat for six years before running for Governor. 

This year, three candidates are running to represent District 7 in the Republican primary: Rick Smithers, Doug Ollivant and Philip Harding. Whoever wins will face incumbent Eugene Vindman (D) in November.

Charlottesville Tomorrow designed a questionnaire for the candidates based on responses we received from our voter survey. 

One candidate, Rick Smithers, responded. His answers are provided below. 

We made multiple attempts to contact Ollivant and Harding by phone, email and Facebook. While we were able to reach campaign staff for both candidates, we had not received responses as of Wednesday, June 17. We will update this voter guide if and when additional responses are submitted.

Data centers, utilities and energy: Many 7th District voters who responded to our survey are concerned that the growth of data centers could lead to higher electric bills. Do you think that’s a legitimate concern, and what would you do about it?

Rick Smithers: Yes, it’s a legitimate concern. Data centers use enormous amounts of electricity, and Virginia families should not face higher utility bills because of it. My position is simple: homeowners and small businesses should come first. Data center companies should pay for the infrastructure needed to support their operations, not local rate payers. I support transparency in utility rate setting and policies that protect families and seniors from unnecessary rate increases. We can welcome economic growth while ensuring the costs are not passed on to hardworking Virginians.

Doug Ollivant: Did not respond.

Philip Harding: Did not respond.

Valley Link, land use and property rights: 7th District voters raised concerns about Valley Link’s proposed Joshua Falls to Yeat transmission line and its impact on private property, farmland and local communities. Where do you stand on projects like Valley Link, and how should policymakers balance the need for reliable energy with property rights and land preservation?

Smithers: I support reliable and affordable energy, however, I also believe property rights matter. When projects like the Valley Link transmission line affect private land, farmland, and local communities, the people who live there deserve to be heard. Landowners shouldn’t be forced to carry the burden of projects they didn’t ask for. Before moving forward, companies should clearly show why a project is needed, look at alternative routes, and work closely with the people who will be impacted. I believe we can meet our energy needs without ignoring the rights of property owners. Farmers, families, and local communities should have a voice in the process from the beginning, not after decisions have already been made. My goal is to find a balance that protects both our energy future and Virginia’s rural way of life.

Ollivant: Did not respond.

Harding: Did not respond.

Military action abroad: The Constitution gives Congress and the president shared responsibilities when it comes to war and military action. What role do you believe Congress should play when a president is considering military action abroad?

Smithers: I believe Congress must play an active role when military action is being considered. While the President must be able to respond quickly to immediate threats, the Constitution gives Congress the responsibility to provide oversight and authorize prolonged military action. As a veteran, I understand that every decision to use force affects our service members and their families. Our military should be strong and ready, but military action should be a last resort, not a first option. Before committing American troops to a long-term conflict, Congress should carefully review the mission, risks, costs, and objectives. When American lives are on the line, the people deserve transparency and accountability from their government.

Ollivant: Did not respond.

Harding: Did not respond.

Rural jobs: Several voters asked how the region will replace manufacturing jobs and create opportunities for younger workers without losing the rural character of their communities. What industries do you believe offer the greatest opportunity for economic growth in the 7th District, and what federal policies would you support to attract those jobs to central Virginia?

Smithers: I don’t believe the future of the 7th District depends on becoming another Northern Virginia. We should focus on industries that fit our communities, including manufacturing, agriculture, small businesses, skilled trades, technology, and tourism. The federal government’s role is to create an environment where businesses can grow by reducing unnecessary regulations, expanding broadband access, and supporting workforce training. We should also strengthen trade and vocational education so young people can find good paying jobs close to home. My goal is to help grow our economy while protecting the farms, small towns, and rural character that make Central Virginia a great place to live and raise a family.

Ollivant: Did not respond.

Harding: Did not respond.

Are there any other pressing issues you would like 7th District voters to know about?

Smithers:Yes. The issue I hear about most often is the rising cost of living. Families are working hard, but the cost of groceries, housing, utilities, and other necessities continues to rise. We need to strengthen our economy, support small businesses, care for our veterans, secure our borders, and restore trust in government. Too many people feel Washington is out of touch with their daily struggles. As a pastor, veteran, and small business owner, I’m not running to build a political career. I’m running to fight for Virginia families and bring common sense back to government.

Ollivant: Did not respond.

Harding: Did not respond.

Related Links:

• Virginia’s 7th District Won’t Look Like a Lobster (Star Exponent, May 10, 2026)
• It’s official: Vindman is Democratic nominee for second run in 7th District (Star Exponent, May 30, 2026)
• Three Republicans vying for nomination in Virginia’s 7th District Primary Race (29News, June 10 2026)
• Profile of Doug Ollivant (ARLNow, April 29, 2026)
• Doug Ollivant Interview (Virginia Insider Podcast, May 6, 2026) 
• Who Is Philip Harding? (Washington Examiner, April 18, 2026) 
• Campaign finance report for Rick Smithers from the Virginia Public Access Project
• Campaign finance report for Philip Harding from the Virginia Public Access Project
• Campaign finance report for Doug Ollivant from the Virginia Public Access Project

The post Q&A with Republican primary candidates for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Shortly after 9 a.m. on Monday, June 8, several dozen men and women walked into The Haven, a nonprofit multi-resource day shelter and homeless support center in downtown Charlottesville. Sunlight streamed through the facility’s stained-glass windows, casting a warm glow as the center’s frequent guests greeted the staff, volunteers, and one another.

Once the guests were seated, all eyes turned to Andrea Douglas, the executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center (JSAAHC). She stood near the front of the historic Gothic-style building, facing rows of polished brown pews. 

Douglas was there to speak to the gathered crowd about the shelter’s former neighbor: the towering statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that stood across the street in Market Street Park from 1924 until its removal in 2021.

Working toward a community-driven revisioning of public spaces

Douglas’ recent visit to The Haven was part of a months-long public outreach initiative designed to give Charlottesville-area residents — particularly members of the Black community and the city’s unhoused population — a voice in the future of the Lee monument.

When the Lee monument was removed, the city of Charlottesville gifted it to JSAAHC, which dismantled and melted the statue into bronze ingots that eventually became part of a massive “Monuments” exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art  in Los Angeles. Once the six-month exhibition ended in early May, Swords Into Plowshares, an organization that formed shortly after the 2021 removal of the city’s Confederate statues, revealed plans for the second phase of its “Recast/Reclaim” initiative.

Stewarded by the JSAAHC, Swords Into Plowshares draws inspiration from the prophetic vision in the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Isaiah, which celebrates turning tools of violence into ones of peace and community-building. SIPS, as the project also is known, seeks to transform the remains of a symbol of white supremacy into a new public art piece that promotes healing and inclusion, according to its website. Much of that art would be found in the city’s public parks, a step that the Charlottesville City Council endorsed during its May 18 meeting according to reporting from Cville Right Now.

Before and since that meeting, JSAAHC’s outreach effort has included several listening and learning sessions across the city, along with an online survey to gather community input for proposals that have been submitted by three design teams. In recent weeks, Douglas has taken her presentation to a diverse cross-section of Charlottesville, including Black professionals who met Thursday evening, May 21, at JSAAHC, community members who met Saturday, May 23, at Visible Records artist studios, and guests at The Haven on June 8.

Connecting with each of those communities reflects JSAAHC’s attempt to create a multi-racial democratic process, said Douglas. “We also want to foreground the voices of descendants to American enslavement as they are inheritors or witness to systemic oppression. The histories that we have uncovered about our civic leisure spaces includes multiple pasts, all of which have implications about citizenship. We want to cast the broadest net possible so that whatever is created is a reflection of a place locally and globally.”

Douglas further emphasized the importance of including Charlottesville’s unhoused population in these conversations, noting their particular relationship to public spaces. “Although they (unhoused community members) often exist on the fringes of such spaces, they possess a deep understanding of how those spaces function,” said Douglas. “The Haven community, in particular, is closely connected to Market Street Park and can offer a valuable perspective to the community engagement process.”

Confronting the myth of the “Lost Cause”

During her June 8 presentation at The Haven, Douglas explained how the Lee monument came to occupy one of Charlottesville’s public parks for so long. Pointing toward an enlarged postcard on her slideshow, she described how the monument’s installation drew massive crowds, including a military contingent from Richmond.

“It was a procession that left the University of Virginia,” Douglas said. “They walked down Main Street. They walked to the park, and then they installed the statue. You can see the crowd there.”

The event played a central role in advancing the “Lost Cause” narrative, Douglas continued. “Central to this mythology was the false claim that the Civil War was fought over states’ rights and secession rather than the preservation of slavery. It also falsely portrayed enslaved African Americans as loyal to their enslavers and sympathetic to the Confederate cause.”

Throughout her presentation, Douglas stressed that the projects seek to acknowledge Charlottesville’s history of segregated public spaces while creating welcoming parks that reflect community values and encourage gathering, dialogue and inclusion.

Douglas also said that the project’s goal of inclusion confronts the legacy of Virginia’s Public Assemblages Act of 1926. Enacted exactly 100 years ago, this law institutionalized segregation by making it illegal for Black and white people to occupy public parks and other public spaces together.

The Lee monument was installed two years before the Public Assemblages Act became law, said Douglas. “It became a legalized moment, so we’re recognizing that by saying this is not just an object that can exist in one place, but the potential is for it to be in several places all at one time. So, as you’re starting to consider which one you like, also consider the fact that they’re not just singular objects in one place. They exist in other parts that intend to then mark histories that are relevant to the way we occupy public space today.”

In place of the statue will be new public art, and three design firms were selected as finalists among 32 applicants to remake the city’s public space.

The first proposal, by landscape architect Walter Hood and Hood Design, centers on a white pine tree in Market Street Park surrounded by a series of 20-foot steel rings engraved with words or symbols generated through community conversations. Initially stacked together as a single sculpture, the rings would later be distributed to locations across the city, including other parks and community gathering spaces.

A second proposal, by MASS Design Group, would transform Market Street Park into  a central gathering space organized around a Baobab tree-inspired bronze structure incorporating handprints collected from community members during an eight-week engagement process. Baobab trees commonly are known as a “Tree of Life.” Elements of the installation would also be placed in other city parks that practiced racial segregation.

The third proposal, by PUSH Studio, would use rammed-earth construction to create large towers and smaller pillars in Market Street and Washington parks, incorporating soil contributed by residents from places meaningful to them. Community members would help build the structures, which would also be the only proposal to reuse both the bronze and granite from the city’s removed monument.

Community members are hopeful and hesitant about plans to reinterpret city’s public spaces

Locally, residents can engage with this history through “Recast/Reclaim,” an exhibition on display at the JSAAHC through June 30. The exhibit features original, never-before-seen photographs documenting the dismantling and melting of the Lee statue. The winning design team tasked with leading the transformation will be officially announced on July 10, marking the five-year anniversary of the day the monument was permanently removed from Market Street Park.

After listening to Douglas’ presentations, several Charlottesville and Albemarle County residents shared their thoughts about the design proposals with Charlottesville Tomorrow.

“Now may be the time for us to put something — I’ll say significantly more meaningful — in that space, said Don Gathers, a community activist and advocate who co-founded a Black Lives Matter organization in Charlottesville.  “My problem is, I’m still not sure what that should look like. Something that would be warm and welcoming and inviting to most people won’t do something that’s good for all. Because ‘all’ would include those who didn’t want the statues taken down in the first place.”

Gathers mainly is glad that people can now go to Market Street Park and not be “subjected to something that seems like they’re being watched — and that there’s no overseer there. The history of the site will be the history of the site and not an individual overlooking the site, which I think is a good thing.”

Maxine Holland attended the May 21 listening session at JSAAHC along with several other community members, and left impressed about what she learned. Holland is a lifelong public schools educator and community servant who co-founded the nonprofit Veterans Committee of Central Virginia in 2015.

“It was a very informative session,” said Holland. “It answered a lot of questions. We left with a better understanding of what the project is about, and it appears that it would benefit the community.”

Kenneth Cartwright, a frequent guest at The Haven who enjoys its daily breakfast, also attended Douglas’ presentation. Cartwright admits he has mixed feelings about how the monument was removed, but also likes the idea of reinterpreting the statue’s remains.

“When I step back and think about it, I do believe what they’re doing now is good,” said Cartwright, a former Greyhound bus driver who encountered health setbacks after experiencing issues with his heart. “I also have some mixed feelings, especially about how the statue was taken down. History is what it is; we can’t change it. If you take the statue down, some people will miss that visible reminder of history. But at the same time, maybe now that it’s gone, more people will actually look into and learn about that part of our history.

“Speaking as a Black man, thinking about slavery and everything tied up in that, I still wonder if it could have been done differently,” Cartwright added. “Maybe the statue should have been moved somewhere else, where people could go if they wanted to learn about it in context.”

Quinn-Michyelle Foxx, who also attended the presentation at The Haven, said he likes Hood Design group’s proposal, which centers on a white pine tree in Market Street Park surrounded by a series of 20-foot steel rings engraved with words or symbols generated through community conversations. 

“I loved the idea of the rings and the circles because I’m someone who always says that ‘the only way you can tell yourself that you fully understand something is if you make a spectrum close to a full circle,'” said Foxx. “Just those rings alone, if you put them anywhere in the city, they’ll be easily identifiable, you know, which makes it cohesive, going back to the one piece. It just stands out.”

The post Swords into Plowshares reaches out to Black residents, unhoused community for input on recasting Robert E. Lee statue into new public art appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

As the number of confirmed measles cases related to the outbreak in Buckingham County keeps growing, reaching 88 as of Thursday, June 11, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) is asking community members to help slow down the spread.

Specifically, health officials are asking community members who are unvaccinated against measles, unsure of their immunity status or have symptoms consistent with measles to avoid large gatherings, events and crowded settings until the outbreak subsides. 

That includes — but is not limited to — the Amish Parochial School Consignment Auction, which is scheduled to take place on Friday, June 12, and Saturday, June 13, in Dillwyn, health officials said.

Measles is a very contagious infectious disease that spreads through the air that an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs.

“A person with measles can spread the virus from four days before until four days after a rash begins, meaning someone can spread measles before they know they are sick,” a VDH health advisory issued on Thursday, June 11, said.

Measles is also highly preventable with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, and VDH has issued additional vaccination recommendations for people in Buckingham County or connected to it.

While we can’t cover every story that’s important to you, we do our best to be responsive to your needs. We use tips from readers to choose which stories to cover, to incorporate information into broader reports or to help us decide how to grow Charlottesville Tomorrow. Here’s where you can tell us what you think we should be covering.

The post Virginia health officials ask for help slowing down measles spread appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Valley Link has released updated routing maps and a new slate of open houses for a proposed high-voltage transmission line that would cut through more than 100 miles of mostly agricultural and forested land from Campbell to Culpeper County in central Virginia.

Company representatives say the route changes have been implemented in response to community feedback, but some community members say they’re not so sure Valley Link is listening.

Information regarding the project first became available in February, when Valley Link — a partnership between Dominion Energy, Transource and First Energy Transmission — invited the public to an initial series of open houses to offer input on a set of proposed routes for its Joshua Falls to Yeat transmission line. Valley Link representatives have said the 765-kilovolt line is needed to stabilize Virginia’s electric grid amid a sharp rise in demand driven largely by new data centers.

Valley Link says it prefers to secure land via voluntary easements, but will use eminent domain — the seizure of private property for public use by the government without the owner’s consent — as a last resort. Dominion-affiliated projects have demonstrated a willingness to utilize eminent domain for other energy projects in recent years, battling everyone from farmers to funeral home owners in legal disputes across the state, according to reports from ABC News and 13News Now in Norfolk.

Public response to the project has been huge, with more than 3,400 community members attending the March open houses. In Orange, Louisa and elsewhere, community members shared concerns about the proximity of the line to existing homes and structures, environmental and health impacts, disruption to agricultural operations and historical resources.

Valley Link pledged to use that feedback, along with comments submitted through their website, emails and other communications with community members, to refine the routes and minimize impact to property owners. In late March, Valley Link released those refined routes on its website, along with the dates for another set of open houses in each county throughout the month of June. 

In a statement emailed to Charlottesville Tomorrow, Valley Link said that “The updated Joshua Falls to Yeat routes are the result of months of ongoing engagement with thousands of residents in our communities along the potential route alternatives.”

According to the statement, the revised routes impact fewer than 75 homes, and there are no homes within 150 feet of the routes. Valley Link says it has reviewed approximately 15,000 miles of routing alternatives and more than 2,000 public comments.

However, community members who spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow expressed exasperation over their attempts to meaningfully engage with Valley Link. They said that when they tried to reach out with concerns and questions, they were met with contradicting statements, technological glitches, and in many cases, silence.

Anna Ahlbin, an Orange County resident, found out in late February that her 6-acre homestead was in the path of the proposed transmission line. Ahlbin attended an open house in March after initially trying to submit a comment on the Valley Link website and getting no response, she said. 

The event left Ahlbin even more perplexed. She said that there was “no one there who seemed to actually know anything,” adding that it was also “incredibly confusing as to who you were supposed to speak with if you had actual information to give them.” 

At an Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting later that month, Ahlbin said she heard another person talk about their difficulty submitting a comment on the Valley Link website. Ahlbin tried to use the feature again shortly thereafter, hoping to provide information about outdated and missing details like existing structures on Valley Link’s route map.

“When I went to submit another comment, I encountered the exact same difficulties as the woman at the BOS meeting,” she said. “The submit button did nothing, and the comment would not go through.” She emailed Valley Link about the glitch on the website but once again, didn’t hear back.

Ahlbin did eventually get a call from Valley Link representative Rob Richardson in early April after asking District 63 Del. Phillip Scott to intervene on her behalf. However, a recent email left Ahlbin wondering what her efforts had accomplished.

On May 31, Ahlbin finally got an automated confirmation about a comment submitted on the Valley Link website. There was only one problem: the address and phone number listed weren’t hers and appear to be connected to an entirely different homeowner in Louisa County.

“But we’re supposed to trust their expertise to build giant pulsing towers spanning nine counties?” Ahlbin asked.

Benjamin Pennington is the founder of the Preserve Orange Alliance, a nonprofit that seeks to “preserve Orange County’s rural land, historic character, and way of life for future generations,” through community engagement regarding major development projects like the Joshua Falls to Yeat transmission line. One of the tasks that Pennington has taken on in his leadership role is helping other community members, such as elderly neighbors or those who may not have regular access to a computer, navigate the Valley Link website. 

Of the approximately 20 residents that Pennington has directly helped to submit comments and emails, he estimated that only about two have received responses.

He added that the design of the website isn’t user-friendly and some features, like a privacy agreement that blurs out the entire section users need to access the comment feature, may be keeping other community members who are less tech-savvy from submitting comments at all.

“Dominion is a very wealthy company,” he said. “They have the ability to make something intuitive and get the information out there.”

Pennington himself has sent about a half dozen messages to Valley Link, but said he didn’t get a call until the day after he was featured in an article by The Daily Progress (subscription required).

Now that the revised routes have been released, Pennington has more questions.

One of the original routes from March passed within 200 feet of Pennington’s house. That route has been moved off his property on the revised map but now, one of the other route alternatives could place the transmission line about 700 feet away on the opposite side. Without publicly available information about the reasons behind the route changes, he doesn’t know why that decision was made or if the route will move again.

Other community members have been even less successful in their attempts to reach out to Valley Link. Johannah Willsey of Fluvanna County was one of several community members who said Valley Link never followed up on their inquiries. Willsey sent an email in mid-March and said she never got a response.

“I don’t honestly believe that they are paying attention to resident feedback of any sort,” she said. 

Carolyn Loveland, like many people who live in the rural communities along the path of the proposed transmission line, doesn’t have reliable cell phone service at home.

Loveland emailed Valley Link three times throughout April, explaining her situation and asking Valley Link to respond via email each time. She said she hasn’t received any emails in response but has gotten two voicemails, which she has to travel off of her property to listen to.

In a series of phone interviews and emails with Charlottesville Tomorrow, Dominion Energy spokesperson and Valley Link representative Craig Carper asserted that Valley Link had “documented interactions” with property owners who had cited communication issues, but declined to answer further questions about specific interactions.

Carper confirmed that Valley Link uses Jambo software to track its communications but was unable to provide details about how the program is being utilized. Jambo’s company website describes the system as “purpose-built software for teams who need to prove they engaged,” with features including prioritizing tasks and generating compliance reports to be submitted to regulatory agencies.

Carper said that Valley Link understands community members’ frustrations but is doing its best to ensure transparency and timely communication given the scale of the project.

“We’ve been engaging with nine counties. It’s a lot,” Carper said. “It’s not a huge team that’s working on it, particularly the people that can speak about the project comprehensively. It’s a handful of people. So, we’re stretched kind of thin and, and we got a lot of work to do.”

When it comes to community members like Lovelend who have limited options for communication, Carper acknowledged that Valley Link must be sensitive to the needs of rural residents, but said that the extensive travel project managers are undertaking can make that difficult.

“When, you know, half or two-thirds of your day is in your car, it’s just so much easier to call,” he said, adding that representatives Rob Richardson and Lane Carr have been “almost living in their cars” going to meetings and visiting impacted properties.

Asked if the Valley Link project is understaffed, Carper said that utilizing a larger pool of employees isn’t feasible within the project’s budget.

“All of this has to get approved and paid for,” he said. “And the SCC (State Corporation Commission) only approves so much in terms of what resources we have. So, you know, if our staff was too large, there’d be questions about costs.”

Bryan Nicol, Chair of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, said in a phone interview on June 3 that he’s been hearing from constituents about communication problems similar to those shared with Charlottesville Tomorrow.

“It’s mind boggling that they can show up with 60 or 70 people at an open house meeting, yet they can’t answer a simple email or return a simple call,” Nicol said. “I’ve heard time and time again, it’s like you send an email and it goes into some folder, never to be seen again.”

Asked about Valley Link’s assertion that they are responding to feedback as quickly as possible while working with a limited number of staff, Nicol responded that he was “speechless.”

“If that’s the real issue, then that says to me that they should slow this thing down,” he said. “They should start over and do it right, and take the amount of time that needs to be taken to respond to citizens and to be able to present that information, so that the ones that are acutely and directly impacted can weigh in on this process.”

Carper said that Valley Link isn’t rushing to get the project done and has already moved the estimated timeframe to submit its SCC application from September to later this fall. 

“We’re sticking to the process and, if anything, we pushed things back a couple times, as we saw with the open houses that were pushed back to give routing more time, because we’re trying to do this right,” Carper said.

But taking the time to incorporate public feedback must be balanced with the “urgency of the demand” for power in Virginia, Carper said.

“As soon as this is built, it’s not speculative, we’re firing it up and it’s going to run at nearly full capacity,” he said.” It’s a very foundational and necessary project.”

However, residents and government officials have pushed back on the necessity of the project, according to reporting by Virginia Mercury. They have argued that the power generated will primarily benefit data center companies in northern Virginia while harming rural residents, leaving them with environmental damage and higher electricity bills.

During an interview in March, Carper estimated that “more than half” the electricity from the Joshua Falls to Yeat transmission line would go toward powering data centers.

According to Nicol, county officials haven’t had much more luck than individual property owners when it comes to getting their questions answered. The Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission have asked for specifics such as routing studies to better understand the project, but aren’t being given access to those documents, he said.

“We’re just not getting a lot of direct information,” Nicol said. “We have to sort of consistently and constantly ask and ask and ask and, much like what the citizens are facing, there are no answers.”

Carper said that the constantly evolving nature of the project can make it difficult to offer up-to-date documents and precise metrics. 

“What I’ve been told is to not give rock-solid numbers yet because they might go up 10 landowners,” Carper said in answer to a question about the total number of properties, including nonresidential, impacted by the revised routes. “They might go down 10, but we don’t wanna go up. And it’s possible we would, not by leaps and bounds because, but it’s, because we’re balancing, you know, landowners are one consideration, historic resources, cultural resources are another. We’ve gotta thread that needle.”

In place of specifics, Carper offered a broad set of considerations that Valley Link is using to revise its route options.

“Are we meeting the demand? Is it going to work? And what’s the least impactful way to do it? Those are the guiding principles that help us make the decisions that we do,” he said.

But Supervisor Nicol said that with a project as significant as the Joshua Falls to Yeat transmission line, citizens and government officials deserve to have more information than what Valley Link is providing.

“Their failure to answer questions, not returning calls or returning emails or cancellations, delays, all of this points to a pattern of behavior from Dominion that, in my view, undermines the validity of this entire process.”

The post From tech glitches to unanswered emails, residents cite communication gaps in Valley Link transmission line project appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

It’s the last day of class in Louisa County, but that hasn’t stopped 17-year-old Macaih Grooms from taking a moment to talk about music. Grooms can’t stop smiling as he talks about his experience this past year. 

“This year it was a little bit different, because I got to learn how to produce music instead of learning how to play it,” Grooms told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “Basically putting up all the parts together, picking out different sounds, and then adding the little bass line and drum part, and sometimes that can get a little bit challenging, but I learned to work through it. It’s basically trying to figure out how you want your music to sound.”

Grooms has been listening to all types of music since an early age, but his favorite, he says, is hip-hop and R&B. Grooms’ interest in playing instruments began after seeing his mother play the drums at church.

“I saw that, I was like, maybe I can do that as well, so that’s what got me started,” said Grooms. “Since then, I played guitar in church, and sometimes, if she wants me to, I play the drum set as well.”

This school year Grooms has been able to grow his love for music after Louisa County High School Band Director Micah Lee expanded the school’s music theory program. The new curriculum includes teaching students how to create their own music, as well as how to produce original songs and learn about copyright laws. This, Lee told Charlottesville Tomorrow, was possible through a new grant.

“One of my goals is making sure I have a comprehensive music program, and that just means that you know everything that we do is geared to the wholeness of a musician,” said Lee. “We were able to, and are in the process of transforming our practice rooms into small recording studios. So we have professional-grade recording equipment, things that are industry standards.”

Lee was able to make the improvements after meeting Shaun Masavage in the fall of 2024 at the Virginia Music Educators Association conference. Masavage is the chief executive officer and founder of Fret Zealot, an online platform for guitar lessons. After speaking with Lee, Masavage encouraged him to apply for the Zealot Interactive grant. 

Masavage first showed Lee the guitar lessons that Zealot offers on their platform, Lee said. “And I’m like, well, I’m not really interested in the guitar system. Do you have anything else? And then that’s what he showed me was the ‘how to build a band’ program, and I was like, you know what? This may be something that may work out.”

By the fall of 2025, just in time for the new school year, Lee had applied for and was awarded the Zealot Interactive grant, which caters specifically to middle and high school students and their teachers.

The “Build-a-Band” curriculum is designed to teach students how to create original music, and includes tools like recording equipment, software and a syllabus that teachers can use to help them build their teaching guides for students. It also goes over copyright laws and offers real-time online support for teachers.

“I’ve had some students, even in my jazz ensemble, that are using the technology and the equipment that we were able to get for the music theory class,” said Lee. “It’s translating to my other classes as well. So, some of them are creating their own songs because of the grant that we were able to get from Shaun.”

Lee said that he’s seen significant changes in his students. One of those changes, he said, and the most rewarding one, was seeing how creating their own music led to his students finding and using their own voices. 

“One of the things I am huge on is — if the opportunity is there for my students to be able to improve — I’m going to take the opportunity,” said Lee. “The biggest difference I’ve seen was the creation of their own voice. After they got through the slog of, okay, well, here’s what music theory is, here’s what a measure is, most of them were soft-spoken students, and throughout this class they became more vocal, verbally vocal, and they came more musically vocal too, and that’s because of what we were able to draw out of them.”

The costs for the “Build-a-Band” program range from $750 to $1,500 in the first year for schools, which can be covered by the one-time $5,000 grant. Schools can also keep the licenses for the digital audio work station – the software used to edit, master and mix music – and transfer them to new students the following year to help lower ongoing costs.

The idea for the program came to Masavage after a few years of helping people learn how to play music as adults despite having taken classes as teens. 

“What we found after years in industry with this is that students felt like they weren’t learning how to create their own original music at the high school level, and then middle and high school level,” Masavage told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “They didn’t have a program for that, and so we kind of put our heads together and we talked and realized that nobody had ever learned really anything in high school on how to create original music.”

Masavage and his team of instructors came up with a way to teach all aspects of music creation and productions to younger students, which is what attracted Lee to the program, because it fell in line with how he wanted to teach his students about music. 

“The way you keep and grow a music program is to offer something to everybody,” said Lee, who previously taught music at Thomas Jefferson Elementary. “And so some of those students that may have fallen through the gaps previously in my program — because maybe an instrument is not approachable for them — maybe that music production piece is that final thing that can get them.” 

This approach helped draw out students’ creativity and led to some, like Macaih Grooms, pursuing music production as a future career. 

“I’m going to continue producing this music, and I want this to be my career option,” said Grooms. “Since I’m graduating next year, I want to be able to work with other music producers.”

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When we launched the Next 20 series, we hoped that asking people to imagine the future would help them create it, and inspire others to dream. For many of the contributors, that’s exactly what happened.

Enid Krieger retired to central Virginia in 1999. She spent many hours on nonprofit boards and committees, drawing on her decades of experience in health care. But it wasn’t until contributing to Next 20 that she considered herself a writer, comfortable enough to share her ideas broadly.

Being edited to share her vision of Black history’s place in our future, Krieger said, “gave me the courage to join Beloved Community CVille’s newsletter staff as their content writer.”

Ckalib Nelson, a data engineer, said the Next 20 series gave him just the push he needed. Telling his story of local data for all propelled him to create a new company that will expand access to public data.

“I’m confident that without the recognition and discussion the series sparked, I wouldn’t have pursued this path. Thank you again for creating something that clearly had ripple effects well beyond the page,” he said in an email.

For Charlottesville Tomorrow’s 20th anniversary, we invited central Virginians to share what they imagine for their communities over the next 20 years. Krieger and Nelson were among 21 community members who participated in the Next 20 series through written pieces and video storytelling, sharing their ideas to help our region thrive. 

• Dave Norris said it’s possible to create permanent, supportive housing instead of focusing on shelters alone to address homelessness;
• Maureen Brondyke dreamed of how central Virginia could be a place where artists live, work and enrich our lives;
• Emily Gorcenski shared why she decided to return to Charlottesville after experiencing the violence of 2017;
• Daniel Fairley wrote about how his own experience gives nonprofits a way forward, together;
• Lisa Draine shared how she believes cooperatives can offer a hyperlocal way to explore alternatives to capitalism;
• and James Dowell — who still doesn’t really like  running — explained how a run club can change a community.

Since the last piece ran in March, contributors have told us that they made new connections, and that friends, colleagues, fellow church members and neighbors reached out. They saw their work — and their causes — shared in social media and supported by donations.

“I was surprised at the number (and diversity) of people who mentioned the piece in the week or two after it was published,” Sunshine Mathon, executive director of the Piedmont Housing Alliance, said by email. “Universally, they thought it was great and they got a glimpse into me in a way many previously hadn’t.” Mathon’s essay told a deeply personal story about his vision for decreasing income inequality in our region.

In her video piece, Zakia Haque called for more interconnection and solidarity between the local Muslim community and other groups. “Members of my community were proud to have our community visible and represented, which was humbling and gratifying,” Haque said in an email.

Many of the writers reflected on the novelty and value of working with our editors, and multiple people mentioned how the experience built their confidence — sparking new projects like Krieger’s newsletter writing and Nelson’s company.

“I had a wonderful time as a Next 20 contributor,” said Daniel Fairley. “I am most comfortable off the cuff and on camera, so writing and refining my thoughts was a new experience for me. I really appreciated the opportunity to write my thoughts down and go through the editorial process of publishing a piece.”

The first step to creating our shared future is imagining it.

For Charlottesville Tomorrow’s 20th anniversary, we invited central Virginians to share their visions for the next 20 years.

“I was in awe of the curiosity, creativity, and vision each Next 20 community member sees for our home,” said Charlottesville Tomorrow’s 2026 Board Chair Barbara Kessler. “The individual and collective impact from the stories shared is at the heart of Charlottesville Tomorrow’s mission and vision: strengthening community by connecting conversations, listening to a variety of voices, and enabling future action.”

Along with our neighbors, Charlottesville Tomorrow’s team and board also envisioned the future to celebrate our 20th anniversary.

In 2024, our board, with guidance from the community and staff, developed a five-year strategic plan for the newsroom called “Vision 2030.” That strategic plan was approved by the board in 2025.

The plan starts this way: “We have a vision for news that informs and serves everyone, centers the people most impacted by it, and helps to create the conditions for stronger, healthier, more diverse communities.”

“Charlottesville Tomorrow envisions by 2030, that we will have expansion of our work in stories told, voices heard, communities served, sectors covered and overall impact,” said Kessler.

Vision 2030 outlines how Charlottesville Tomorrow will meet our region’s growing information needs and respond to communities who increasingly see high quality, locally governed news institutions as an essential part of strong civic life.The strategic plan is a roadmap to cover more topics, such as business, labor and wealth; arts and culture; energy and the environment, said Kessler.

When we filmed board member Joshua René for his Next 20 contribution, one piece didn’t make the video cut: He described a scene from “Back to the Future,” where far ahead in the future, fingerprints are used to unlock a house — decades before that technology would catch up. Imagining things that don’t yet exist is powerful.

“The future is fun to think about,” he said.

The post Your neighbors shared their visions for the future — and then got to work to make it happen appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

The measles outbreak in Buckingham County keeps growing, with the number of confirmed cases reaching 69, according to the Virginia Department of Health’s (VDH) measles dashboard as of Monday, June 8.

This outbreak has already led to more infections than any of the past five years, and it has surpassed the total from the 2021 outbreak. It’s likely to keep growing.

“While we actively investigate each new case we are likely to continue identifying new cases,” said Emily Rich, a vaccine-preventable disease epidemiologist at VDH. “I can’t predict the future anymore than anyone else, but I can say that measles is very contagious. Nine out of 10 people who are exposed to measles will develop symptoms if they’re not immune. Which means measles can spread very rapidly through households and through undervaccinated communities.”

There are also two known public exposure sites that state health officials want everyone to be aware of.

The first is Bon Secours St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond. The exposure window was Wednesday, May 20, to Sunday, May 24, until noon. Anyone who was there within this window should monitor for symptoms until June 14.

The second is Centra Southside Community Hospital Emergency Department in Farmville, on May 26, between 8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. Anyone visiting the ED during that time period should watch for symptoms until June 19. 

These places are the only public sites of measles exposure that VDH officials have identified. In the case of smaller exposure sites where everyone present could be identified, such as a childcare facility or doctor’s office, VDH would contact those affected people directly, according to its website.

“We have been actively investigating new cases and contact tracing to the best of our ability. And that has led to the identification of additional cases,” said Rich. 

While highly contagious, measles is highly preventable with vaccines. “MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccines are safe and effective, and that is the best way to protect yourself against measles. Two doses of MMR vaccine are 97% effective at preventing measles, and that projection lasts your entire life,” Rich told Charlottesville Tomorrow in May. 

Statewide, out of the 91 measles cases reported this year, 86% were among people without vaccination records. Only 64.6% of 5-year-olds in Buckingham county have the complete series of vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella. Some neighboring counties, such as Cumberland, Prince Edward, Appomattox and Amherst have lower rates.

The first case in the current measles outbreak was identified and announced on May 8. Health officials couldn’t identify any source of the exposure, which led them to conclude it was local and more cases were to be expected. Indeed, more followed soon after.

While we can’t cover every story that’s important to you, we do our best to be responsive to your needs. We use tips from readers to choose which stories to cover, to incorporate information into broader reports or to help us decide how to grow Charlottesville Tomorrow. Here’s where you can tell us what you think we should be covering.

The post Measles cases in Buckingham County keep climbing as health officials identify two public exposure sites appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Jojo Robertson stood at the kitchen stove in her Park’s Edge apartment, stirring a simmering pot of water and cinnamon sticks. She lifted the wooden spoon into the air, closed her eyes, and took a long, deep breath as beads of aromatic liquid dripped back into the pot. Her face relaxed.

“It soothes me,” she said, turning off the stovetop and waving the steam around, wafting the scent of homemade potpourri through the living room of the three-bedroom apartment she shares with her husband and their two children. “It’s so stressful living here that I do whatever I can to feel peace.” 

Over the past few years, Park’s Edge residents in Albemarle County have faced a slew of problems in their units: fetid floods, rats in children’s beds, sparking electrical outlets, fire hazards, roaches, mold. 

Like her downstairs neighbor, Lanika Hester, Robertson has tried many times to get the property managers and owners of Park’s Edge to pay attention to the issues in her unit. 

Unlike Hester, Robertson hasn’t been able to bring a case to court, so she’s tried other ways.

Like many other tenants at Park’s Edge, Robertson has a housing voucher, a form of rental subsidy provided by the federal government. That means problems in her unit should be covered by the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development’s inspection program. But her unit has passed inspection despite obvious problems. And she’s not the only one. An investigation published by ProPublica and the Southern Illinoisan in 2018 and 2019 showed that HUD inspections passed dangerous apartments all over the country. That reporting pushed HUD to revise its quality of living standards and inspection practices, but the agency hasn’t yet implemented those changes for its housing voucher program.

Running out of options, Robertson contacted her local elected official for help.

At the time, early 2024, that was Diantha McKeel, who represented the Jack Jouett district on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors from 2013 to 2025. 

Robertson knew that as a tenant, she had few protections under the Virginia Residential Landlord-Tenant Act. But she was surprised — and disappointed — to hear that the local government couldn’t do much to help her either.

“I have a lot of sympathy and I understand where they are,” McKeel told Charlottesville Tomorrow in March 2024. “Having said that, we are very limited in what we can do. There’s no magic bullet here. People think that we have a lot more power than we really do in a lot of areas.”

That’s true, but it doesn’t have to be.

Albemarle County, like all Virginia local governments, has the authority to intervene in the kinds of conditions tenants at Park’s Edge describe enduring. Housing law experts say one policy in particular could reshape accountability for landlords across the county: rental inspection programs that proactively identify unsafe and neglected housing.

“Localities have been given the power” to implement rental inspection programs, said Daniel Rezai, an attorney with the Virginia Poverty Law Center who works exclusively with low-income clients, many of them renters. “In a perfect world, every one of them would have one.”

Some do. At least 18 local governments across the commonwealth have active rental inspection programs, and the City of Richmond is currently working to create one.

“It just makes sense,” said Gregory Miao, an attorney who has worked with jurisdictions across the country to establish rental inspection programs. “You should make sure that housing that’s being leased in your community is suitable and habitable for people to live in. That’s a core government service that we should probably be providing.”

In the three years Charlottesville Tomorrow has investigated conditions in rental units, Albemarle County officials have offered different perspectives on the possibility of implementing a rental inspection program here.

When Charlottesville Tomorrow reached out to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors in 2024 to ask about rental inspection programs, three of the six supervisors responded. They gave multiple reasons why they hadn’t established a rental inspection program in the county, including that it would be impossible, very difficult, or simply not worth it. Some said that Virginia law forbids them from creating such a program. Others said the county’s own ordinances won’t allow it.

However, that appears to be changing. During its May 20, 2026 meeting, Supervisor Sally Duncan, who has represented the Jack Jouett district (where Park’s Edge is located) since January 2026, initiated a Board discussion about a rental inspection program. The rest of the Board seemed interested in learning more about a program, or something similar, and they directed county staff to look into it.

“If it’s legally allowed, then we should do it,” Duncan, who succeeded McKeel in January 2026, told Charlottesville Tomorrow in a May 13 phone call. That call was the first time Duncan heard that the county could, in fact, have a rental inspection program, she said. “If the county can enforce that, we have a moral obligation to do so.”

Until Albemarle County changes its policies, renters have few options to improve conditions

Currently, when someone contacts Albemarle County about conditions in their rental home, all the county can do is send out code enforcement, said Mike Pruitt, who has represented the Scottsville District on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors since 2024. 

That’s exactly what McKeel did when Robertson and some other residents got in touch with her in early 2024.

County code inspectors visited Park’s Edge in mid-February 2024, which was about a year and a half after RailField Realty bought the property from TRC Parks Edge LLC. An email between code enforcers and McKeel that Robertson shared with Charlottesville Tomorrow mentioned things like trash and debris, as well as an outdoor light that wasn’t up to code, but said nothing about any of the more severe issues that terrified residents — flooding, blocked exterior vents, mold, pests or faculty electricity.

One inspector did note that he and his colleagues tried to speak with the property manager but were met with a “closed” sign on the office door. Eventually, he spoke with Todd Watkins, Chief Operating Office of RailField Realty, about the lighting problem.

The county is limited in what it can enforce as far as conditions go, Jodie Filardo, Director of Community Development for Albemarle County, told Charlottesville Tomorrow — it can only address what’s mentioned in county ordinances and what is required by the Uniform Statewide Building Code. Filardo retired from her position with the county in February 2026.

The Uniform Statewide Building Code has three parts: the Construction Code, the Existing Building Code and the Maintenance Code. All localities are required to enforce the Construction and Existing Building codes. However, localities can choose whether or not to enforce the Maintenance Code, and Albemarle chooses not to, said county spokesperson Abbey Stumpf.

The Board of Supervisors discussed enforcing the Maintenance Code in December 2021, but according to the meeting minutes, they felt the cost — $500,000 for the first year and $390,000 annually after that — was prohibitive.

From a zoning perspective, the county can force a property owner to address things like weeds, inoperable vehicles and stagnant water in pools, Filardo said. All of this falls under the county’s Spot Blight Abatement Ordinance, which also addresses damaged, decayed or dilapidated structures, as well as completely inoperable utilities.

The building code is more focused on public health and safety relative to a structure, for things like broken windows and holes in roofs, Filardo said.

When county inspectors find a violation of either a county ordinance or the building code, staff work with the property owner to bring the property or the structure back into compliance. If it’s not addressed, the county can issue a fine.

Interior issues, however, fall under the auspices of the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, Filardo said. That’s a state law that defines the relationship between a landlord and a tenant.

McKeel said she frequently heard complaints from her constituents about living conditions in their apartments.

“It’s frustrating, I think, for all of us,” McKeel told Charlottesville Tomorrow in 2024. “It’s especially sad and frustrating for our residents. I don’t want to paint everybody with the same brush, but we do have property management companies that are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do and are really doing a good job. We also have some property management companies that are not, for various reasons. Sometimes they’re out of town, they’re not located here.”

Virginia state lawmakers add a few new tenant protections, and Albemarle County considers rental inspections

When Charlottesville Tomorrow spoke with some Albemarle County elected officials in spring 2024, they said they were interested in advocating for more tenant protections, but a county rental inspection program was not one of them. Since Charlottesville Tomorrow started sharing residents’ experiences and asking officials questions about these issues, that changed.

In 2026, Albemarle County officials asked local representatives in the Virginia General Assembly to support a variety of tenants’ rights bills meant to work in tandem to give tenants more substantial rights within the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act.

“I see this network of other priorities as being, frankly, more urgent than an inspection program,” Supervisor Pruitt told Charlottesville Tomorrow in March 2026.

One of the bills the supervisors supported was HB281, sponsored by Del. Katrina Callsen and signed into law by Gov. Abigail Spanberger on April 22. The law, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2027, will allow a tenant who is being sued by their landlord, usually in an unlawful detainer case (i.e. an eviction case), to defend themselves on the grounds that the home the tenant is renting is unlivable. It would also allow a tenant to raise that defense in court without having to pay all of their past-due rent first. Currently, tenants can do neither of those things under the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act.

“If you get caught in a situation where your landlord’s not doing right, you can be completely out of luck,” Callsen told Charlottesville Tomorrow in March 2026. “There’s something inherently kind of wrong about not being able to raise a defense, a valid defense, unless you’ve paid money to do so.”

And in order to raise this defense, the tenant must have proof of those poor conditions, such as photos, a paper trail of communications to property management, receipts — just like Lanika Hester did for her case where she won damages from the owners of Park’s Edge.

Another piece of legislation the supervisors supported was HB14, which was also signed into law and will take effect July 1. It allows all localities to enforce the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. The new law essentially allows a local government to act in a way that an attorney general might, with something called parens patriae standing, explained Pruitt. In addition to his Board service, he is a civil rights attorney focused on housing law. 

That means a local government would be able to step in and sue a negligent landlord on behalf of a tenant or tenants who believe their landlord has violated the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. For that to happen, a tenant must file a complaint about the conditions in their rental and their landlord’s neglect. If the local government agrees the landlord is in violation, it could file a suit against the landlord.

Having a county attorney’s office throw their weight behind a case could really help tenants, especially ones who can’t afford an attorney, Pruitt said. He sees the potential for a variety of legal remedies, including getting money for tenants or forcing a landlord to make specific fixes.

“The world of remedies is going to be bigger than what we currently have,” he said.

While Pruitt is excited about the new law, he was quick to acknowledge its weaknesses.

“I don’t want to be too Pollyanna about this,” Pruitt said. “We’ve still got to actually bring a case.” 

On top of that, Albemarle County is a fairly large county, one with “a decent-sized attorney’s office,” Pruitt added.

“This ain’t gonna do anything for, say, Buckingham County,” he said. “A lot of smaller counties in the commonwealth, they might not even have a full-time county attorney, they have someone on contract. Realistically, this does nothing for them.”

Miao, the equitable housing policy and rental inspection expert, agrees. He said this kind of law will likely be most helpful when a group of tenants in more urban areas with a larger local government can get together and prove to officials that their shared landlord is neglecting conditions. That could put more pressure on the local government to bring a case, particularly if the locality’s attorney could sue one landlord and help hundreds of people.

Another possible weakness of this type of law is that it will be the tenants’ responsibility to bring the issues to county staff.

“There is no internal trigger. We’re not going out and seeking these cases,” Pruitt said.

“There’s no system where the government can protect everyone,” Miao said. “So it’s important to both increase individuals’ rights to bring their own enforcement actions if they can, and to try to make that as accessible as possible, while also taking a more proactive approach from the government perspective and trying to ensure safer, healthier housing.”

An approach like a proactive rental inspection program.

These programs that aim to actually protect the health and safety of tenants have grown in popularity around the country, according to Miao. Cities like Boston; Seattle; Syracuse, New York; and Tulsa, Oklahoma have them. The state of Florida has one for large buildings. 

They look different from place to place, Miao said. For instance, some inspect all rentals, whereas others look only at multi-family buildings. Some inspect every year, others every 10 years.

But there are a few core similarities among them: They’re periodic, regular inspections of rental units conducted by a local government. And for the places that have them, they’re typically mandatory. These proactive programs also share a similar mission.

“There’s a lot of variety, but the purpose really is to ensure that we’re maintaining and promoting public health,” Miao said.

That’s something local governments should be interested in, he added. Otherwise, they’re risking a lot.

“Oftentimes, these programs proliferate relative to some local tragedy,” Miao added.

That’s exactly what happened in Roanoke.

A tragedy moves Roanoke to act on rental inspections

Content Warning: The following text contains graphic descriptions of a fatal house fire.

A house divided into apartments went up in flames in Roanoke in January 1996. A family of six was inside: four children, their mother and their grandmother.

A 1996 Roanoke Times report about the incident is hard to read.

Two neighbors tried to help. One called 9-1-1 while another said she talked with the trapped family through a closed window. Both neighbors tried to break the window but couldn’t shatter the glass. Eventually, the family stopped responding.

The mother was able to escape, and she was inconsolable as she watched the house burn. The children’s pink bicycle and red wagon sat in the yard.

The children’s father arrived on the scene about 15 minutes after the fire department, and he pounded on a fence across the street from the house, shouting, “Oh, my God.” 

All of the victims died from “a combination of smoke inhalation and fire” the Roanoke Fire Chief told the newspaper. They were Mark, 6; Clyde, 5; Patrick, 4; Nancy, 3, and Goldie Christie Duncan, 46.

Faulty wiring in the kitchen was thought to be the cause, and it was  later determined that the apartment didn’t have any smoke detectors, a Roanoke city code violation. City officials said they felt as though the fire could have been prevented.

Determined to make sure something like that wouldn’t happen in Roanoke again, the city instituted a proactive rental inspection program.

The city had considered implementing a rental inspection program since at least 1979, according to a November 1995 article in the Roanoke Times. As the city started to consider a program more seriously, a group of 72 landlords owning more than 3,000 properties among them banded together to oppose it.

One landlord called it “government intrusion of the worst order. If we have to go to the Supreme Court, we’ll go to the Supreme Court,” and said Roanoke should enforce its existing building code. This same landlord said that he had a tenant who disappeared on him, owing him $1,400 and causing $1,600 in damage. “We are pictured by and large as greedy landlords. [But] there are people out there who know how to beat the system,” he said.

But after the fire — which happened just a few months after that landlords’ meeting — Roanoke moved quickly to implement a proactive rental inspection program.

“For us, it’s all about safety,” Jeffery White told Charlottesville Tomorrow. White is a codes compliance coordinator for the City of Roanoke, about 120 miles southwest of Albemarle County.

When Roanoke began its program nearly 30 years ago, it first established a rental inspection district. Then, staff used property records and geographic data to identify every property within the district boundaries and mailed notices of the inspection program to property owners.

Those who owned rental properties in the city-designated inspection district would have their units subject to inspection every two years. That was later changed to every four years.

The inspection district covers the most dense parts of the city and includes 5,300 to 5,400 units, White told Charlottesville Tomorrow. That’s most of the city’s rental homes.

(Roanoke is about 43 square miles in area, and has about 100,000 residents. Albemarle County, for comparison, is over 700 square miles and has more than 117,000 residents.)

Roanoke’s inspectors look for violations of the Virginia Maintenance Code, which is the third chapter of the Uniform Statewide Building Code, as well as things on the city’s own checklist. That checklist includes things like roof condition, any rotting wood inside or out, loose or missing gutters, structurally unsound porch columns, peeling paint (especially if the home was built in a time when lead paint was used), the quality of interior surfaces, plumbing and electrical wiring, “just to name a few,” White said.

When a unit passes inspection, the city issues a certificate of compliance. That means the property owner can rent it out and potential tenants will know it’s safe, he said.

If a unit fails inspection, the city gives the landlord what it feels is a reasonable amount of time to fix the problems, depending on the repairs needed. Landlords can ask for an extension, which the city grants if the landlord has made what it considers “substantial progress,” said White. Most of the problems are fixed this way.

In rare cases, the city uses the court system to pressure a landlord into compliance.

“If we have someone who has to appear in court, that means we have exhausted all other means to get them to comply,” White said.

White’s office works with Roanoke’s Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney on the cases, usually about 25 each month.

“How [landlords] get there is, maybe lack of communication or just totally disregarding the notices,” said White. “Or the condition is substandard to the point where we need immediate action and just can’t wait any longer.”

If you go out and inspect a lot more units, you find a lot more problems. It can, in unfortunate circumstances, lead to tenant displacement.

—Gregory Miao, housing attorney

In most cases, the judge gives the landlord time to make the repairs or address the situation. But when the judge finds the landlord guilty, the court can fine the landlord and require the repairs to be made. The city also reserves the right to bring the case back to court every month if there’s still no compliance.

“That’s a very valuable tool that we have, and one that we use frequently,” said White.

Roanoke hasn’t had to revoke a certificate in at least four years, said White. But when it has had to, it was due to unsafe conditions resulting from a fire, significant plumbing or electrical issues, or deteriorating conditions.

When a unit is deemed unsafe for habitation and its certificate revoked, tenants must move out. That is a legitimate concern and potential downside for any rental inspection program, anywhere, said Miao.

“If you go out and inspect a lot more units, you find a lot more problems. It can, in unfortunate circumstances, lead to tenant displacement,” Miao said. “In the long run, those are terrible places that were killing tenants, probably, anyway. No housing solution operates on its own — housing programs are integrated — so what you need to do is have housing relocation assistance.”

For example, some localities have a relocation fund paid for with money from the fines and penalties levied against landlords, Miao said. Roanoke provides a list of community resources and contact information to help tenants find a new place.

Since inspectors are the ones closely examining the units, it’s important for them to be highly-trained, said Jillian Papa-Moore, Deputy Director of Roanoke’s Department of Planning, Building, and Development. They go through months of training on local and statewide codes and ordinances, and must pass a two-hour, 60 question exam in order to become a certified property maintenance inspector with the city. And there’s continuing education requirements after that.

“It’s vast training,” said White, who likes to recruit people with practical building experience — like certified electricians and contractors — to the inspector program. You don’t want “just anyone” telling you what’s wrong with your plumbing or electricity and how to fix it, he said

What’s more, the inspectors spend a lot of time in the field, said White. Each inspector is assigned to a zone and their duties extend beyond the proactive rental inspection program. They’re encouraged to get to know the residents and landlords in their zone and attend monthly neighborhood meetings.

That helps establish trust between the city and tenants who might otherwise be nervous to call in a potential violation on their landlord, with the limited protections they have under the Virginia Residential Landlord Tenant Act. 

White and Papa-Moore said that while the program goes a long way to ensure the safety of many Roanoke tenants, it’s not perfect. On rare occasions, tenants are in fact displaced.

But, they say people see the program’s value. Roanoke is growing in population, and as of 2024, its zoning ordinance allows more density throughout the city. 

“There’s a tremendous amount of fear about how housing conditions may be affected by reform, potentially in a negative way,” said Papa-Moore. “We constantly hear the community looking for us to do things to preserve the existing housing stock, rather than promote new development. And this particular program is foundational when it comes to preserving the integrity of the existing housing stock.”

Papa-Moore said she regularly hears from residents who want to see the inspection program expanded to include the entire city.

“No,” she has to tell them. “We can’t. State law.”

When they learned about Park’s Edge, Albemarle officials began to consider rental inspections

A Charlottesville Tomorrow reporter asked all six members of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors in spring 2024 if they would consider implementing a proactive rental inspection program. Three of them replied, saying that it would be extraordinarily difficult.

“There are legal and practical obstacles that limit the County’s ability to implement a broad rental housing inspection program,” Jim Andrews, who represented the Samuel Miller District on the Board from 2022 through 2025, wrote in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow.

“We are limited in what we can do,” Diantha McKeel said in a phone call. 

“The obstacles the state has placed in our way make proactive inspections nearly impossible and of questionable value,” Pruitt, representing the Scottsville District, said at the time. “Without a licensing process and registry for landlords, it is effectively impossible to maintain an inspection program.”

The Statewide Uniform Building Code gives any locality the ability to adopt a rental inspection ordinance “to promote safe, decent and sanitary housing for its citizens.” That same law also makes creating an effective inspection program difficult, as Albemarle County officials have repeatedly said.

For instance, if a locality wants to have a rental inspection program, it must create an inspection district. But the district cannot cover the entire locality. So while Albemarle County could create an inspection program in the urban ring that includes Parks’ Edge, it could not inspect all rentals across the entire county.  

Additionally, the law prohibits a locality’s rental inspection program from imposing a registration or a fee upon property owners. Landlords cannot legally be fined for not registering, except in some cases, and that fine is just $50.

However, Roanoke created an inspection program using this same law. The law does allow localities to require owners of dwelling units in a rental inspection district to notify the locality’s building department in writing if the unit is being rented out as a residence. That, in combination with the city’s property records, is how Roanoke was able to create its list of rental properties, White said. 

For the most part, current Albemarle County lawmakers seemed unaware that they had the authority to implement a rental inspection program. Supervisor Pruitt had discussed rental inspection programs and other tenant protections with Charlottesville Tomorrow previously. But Supervisors Bea LaPisto-Kirtley and Fred Missel told Charlottesville Tomorrow that they didn’t know much about rental inspection programs but wanted to learn more. Ann Mallek said something similar during the Board meeting, and Ned Gallaway seemed interested as long as it was something to be considered during the budget cycle. 

Supervisor Sally Duncan, representing the Jack Jouett District (which includes Park’s Edge), spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow by phone on May 13, 2026. During that phone call, she said that it was the first time she’d heard that the county could, in fact, have one. Duncan, who is a renter herself, joined the board in January 2026 and said she was told by other county officials that the Board had very few options when it comes to holding landlords accountable.

But after hearing that it is possible for the county to have a rental inspection program, she wanted to know more. She asked about other Virginia localities that have them, and asked what spurred Charlottesville Tomorrow to look into the issue. That is how she learned about fetid floods, rats, roaches and other hazards at Park’s Edge.

She said she was eager to meet with residents to hear what they were going through and what she could do to help.

“I am in favor of every tool at our disposal in order to protect tenants, to hold bad landlords accountable, and to ensure that people have good, safe living conditions,” Duncan told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “We have a moral obligation to do so.”

Duncan spent a few days before the May 20, 2026 Board of Supervisors meeting researching.

“I have always been told that we don’t, we can’t do anything for renters with tenant protections and holding landlords accountable,” Duncan told the Board and other county staff present. “I was made aware last week that that’s actually not the case.”

She detailed some of the ways it could help tenants, such as ensuring their health and safety in their homes, but also landlords, by identifying problems they’re not aware of in their properties. She asked if the other five members of the board would be interested in learning more about the possibility. All of them said that yes, they’d like to know what’s possible and how much it would cost.

“Quality of life inside the home is just as important as quality of life in the county,” she said. “I would expect our out-of-town landlords and property managers to uphold the values that we have in Albemarle County.”

Pruitt, representing the Scottsville District, voiced support and also shared his reservations about a rental inspection program: potential high costs, the challenge of creating an inspection district, and displacement of tenants if a building has to be condemned.  They are concerns he has brought up with Charlottesville Tomorrow since 2024.

Pruitt said he has more faith in the new law that will give localities the authority to sue a landlord on behalf of tenants. He sees it as a way to potentially solve the same problem for less money, and suggested the county could create an “Office of the Tenant Advocate” in order to do so.

Still, he wanted to know how that program might be able to work in tandem with an inspection program.

“I think we could potentially do both,” he said.

The entire discussion lasted less than 20 minutes, and by the end, the Board asked county staff to do some research and come back to them with a report later in the year. It’s something they said they’d think about while discussing the county’s affordable housing plan and next year’s budget.

If the Board decides to move forward, they’ll have some important decisions to make.

Miao agreed that overall, the legal limitations Virginia law puts on rental inspection programs are “significant.” Limiting a program to only part of a locality only protects a portion of tenants and can create problems with enforcement.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing,” he added. “I would still encourage jurisdictions to utilize the rules as written.”

A locality needs a few things to stand up a rental inspection program: data tracking software, which many already have for building and fire code inspections; an administrator who would do things like acknowledge a receipt of rental licenses and registrations; and inspectors.

Most localities already have inspectors, Miao said. And what usually happens is, as proactive inspections go up, responsive inspections go down, and inspectors end up with a similar amount of work.

“We know that cities of 30,000 to 50,000 people have been able to do this with four inspectors or less,” Miao said.

Yet another common argument against proactive rental inspection programs is that they will “have a chilling effect on landlords,” and therefore a negative effect on the availability of affordable housing, Miao said.

He’s not sure the data backs up that concern. What is a real concern, however, is that it could make it difficult for mom and pop landlords who own a few buildings, who are people with low profit margins, to keep up with the inspection standards.

Small landlords tend to be the most accommodating type of landlord, Miao said, and it’s important to keep them in business. They’re more likely to work with a tenant who is struggling to make rent one month, and they raise rents less often than corporate landlords.

Some cities, like Cleveland, try to keep mom and pop landlords going by having rental rehabilitation programs, or city-funded low-interest loans or grants for property upgrades.

“These are really important things to pair with proactive rental inspection programs, not only because it helps those landlords, but because ultimately it keeps those properties on the market,” Miao said.

That’s important because preserving existing low-cost housing is less expensive than building it anew. Still, Miao isn’t convinced that any of this is why proactive rental inspections aren’t widespread.

“I don’t think those are the real reasons why those programs don’t exist,” he told Charlottesville Tomorrow. It’s because living conditions are, for the most part, a hidden problem. 

“You can go around and see everyone’s house, but you don’t go into everyone’s house, so you don’t see the conditions everyone’s living in. Unless you have a program like this, you don’t know what your housing stock really looks like,” Miao said.

“People don’t realize how stacked that system is against tenants.”

Floods, roaches, rats, mold — these are just a few of the issues in Charlottesville Tomorrow’s investigation into how Virginia law often fails to protect vulnerable renters.

This series, reported over years of following tenants’ stories, is about what happens when renters in Virginia try to improve the conditions of their homes. It took reviewing images and records, hundreds of emails between residents of Park’s Edge, their landlords and advocates, court records and legislative efforts.

It was reported by Erin O’Hare with editing by Jessie Higgins, photography by Ézé Amos and O’Hare, with images and documents provided by residents of Park’s Edge, editing and design by Angilee Shah and Ashley Harper.

Follow the series over the week of June 1, 2026 by subscribing to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s free Beyond the Headlines newsletter.

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The post While state laws do little to protect tenants, counties have options — and Albemarle is beginning to consider them appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Sitting alone on a bench outside the Albemarle County General District Court, Lanika Hester took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and checked the time — 1:12 p.m. She’d been there for nearly an hour, trying to memorize the statement she wanted to give to the judge.

Against all odds, she had sued her landlord over the conditions in her apartment, and the trial was scheduled to start at 1:30 p.m.

She looked down at a piece of paper in her hand with her words written out in blue ink.

“This experience has had a profound impact on my life,” she whispered to herself. “I’ve spent thousands of dollars staying in hotels, buying devices to fight mold, which created a financial burden I wasn’t prepared for. I also faced constant worry about health risks, which disrupted my peace of mind.”

She took another breath, closed her eyes, and tried to repeat those lines.

“This experience has strained my resources and my ability to plan for the future.”

She stood up and walked in a small circle, smoothing the fabric of her blue slacks. 

It was January 24, 2025, more than two years after a putrid flood upended her life, and she was hoping for a modicum of justice — compensation for the money she’d spent, but also acknowledgement that what she’d been through was not okay, she said. 

Hester’s attorney, Victoria Horrock, arrived a few minutes before the trial was due to begin, a hefty bundle of paper in her arms.

Hester’s case was a rare one, she said.

Attorneys and lawmakers who work with low-income renters throughout the state told Charlottesville Tomorrow that they regularly hear stories like those coming from Park’s Edge — floods, roaches, rats, mold, sparking electrical sockets and more.

In many of those cases, property owners and managers do not address the problems — at least not quickly.

Why?

Under the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, landlords are, for the most part, responsible for the living conditions in their properties. But that law offers no way for a tenant to force a landlord to address maintenance issues. So when a landlord is unresponsive, or fails outright to maintain a safe living environment, tenants in Virginia have few options, attorneys say.

One option is to move. But not everyone can afford to do that — particularly those like Hester who have secured one of the area’s scarce federally subsidized units.

For tenants who can’t move, their only other recourse is to sue for damages. This gives the tenant a way to recoup any money that the landlord’s actions cost them — but that’s just about monetary damages. A ruling in favor of the tenant in this kind of case does not force the landlord to fix anything in the rental unit.

And suing for damages has other limits.

“It’s really hard to sue your landlord,” said Horrock.

As a result, cases like Hester’s that do make it to court are rarely the result of a single incident. They are the culmination of years of unresolved problems. This was true for Lanika Hester. She’s been dealing with maintenance issues in the aging building for years.

Park’s Edge was called a ‘great complex’ by an Albemarle County supervisor, before is was sold multiple times without repairs

Park’s Edge sits in Albemarle County’s urban ring, on the edge of the City of Charlottesville. It is one of dozens of similar complexes in the area constructed in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s to meet the housing demands of a growing population.

These buildings are now aging, and not all of them are aging well, former Albemarle County Supervisor Diantha McKeel told Charlottesville Tomorrow in March 2024. At the time, McKeel represented the Jack Jouett District, which includes Park’s Edge.

Park’s Edge is one of the ones that’s aging poorly, its residents say.

Built in 1977, Park’s Edge is an eight-building, 96-unit apartment complex located at 181 Whitewood Rd., on the edge of the 25-acre Charlotte Humphris Park. It’s a few minutes’ walk to Albemarle High School and a 15 minute drive to downtown Charlottesville.

The complex had a couple owners before the Albemarle Housing Improvement Program bought it in 2002. The local nonprofit stepped in after county officials encouraged the purchase.

“At the time, the property was troubled,” AHIP’s then-Executive Director Jennifer Jacobs told Charlottesville Tomorrow in 2020. “It was affordable, but not a nice place for the residents who lived there.”

That’s fairly typical for housing of its age, said Greg Miao, a Denver-based attorney who has worked with communities across the U.S. on implementing healthy and equitable housing policies. 

“There’s a life cycle for buildings that we need to budget for but never do,” Miao said. “Something new becomes a priority, the funding goes away, and then there’s no dedicated funding.”

That makes deferred maintenance commonplace, he added. Most apartment buildings built after World War II had a lifespan of about 40 years before they needed major upgrades. That timeline is even shorter — about 20 years — for most apartment buildings being constructed today, Miao said.

On top of all that, Park’s Edge’s federal rental subsidy was about to expire in 2002, and county leaders feared it would be sold off and turned into condos or student housing.

AHIP stepped in and bought the property for nearly $4.4 million. A few years later, in 2005, the organization renovated the complex using Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC, pronounced “lie-tech”) funding. That’s taxpayer money. 

The funding came with strings. By accepting it, Park’s Edge had to remain a LIHTC property, meaning it must accept housing vouchers, the federal government’s rent subsidy program. Its current affordability contract expires Dec. 31, 2034, at which point the owner could opt to renew the contract or exit the program.

Today, many residents at Park’s Edge use those vouchers. They pay a portion, usually 30%, of their income toward rent, and the government picks up the rest, up to market rates.

For years after AHIP purchased the property, life at Park’s Edge was relatively uneventful, residents told Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Jojo Robertson and her family moved into Park’s Edge over a decade ago, when AHIP owned it. 

“It was very quiet,” Robertson said.

Then, in 2018, AHIP started thinking about selling the property.

“We don’t have the infrastructure to do this,” Jacobs said about a potential sale in 2020. The organization wanted to go back to focusing on property maintenance.

One of the interested buyers was Piedmont Housing Alliance. PHA is a local housing nonprofit that started managing the property for AHIP in early 2019 (via Internet Archive). Hoping that PHA would buy the property, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors voted to financially support a round of renovations and allocated up to $325,000 for it in late 2018.

“It really is a great complex,” Supervisor Diantha McKeel said during a meeting at the time. “It’s getting old.”

McKeel also mentioned that she was impressed by how satisfied residents seemed to be with management at Park’s Edge, which helped convince her to vote in favor of the funding.

But PHA did not purchase the property. And that round of renovations never happened.

Instead, AHIP put Park’s Edge on the market in 2020. That December, a company called TRC Parks Edge LLC bought it for $7.4 million. That LLC owned the complex for less than two years before selling it to a Bethesda, Maryland-based company called RailField Realty for $11.7 million in 2022. RailField is the current owner.

It really is a great complex. It’s getting old.

—Albemarle County Supervisor Diantha McKeel said of Park’s Edge during a 2018 Board meeting

Looking back, Park’s Edge residents say they noticed a few maintenance issues here and there over the years, but nothing really grabbed their attention until 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when maintenance was curbed by stay at home orders. And not long after TRC Parks Edge took over, residents say conditions inside the complex began to deteriorate. Small problems started to go unaddressed and snowballed into big ones.

Charlottesville Tomorrow tried multiple times over a year to reach representatives from TRC Parks Edge LLC, a company whose only web presence is a few founding documents in a Virginia state database. As of publication, no one associated with the company has responded to those inquiries.

TRC’s property management company for Park’s Edge, Franklin Johnston Group, did not respond to multiple requests by email, phone and through their website to speak with Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Letters from lawyers prompt repairs — but some residents say it was just cosmetic

Park’s Edge residents were not able to reach TRC Parks Edge, either. And by September 2022, they desperately wanted to. Lanika Hester’s basement apartment, and the ones next to hers, had flooded with what looked and smelled like sewage. Some of their neighbors complained about roaches and rats. Others were concerned about mold, and their electrical outlets sparking when they plugged in appliances.

The conditions prompted a local legal advocacy organization that provides services to low-income people to take up their cause. On Sept. 26, an attorney at the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville sent a letter on behalf of Park’s Edge residents to management. The four-page document outlined various issues with the buildings, as well as problems with how on-site staff handled residents’ concerns and maintenance requests.

“We have learned of an extremely high number and variety of substandard conditions,” the attorney wrote. “The most urgent matter is that deferred and poor-quality maintenance have led to various health and safety problems.”

The letter cited 18 different concerns, along with the sections of the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act that the attorney alleged the company was violating.

The letter also included 10 suggested solutions for those problems, most of them focused on improving the frequency, quality and responsiveness of property management and maintenance.

Residents hoped that a letter from an attorney would escalate the issue and prompt either the property manager Franklin Johnston Group or the owner of the complex to respond.

TRC Parks Edge never responded. That’s because, unbeknownst to residents, the company had already sold the complex to RailField Realty.

RailField had owned the property for less than a week when it received the residents’ letter.

The letter “came as a surprise,” Todd Watkins, RailField’s Chief Operating Officer and general counsel, said in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow on Feb. 14, 2024.

“It was clearly written to the organization who owned the property before us and certainly did not give us enough time to make any repairs to the property,” Watkins wrote. “We knew when we purchased Park’s Edge that work needed to be done to bring it up to our standards, so we got to work as quickly as possible.”

Watkins, as well as representatives from Franklin Johnston Group, met virtually with tenants and the Legal Aid Justice Center in November 2022, about two months after receiving the letter.

“At that meeting we stressed that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but we moved quickly,” said Watkins.

Residents waited about four months. But after seeing little improvement, they sent another letter, and RailField and Franklin Johnston Group met with them a second time, in March 2023.

Watkins told Charlottesville Tomorrow that since those meetings, RailField has made numerous improvements to the property.

One of the biggest was replacing roofs and gutters on four of the complex’s eight residential buildings. RailField has also painted the building exteriors and shutters, repaved the parking lots, repainted interior hallways, installed new light fixtures and replaced the rubber coating on the stairs. The company also replaced the flooring and appliances in some units. 

While many residents expressed gratitude, they also had concerns.

“I remember sitting with the owners,” Hester said. She recalled that they told residents that the buildings had a lot of issues and therefore couldn’t be tackled all at once. But she questions the things they prioritized.

“He is investing a lot of money on things that do not matter to the health of the people. He’s painting shutters outside, from burgundy to blue. Now what does that do for us? It was fine being burgundy. We need to figure out what’s inside the walls, what’s going on.”

“They’re trying to make us look beautiful,” Hester continued, “but on the inside, it’s no good.”

In February 2024, Watkins said that the company had additional projects planned, such as replacing HVAC units and other appliances as necessary. Since then, RailField has spent about $250,000 improving the interior unit finishes and replacing appliances, Watkins told Charlottesville Tomorrow in an email in May 2026.

Those improvements came too late for Hester.

After the various floods that left the floors in her apartment wet for days at a time, Hester had another concern: mold.

Email records she shared with Charlottesville Tomorrow show that she had mentioned it to property management a few times over the years, including when her apartment flooded with what she believed to be sewage in September 2022.

But on Feb. 27, 2023, she sounded the alarm bells in earnest.

That afternoon, Hester sent an urgent email to her property manager with photos of what looked like mold in the kitchen and in the air vents. She also mentioned getting a positive result from a mold test kit she purchased at the hardware store.

The property managers responded immediately, sending a mold remediation company to inspect the unit. About two weeks later, they gave Hester the all clear.

“There is nothing to be concerned about,” the property manager told Hester in an email on March 8, 2023.

The trouble was, the black stuff still looked like mold to Hester. She never quite understood how the company determined it wasn’t — and she never got an explanation from them that made sense to her.

The property manager seemed to think the company tested the apartment for mold. Hester claimed that someone from the company told her that they don’t test for mold, that someone else tests and they treat.

A representative from the company, Paul Davis Restoration, declined to comment on this inspection with Charlottesville Tomorrow.

As Hester continued to press for more mold testing, property management set to work fixing a leak that the remediation company had identified in the ceiling. Hester was terrified, believing the work was disturbing mold spores and spreading them through her unit.

As she pushed for more information, she became increasingly desperate. That’s because her daughter had fallen ill. 

In addition to extreme fatigue, Hester’s 18-year-old daughter, Elesia Cooper, suffered from overwhelming nausea. They had been spending nights in the emergency room. Doctors repeatedly told Cooper to go home and hydrate. She would try, but she struggled to keep food or water down, and she’d be back in the hospital a few days later.

Without clarity on the mold situation or Cooper’s condition, Hester was becoming increasingly concerned the two might be related.

“It was so bad, to the point where — I’m trying not to get emotional,” Hester said, her voice cracking and her eyes welling up with tears. “My kid, I knew she was sick. I couldn’t sleep from the sounds and the pain and the aches she would have in the middle of the night. The scariest part was not knowing when my daughter was going to get well.” 

Hester’s own health also wasn’t great. She was working two jobs and taking care of Cooper, she said. And some nights, she slept for just a couple of hours. She had headaches and sinus problems, but couldn’t afford treatment for herself and her daughter.

Then, in June 2023, Cooper’s nurse practitioner documented a suspicion that validated Hester’s fears — the source of Cooper’s illness might be mold in the home.

“I urgently recommend your home get tested thoroughly by the below recommended experts given lab results that show immune suppression and symptoms consistent with mold exposure,” the nurse practitioner wrote in the visit summary, which Cooper shared with Charlottesville Tomorrow.

“I strongly suspect that the current mold exposure is contributing to your symptoms. I am medically requiring past home/mold testing given recent lab results and the known negative impact of mold exposure on humans’ immune system. And to be given access to any future mold testing results as this will guide my management.”

The nurse practitioner treating Cooper declined to comment on Cooper’s case because of patient confidentiality laws.

Hester shared the medical provider’s recommendation with property management, but it didn’t move the needle very far. Property management agreed to hire a mold inspector to test her apartment in March 2023, but Hester never saw the report.

She struggled to find out why, and a few months later asked the Legal Aid Justice Aid Center for help. In an email exchange shared with Charlottesville Tomorrow, Joel Loving, a local mold inspector, told LAJC that he had conducted a test and written a report, but he could not release it. His client, Park’s Edge property management, had not paid for it. If they paid him for it, he said he could ask their permission to share the report with LAJC.

That never happened. Instead, LAJC secured $600 from a private donor for Loving to conduct another test and write a report Hester could finally put in front of property management.

In that report, dated Sept. 24, 2023, Loving said he found three types of mold in the kitchen ceiling and in the HVAC vent, the same spots Hester photographed months earlier for property management. He suspected that a leak was causing the mold in the ceiling, and that the mold in the HVAC vent was due to the wrong filter being installed, backward.

For renters to take landlords to court, they need resources and records

By the time Hester sat in the courthouse lobby in 2025, she had made it further than most tenants ever will under the state’s current Residential Landlord and Tenant Act.

The first hurdle most tenants face is getting their case into court at all, said Horrock. She’s a housing attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville, and before that, she handled similar cases in New Orleans and New Hampshire.

Some low-income tenants qualify for representation from nonprofit legal aid organizations like LAJC, but those organizations are often resource-strapped and cannot take on every case.

And even when tenants can afford to pay an attorney, few lawyers take on these types of cases, said Horrock.

And that’s just the first hurdle. Even with representation, there are few legal remedies for them in Virginia.

One of the simplest is called the “tenant’s remedy by repair.” This is when a tenant notifies a landlord of a problem, and if the landlord has not fixed it within 14 days, a tenant can pay a licensed third party contractor (or pesticide business, if that’s the problem) to fix it. The thing is, the tenant must pay for the repair out of pocket. The law then requires the landlord to pay it back — up to a certain amount.

This only works in cases where the cost of repairs is relatively low. Under this law, the landlord is responsible for bills up to either $1,500 or the cost of one month’s rent, whichever is greater. If the repair is more expensive than that, the tenant is stuck paying the difference.

“Low-income tenants basically can’t do that. They don’t have the money,” said Horrock. “If they had $1,500 to pay up-front, they probably wouldn’t live in places that have this type of problem.”

A second possible remedy is for a tenant to file a “tenant’s assertion” against their landlord for bad conditions. It’s basically saying that the landlord, who is responsible for maintaining fit and habitable premises, is failing to do so. That worked for one Park’s Edge tenant in March 2022.

But filing a tenant’s assertion is harder than it sounds, said Daniel Rezai, an attorney with the Virginia Poverty Law Center who works with low-income tenants in southwest Virginia. 

The main reason is that the tenant must have written proof of everything — of all the conditions issues they’re suing for, plus proof that they’ve communicated these issues to property management — to have a strong case. Most people aren’t keeping track of conditions issues in writing.

“A lot of people call maintenance,” said Horrock. “When your apartment floods, you tend not to send a letter.”

Rezai estimates that a paper trail would make a difference for about 90% of the cases he’s worked on.

“I don’t think I’m exaggerating,” he said. “They never wrote it down, and because they never wrote it down, all of those protections immediately don’t exist. If you didn’t put it on paper, did it happen? In the court, it didn’t.”

Rezai encourages his clients to keep a log of every communication they have with their property management and ownership, especially phone calls, text messages, and any submissions to a property management portal. Email and written letters hold up in court, but other forms of communication don’t always, he said.

If you didn’t put it on paper, did it happen? In the court, it didn’t.

—Daniel Rezai, an attorney with the Virginia Poverty Law Center who works with low-income tenants in southwest Virginia

But even if a tenant has documentation and could feasibly pursue either of the available legal remedies — a tenant’s assertion or remedy by repair — they’re often nervous to do so out of fear of retaliation, the attorneys say.

Legally, landlords are not allowed to retaliate against tenants for any of this, but retaliation is a tricky thing to prove, said Rezai.

“Let’s just say there’s no retaliation, but your lease is coming up to be renewed in three months. Then they send you a notice of non-renewal. Did they retaliate?”

With the odds stacked against them, tenants might feel more confident suing a landlord if they could do it with other tenants in their building or complex who are experiencing similar issues. That way, they might have a stronger case that the entire building has plumbing issues, for instance, the attorneys said. But that’s out of the question, too: You can’t file a class-action lawsuit in Virginia courts.

It’s hard to sue your landlord.

Still, some cases do progress. And, despite the odds, Lanika Hester’s case was one of them.

How one renter was able to sue their landlord in a rare court case

The case Horrock ended up filing for Hester wasn’t a tenant’s assertion at all. Instead, Hester sued Park’s Edge under breach of contract.

“This was a funny one,” Horrock said.

The basis of the suit itself was simple: Park’s Edge and Lanika Hester signed a contract — the lease. Park’s Edge affirmed in that lease that it would maintain the property up to a certain standard. The company breached the contract, the suit alleged, and Hester was damaged by that action.

Normally, this kind of case would be filed as a “warrant in debt,” which moves slowly through the court system.

A “warrant in debt” case is basically a “money owed” case. In order to file one, a tenant must have accrued monetary damages. It often takes months, even years, for those damages to build up, said Horrock, so it’s not an option for tenants when they first begin to have problems with conditions.

But it was an option for Hester, who has years of documented complaints about the conditions in her apartment. When Hester had the chance to file a case, she had everything she needed.

That chance came on Aug. 22, 2024. Park’s Edge sued Hester that day for not paying rent that month and filed an unlawful detainer — the start of the eviction process — against her.

She did miss rent that month, she told Charlottesville Tomorrow, because she was confused about how to pay it. Multiple residents have said that property management has changed the rent payment method at Park’s Edge a few times in recent years.

The court scheduled a hearing for the suit for just a few weeks later, Sept. 12. By then Hester was caught up on rent payments, and the Park’s Edge attorney dropped the eviction suit.

While RailField Realty answered some questions about their property, neither their attorney nor the company responded to multiple inquiries Charlottesville Tomorrow made about Hester’s case.

Unlawful detainer cases move quickly, much faster than warrant in debt cases. And even though Park’s Edge ended up dropping the eviction suit against Hester, Horrock saw an opportunity: She filed Hester’s suit as a counterclaim, asking for about $8,000 in damages.

A few months later, Hester sat on the bench outside the courthouse trying to memorize her statement.

The courtroom was warm, bright, and quiet that afternoon when Horrock made her opening statement. She held a copy of Hester’s most recent lease agreement and read from it.

“The landlord will ‘maintain in good and safe condition, all electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating, air conditioning and other facilities,'” she said, arguing that Park’s Edge had breached that agreement a number of times between 2022 and 2023.

Horrock called Hester as the first witness.

The bundle of papers Horrock carried into the courtroom was evidence. Piles of it. Many months of emails between Hester and Park’s Edge property management about various problems. Photos of black stuff accumulated on the apartment wall, the ceiling and inside the air vents. Copies of bills from the hotels Hester and her daughter stayed in during the sewage flood in Sept. 2022, which happened nine days before RailField bought the property from TRC Parks Edge, and when work was being done on the black-spotted wall in Oct. 2023.

As Horrock went along, each piece of evidence she entered was given a letter of the alphabet.

“I’m running out of letters,” Presiding Judge Matthew J. Quatrara said when Horrock entered a packet of hotel bills as exhibit O.

As Horrock presented each piece of evidence, Hester confirmed them and along the way told bits of her story.

Hester talked about the flood that covered her apartment floor in sewage. She testified that liquid bubbled up from both of the bathtubs in her apartment, from the laundry room and the kitchen sink.

“It smelled horrible and was black and brown in color,” she said, describing how it “chunked up” in the bathtubs. It got into the living room and soaked through the carpet, she said. It seeped into the hallway, where it mingled with the substance that had leaked from her neighbors’ apartments, too.

Property management put two large fans in her apartment for two weeks in an attempt to dry out the floors and the carpet, she said. When the carpet was replaced, Hester noticed the padding between the carpet and the flooring had disintegrated.

She talked about the material items she’d lost during the flood — all the clothes in the laundry closet, as well as some furniture. She was able to save a table with metal legs since she just had to wipe it clean. The same couldn’t be said for her couch, or other items that were soaked. She took multiple trips to the complex’s dumpster and local stores to buy cleaning supplies.

And when the carpet replacement happened, Hester said, she lost even more belongings. Property management required her to move all of her furniture out of her apartment in order for the carpet to be replaced, but she didn’t have anywhere to put it, she said. A friend let her put some things in the bed of their truck, but that wasn’t enough space for everything. With no place to store her bedroom set and to avoid having the repairs delayed, she threw it out.

She didn’t just lose belongings. She lost work and therefore wages. She detailed for the judge how many hours of work she missed when things went wrong in her apartment.

She talked about being afraid to stay in her apartment when she suspected mold was growing there. She talked about staying with her mother, or sleeping on friends’ couches, and about paying for hotel rooms when she worried that she’d overstay her welcome.

She explained how she worried about her health, and her daughter’s. How she bought expensive purifiers to pull what she feared was mold from the air. How she notified property management, over and over.

Cooper’s medical bills weren’t included in the list of things Hester was asking to be reimbursed for. That is an entirely different kind of lawsuit, and the Legal Aid Justice Center does not take on personal injury cases.

As Horrock wrapped up her first round of questions, she asked Hester, “How did this process make you feel?”

It was time for Hester to make her statement. She didn’t get it out word for word, but she gave the gist.

“It was extremely stressful,” Hester said quietly. She started a new job while all of this was going on. “It felt like we didn’t matter. It really took a toll.”

For some renters, moving out is either unaffordable or ‘trading rats for roaches’

Then it was time for cross examination.

Robert Harris, the attorney representing Park’s Edge in Hester’s case, didn’t have many questions but for one big one: If it was so bad, why didn’t you just move out?

“I couldn’t afford it,” Hester said from the witness stand.

But she has help paying rent, in the form of a Housing Choice Voucher from the federal government, the attorney replied. Why didn’t she take her voucher somewhere else?

That is something tenants could do — and for anyone unwilling or unable to go to court, it’s really the only other option. But it’s not always realistic.

To do this, a tenant must send their landlord a notice giving them 21 days to fix a problem. If the landlord doesn’t fix the problem, the tenant can terminate the lease 30 days after sending that notice.

“But then they have to have somewhere else to go, which is a challenge in this rental market,” Horrock told Charlottesville Tomorrow before the trial.

Having a housing choice voucher doesn’t guarantee someone housing, and in some cases, it can make searching for a home in an already tight market even more difficult. When someone receives a voucher, they have 60 days to find a place that fits both the financial parameters of the voucher and meets the federal government’s condition standards. If they can’t find that place, they have to forfeit the voucher and return to the waiting list. Those lists are long, and people are often on them for years.

So, if Hester chose to leave Park’s Edge, she would have 60 days to find a new home, or lose her voucher. On top of that, vouchers don’t cover first and last month’s rent, security deposits or movers.

Hester couldn’t afford to move, she said from the stand.

She’s not alone in this. The seven Park’s Edge residents who spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow said they also cannot afford to move.

“And then, most of the units you’re going to get into are in a complex that’s just going to have a different set of similar conditions problems, if not the exact same problems,” said Horrock. “Maybe you’re trading rats for roaches, and that might be as good as it gets.”

After Hester’s explanation, Harris, Park’s Edge’s attorney, didn’t press his question about moving. Nor did he argue with much of the evidence Horrock presented during Hester’s testimony.

But that changed when Horrock called her second witness, Joel Loving.

Loving is a mold inspector with Environmental Health Consultants, Inc., a Charlottesville-based company that specializes in indoor air quality testing for contaminants like mold, lead, radon and asbestos. He testified that he has worked in air quality testing since the 1980s, and is regularly hired by agencies all over the state, including school systems.

Getting an expert witness like Loving to testify in a trial is challenging, said Horrock. But without it, tenants can struggle to establish that the conditions they are suing over exist at all.

In order to show there was mold in an apartment, for example, an attorney must admit evidence of it — like a mold inspector’s report. But to do that, the mold inspector must be present at the trial to confirm that he did indeed write that report.

The reason it’s so hard to get expert witnesses, people like mold inspectors, maintenance workers and HVAC specialists, to testify on behalf of tenants is they frequently work for the landlord.

For Hester’s trial, Loving did agree to testify. Why is unclear; Loving did not respond to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s request for comment. But as he sat on the stand, it became clear that the outcome of Hester’s case would revolve around his testimony.

Loving confirmed that he prepared a “molds inspection report” for Hester’s apartment in September 2023.

Loving described his testing process, saying that he uses a high-intensity flashlight to examine every surface. When he sees something suspicious, he collects samples and sends them to Hayes Microbial Consulting, a lab in Midlothian. He then prepares a report based on what the lab finds, explaining what it means and what to do about it.

What did he find in Hester’s apartment? Horrock asked.

“We detected mold,” Loving testified. 

Harris quickly objected, asking Loving if that was based on what he saw, or the results from the lab.

Loving said both — based on his experience, he can usually tell. But the test results from Hayes confirmed there was mold.

Harris objected to Loving calling the substance “mold” because no one from Hayes Microbial was present to confirm the origin of the report so it could be entered as evidence.

Horrock assured Judge Quatrara that Loving was “very expert.” She had a copy of Loving’s report from September 2023, as well as the accompanying results from Hayes Microbial.

Quatrara acknowledged Loving’s experience, but still, he sustained Harris’ objection.

“So, ‘suspect mold,'” Harris said.

“Yeah, but I’ll say this: His ‘suspect mold’ carries a lot more weight than the average Joe,” Quatrara said, pointing at Loving.

Loving continued his testimony.

Legal Aid Justice Center hired and paid him for the September 2023 test and report, he said. Park’s Edge hired him twice more after that. Once to re-test Hester’s apartment two months later, in November 2023, and another time for another unit.

Loving testified in court that Park’s Edge had not paid him for the November 2023 report.

With final arguments and a swift judgement, one Park’s Edge resident gets some resolution

Horrock’s final witness was a Park’s Edge property manager working for Franklin Johnston Group. That witness allowed Horrock to enter into evidence multiple work orders the company had recorded for Hester’s apartment.

Then the attorneys made their final arguments.

Harris didn’t object to some of the damages Hester sought payment for, including a few of the hotel stays. He said he was “not sure” about some of the lost wages claims or the necessity of the air filters. There was no evidence that Hester needed the air filters, he said, because Hester had testified that both she and her daughter have breathing problems. If Park’s Edge did end up paying for the air filters, Harris said, then Park’s Edge would own them.

Moreover, Harris said, his client, Railfield Realty, didn’t own the property when the September 2022 flood occurred, and therefore it should not be liable for damage caused by it.

RailField bought the building from TRC Parks Edge on September 21, 2022, nine days after the flood. 

But on top of that, he argued, the lease says that Park’s Edge is “not responsible for loss or damage of personal property” due to many things, including floods. That makes his client not liable for property damage, and Hester agreed to that when she willingly signed the lease.

Harris claimed that Hester had a number of legal remedies available to her. Under the Code of Virginia, she could have lawfully terminated her lease. She could have moved out. Because she did neither of those things, she “is not entitled to anything,” Harris said.

“She chose to stay there, live, and pay rent,” Harris said.

“There are lots of protections for tenants in there,” he continued, referring to the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act section of the Code of Virginia. He specifically cited a newer section of the Code, added in 2023, that states that if at the beginning of a tenancy, a tenant finds the unit they have leased in unacceptable condition, they can terminate the lease and receive all paid deposits back without consequence.

It is unclear whether that law would apply to Hester, for two reasons: She signed her most recent lease in May 2022, before the law took effect, and has lived in the same apartment for more than 16 years.

Horrock began her closing argument simply: Park’s Edge and Lanika Hester had a contract, and Park’s Edge breached it. She pointed out the eight-month delay between when Hester first told property management she was concerned about mold, and when Park’s Edge finally started remediating it.

“Eight months is a long time to wait,” she said.

Horrock cited the part of the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act that outlines the landlord’s responsibility to “maintain in good and safe working order and condition” things like electrical, ventilation and plumbing. Park’s Edge did not do that, she argued. What’s more, Park’s Edge also violated the part of the law that requires the landlord to “maintain the premises in such a condition as to prevent the accumulation of moisture and the growth of mold and promptly respond to any notices from a tenant.”

A landlord cannot waive the law in a lease, she said.

Yes, Hester had a few remedies available to her through the law, but she was unable to seek them because she is a low-income tenant, Horrock added.

This was not only financially damaging to Hester, it was stressful and took an emotional toll, Horrock said, touching back on points Hester made in her statement.

“We are just asking that she be compensated for these things,” Horrock said in conclusion.

Quatrara was silent as he looked over the papers in front of him. After two or three minutes, he announced his decision, quickly rattling off instructions to the attorneys. Park’s Edge would pay Hester $8,193 in damages, plus $2,048.25 in attorney’s fees. The company had 10 days to appeal the decision.

It took a moment for the meaning of the judge’s words to sink in.

Hester won.

Hester and Horrock stood slowly from their seats and hugged. There was no big celebration, no jumping or crying, but Hester smiled quietly as she walked out of the courtroom, Horrock at her side.

Once outside, Hester and Horrock locked eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

Hester sat in the same spot she’d been in a couple hours earlier and looked at Horrock expectantly, wanting to know what was next.

“Keep looking for a new place,” Horrock told Hester. She’d soon have the money to move.

Horrock explained that Park’s Edge had 10 days to appeal the judge’s decision. If they didn’t appeal, Horrock could start working on getting the money for Hester. She said it would take a few weeks.

“I feel like she was owed what we sued for and more, monetarily,” Horrock told Charlottesville Tomorrow a couple weeks after the trial. “But I also think the trial judge, by granting her exactly what we sued for, was confirming that she was right, that what her landlord had done was actually wrong.”

The fact that Hester had accrued money damages that she could articulate to the judge, and prove with documentation, helped her case tremendously, Horrock said.

“A really cruel part of the legal system is that when you’re poor, you don’t have money to spend on things, and then you don’t incur charges,” Horrock said. “Like, if you go and sleep on a friend’s couch, you’re not out any money. And that’s the main kind of damages that, in a contract case like this one, the court is going to award.”

Additionally, Hester’s issues at Park’s Edge occurred over many months, which is part of how she was able to incur the damages she sued over and won.

That’s why tenants who have not incurred money damages and are looking for their landlord to fix a problem — even if it’s for a major problem — are stuck with just three legal remedies: tenant’s right to repair, tenant’s assertion and terminating the lease.

But what if there was a way to prevent many of these conditions problems from happening in the first place? In the next report in this series, one process could force a landlord to act on conditions issues — that is, if lawmakers and local officials want it to.

Floods, roaches, rats, mold — these are just a few of the issues in Charlottesville Tomorrow’s investigation into how Virginia law often fails to protect vulnerable renters.

This series, reported over years of following tenants’ stories, is about what happens when renters in Virginia try to improve the conditions of their homes. It took reviewing images and records, hundreds of emails between residents of Park’s Edge, their landlords and advocates, court records and legislative efforts.

It was reported by Erin O’Hare with editing by Jessie Higgins, photography by Ézé Amos and O’Hare, with images and documents provided by residents of Park’s Edge, editing and design by Angilee Shah and Ashley Harper.

Follow the series over the week of June 1, 2026 by subscribing to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s free Beyond the Headlines newsletter.

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