IMPACT had a very successful Annual Assembly on October 15, 2007. Over 635 people attended and we welcomed 4 new congregations into membership: St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, P’nai Yisrael Chavurah, Living Water Christian Center and St. Paul’s Episcopal, Ivy. This brings our total to 27 congregations. We also adopted a new Executive Committee, led by Fr. Dennis McAuliffe, Holy Comforter Catholic Church and Pastor Stanley Woodfolk, Evergreen Ministries.

The Assembly followed our fall listening process in which 790 people participated in 80 house meetings. The top community problems raised were affordable housing, healthcare, youth, and education concerns.

At our Assembly we voted to continue our efforts on affordable housing and begin efforts to address gaps in healthcare. We will continue to monitor our work on public transportation, but affordable housing and healthcare will be the 2 focuses of the 2007-2008 cycle.

Supervisor Slutzky attended the Annual Assembly. He committed to continue his efforts to ensure that the Charlottesville/Albemarle/UVa Task Force has concrete outcomes and has a focus on families that earn 30%AMI, under $20,000 a year. He praised IMPACT for our ongoing efforts and presence.

Next Steps:
We are in the research process and over the next several months, the research committees will be meeting with local experts, decision makers, and people affected by the problem.

Congregations will be focused on deepening and solidifying their justice ministry networks.

IMPACT’s first Nehemiah Action was held March 15, 2007. It was a great event on many levels: the amount of participation exceeded the capacity of the MLK Performing Arts Center (over 1600 sign-ups), the coming together of so many different faith communities unified in addressing social justice issues in the community, and the participation by many public officials. While the concept of grassroots, interfaith organizations addressing social justice issues is not new in this country, it is certainly new to Charlottesville and Albemarle County. We were very pleased with this first annual event.

Highlights:
– Enthusiastic, capacity crowd that did a great job of expressing respect and gratitude toward our public officials (this was the largest, first Nehemiah Action meeting in the history of DART).

– IMPACT’s 25th congregation, Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church, signed the Covenant Agreement.

– The City Councilors agreed to call this a public meeting and City Councilors Norris, Taliaferro & Lynch and Mayor Brown participated and responded to IMPACT’s proposals.

– Albemarle County Board of Supervisors (BOS) did not call this a public meeting. Five BOS attended and Supervisors Slutzky and Boyd responded to IMPACT’s proposals.

Public Transportation Solutions & Results:
1. Establish Sunday daytime bus service on the two most heavily traveled CTS routes, the free trolley and route #7, with buses every 30 minutes.
* Councilors Norris & Taliaferro agreed to support this solution.
* Post Action Update: City Council has approved a budget with this service and it will start this summer.

2. Establish daytime bus service to Southwood and 5th St. Extended County Office Building.
* Supervisor Slutzky agreed to support this solution.
* Post Action update: This service has started!

3. Add 5 hours of night service to route #5, with buses every 45 minutes.
* Supervisor Slutzky agreed to support this solution.
* Post Action update: Albemarle County allocated an additional $250K to expand public transport. Our request for night service on route 5 is a strong possibility for use of these monies.

Affordable Housing Solutions & Results:
1. Support the city’s adoption of the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Investment Program (CAHIP) proposal with the original funding of $500K for Special Needs Housing and $500K for Public housing, the two categories of CAHIP serving people who make $20,000 or less.
* Councilors Norris & Taliaferro agreed to support this solution.
* Post Action update: City Council has approved a budget with CAHIP.

2. Secure an additional $420K or 1 cent set aside of the property tax dollar, allocated toward the creation of new affordable units for 0-30% AMI.
* Councilors Norris & Taliaferro agreed to support this solution.
* Post Action update: With this proposal we were asking the City to expand their housing proposal from $1 million to $1.42 million dollars per year. City Council has approved a budget that allocates $1.75 million dollars this year and a commitment to a total investment of at least $5 million over the next 5 years!

3. Creation of a Regional Affordable Housing Task Force comprised of decision makers from Charlottesville and Albemarle County to (1) develop a plan to create at least 150 additional housing units over the next 5 years for those earning less than $20,000 (0-30% AMI) and (2) keep these units affordable to this income category for at least 15 years. The Task Force will come up with an implementation schedule and funding plan. This plan will be presented to IMPACT congregations at the Oct 15 Assembly.
* Councilors Norris & Taliaferro agreed to support this solution.
* Supervisor Slutzky agreed to support this solution.
* Leonard Sandridge, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of UVA, agreed to provide a University representative to this task force.
* Post Action update: We are currently following up with public officials.

Next Steps:
– Continue to observe and participate in City and County budget work sessions and meetings.
– Continue building Justice Ministry Networks within congregations.
– Support IMPACT financially through Member Support Drive during May and June.

Healthcare
Problem: The lack of access to dental care, both emergency and restorative, for low-income uninsured adults has reached crisis proportions in our community.

Statewide Statistics:
· Of the approximated 7,642,884 people in Virginia, it is estimated that 3,750,306 have no dental insurance.
· 55.2% of uninsured Virginians reported that they do not visit a dentist regularly.
· Virginia is 1 of 8 states that does not provide Medicaid reimbursement for adult dental care. However, Medicaid reimburses dental care for children.

Local Need:
· In determining the need for adult dental care, many organizations have used the following formula: for every one uninsured person there are an estimated three without dental insurance; these calculations would lead to an estimated 17,283 Charlottesville residents without dental insurance and an estimated 33,240 Albemarle County residents without dental insurance.
· The UVa emergency room sees between 5-10 people per day in dire need of dental care; in 2007, this totaled 1,792 people.

Effects of poor or no dental care:
There are a number of diseases and conditions that have been linked to oral health, i.e.: cancer, AIDS, cardiovascular disease, premature birth, diabetes, and osteoporosis. Poor oral health also affects nutrition and hinders one’s ability to find employment.

History of dental care access for the uninsured in our area:
-UVa Medical Center stopped their sliding fee scale dental care program 4 years ago and refocused on medically necessary patients needing dental care who are already in the UVa system.
-Virginia Baptist Association dental care program was discontinued.
-Thomas Jefferson Health Department stopped seeing adults for dental care and sees only a limited number of children.
-Charlottesville Free Clinic reports that with the end of the aforementioned dental care, calls for dental assistance tripled. There are few efforts to meet this dire need. Currently, the Free Clinic is struggling to treat those in need of emergency extractions, serving approximately 20 individuals a month through a very limited schedule with volunteer dentists (13) at the clinic. The waiting list for extractions stands at over 240.
-Community Dental Program that began in March 2007, was an effort to address the need for restorative care. Thirty-eight dentists agreed to treat uninsured adults at their offices. The list of people needing dental care began at 330 and now has ballooned to the extraordinary number of 759 as of the end of January. However, MACAA, the agency that maintains the list, reports that this list for restorative care has not continued to be maintained because it is no longer realistic to put any more names on the list. Since March, only 40 of those on the list have been screened and approximately 20 have been treated. At this current rate, it will take 30 years to treat just those on the current waiting list.
-People are being referred to Richmond and Buckingham for affordable dental care, both emergency and restorative, due to lack of care in this area.
-Volunteer programs for meeting this need have been overwhelmed, and dentists all over our community say the need far exceeds their volunteer efforts.

Affordable Housing
Problem: Because of the great need in our region, our interest continues to be to increase housing opportunities for families earning 0-30% AMI (Area Median Income), or under 20K per year.

The Need:
-There is a deficit of 3,917 affordable rental units for families in our region earning under $20,000/yr or 0-30% AMI (Area Median Income) Source: TJPDC “State of Housing Report”, Jan. 2007
-700 people applied for the Albemarle County Housing Choice Voucher program (Section 8 rent assistance) when they opened their waiting list between Nov 26, 2007 and Jan 22, 2008. This does not include the 400 individuals currently using the voucher program.
-There are families living in the 376 public housing units in the City and approximately 900 more families on the waiting list.

Statistics on children who became homeless during recent academic years:
Albemarle County
2003/2004 – 84
2004/2005 – 219
2005/2006 – 284
2006/2007 – 320

Charlottesville
2003/2004 – 125
2004/2005 – 100
2005/2006 – 127
2006/2007 – 240
*This does not include children who began the school year in a shelter or doubling up with other families, but only those newly homeless children.

Status of the Task Force:
The Task Force finally formed in late 2007 and IMPACT has a seat on the task force. The initially elected Co-chairs were City Councilor Dave Norris, County Supervisor David Slutzky, and David Neuman, UVA Architect. In January, City Councilor Huja replaced Councilor Norris as the City’s representative on the Task Force. They have selected rental housing for the 0-30%AMI category as their top priority, followed by rental/home ownership for 30-60% AMI and then home ownership for 60-80% AMI. The Task Force is charged with coming up with regional plans and funding sources to meet these needs.

IMPACT is currently working on its first success story and we have every reason to expect success as we look at the examples of our sister DART Network organizations around the country.

Affordable Housing:
Over the past three years, BREAD in Columbus OH, initiated and maintained a campaign to address the dramatic shortage of affordable housing in Central Ohio. As a result, Columbus and Franklin County have created the Columbus-Franklin County Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The City and County invests $6.2 million annually in the AHTF.

In 2004, BREAD initiated a campaign to strengthen the oversight of the Trust Fund. Stemming from commitments made by County Commission candidates at the 2004 Nehemiah Action BREAD secured a revised contract to ensure that the housing built is truly affordable to low income people and that low income people are occupying the units.

Healthcare:
PEACE, in Polk County FL, won a stunning victory in 2004 when the voters passed a half cent sales tax to fund indigent health care for the 125,000 residents that do not have health insurance. Since that time PEACE has been monitoring the spending of the $26 million dollars per year from the sales tax. At PEACE’s 2005 Nehemiah Action Meeting, PEACE won commitments from the Director of Community Health and County Commissioners to open one clinic a year for the next five years and increase patients seen from the current 2,000 to 45,000 patients per year.

Crime:
A Hot Spot Card Campaign has been very successful in Springfield, OH due to the efforts of JAM. Residents anonymously report criminal activity on these Hot Spot cards. In April 2005 critical information concerning a homicide in the city came in through the use of the cards leading to the arrests and arraignment of the suspects. In total over 250 cards have been turned in with a 50% arrest rate.

Wages:
In June 2006 RISC, in Richmond VA, received firm commitments from four City Councilers to fight to pass a living wage ordinance by October 2006 for city contractors and sub contactors. This would raise wages from $5.15 an hr to $9.10/hr. This will put at least 2 million dollars more a year into the hands of people through work instead of having to depend on charity or hand outs to supplement wages.

The Rally is scheduled for February 15, 2007. The purpose of the rally is to update people on research and build excitement for Nehemiah Action!

Time: 6:30pm
Location: University Baptist Church (1223 W. Main St)
Parking: Parking in 14th St. Garage

We are currently in the Research phase. Research groups are formed of diverse clergy and lay people from across the congregations:
1. We research the extent of the problem, what is currently being done about it, and what else could be done to address it more effectively, often looking at best practices in other cities.
2. We come up with a specific change that can be made locally.
3. Changes must be “winnable”—i.e., small enough to be achievable, building toward bigger steps as the credibility and power of the organization grows. a. One example of an identified change would be: “Add a drug treatment program serving at least 250 people per year to the local jail, beginning January 1.”
4. We also identify the person(s) with the power to implement that change.
5. At the end of the Research process, a Rally is held, where the results of the research are shared, and where the people make preparations for the Nehemiah Assembly.