At the first meeting of the President’s Council on UVA-Community Partnerships, lifelong Charlottesville resident Harold Folley wasted little time telling UVA President James E. Ryan (Law ’92) what he thought of the university’s latest outreach initiative.

“I sat at the table and said, ‘What makes you think this is going to be something different?’” Folley recalls. “I’ve been here all my life and we’ve been like stepchildren to UVA.”

Ryan said he remembers the conversation well.

“I had a feeling going into the first meeting that there was going to be some skepticism,” he said in an interview with Virginia Magazine .

“Higher ed is filled with working groups and committees that produce reports that sit on shelves. I thought it was a completely appropriate question to ask, and I wasn’t going to answer it by promising something that would have been a hollow promise.”

His answer instead: “Just watch my actions,” both Folley and Ryan recall.

Five years later, Ryan’s ambitious plan for UVA to be a better neighbor—one of 1 0 key initiatives in the university’s 2030 Plan —is producing results. Some are tangible, others not as much, but the scale of the ongoing effort from UVA shows a commitment to the cause that has not been seen before, some local leaders say.

“Over the last four or five years I’ve seen more progress than I have in the previous 20-something years,” said Charlottesville Mayor Juandiego Wade (Arch ’90).

Among the accomplishments: a $15 minimum wage for UVA employees and contract workers; a jobs program that recruits, hires and supports local residents; two affordable housing developments in the works; and an increased presence in the community through The Equity Center at UVA . There are also initiatives focused on public safety; early childhood education; public health; and the goal of engaging with more small, woman-owned and minority-owned local businesses.

Some progress is harder to measure. The 51-year-old Folley, who grew up in the Westhaven public housing community near UVA and now works as an organizer at the Legal Aid Justice Center, cited improved lines of communication and a sense among some in the community that the university is not as closed off to them as it once was.

Indeed, while he was growing up, Folley said, UVA was considered “taboo” by him and many others in his neighborhood.

“We can’t go up there, we’re going to get locked up, we’re not wanted,” he recalled.

Perceptions are slowly changing, he said. The President’s Council, a standing council established in 2019 with six working groups and representatives from both UVA and the community, has been instrumental in bringing about that change, said Folley, a late addition to the council who has gone from skeptic to co-chair for the 2024-25 academic year.

“One of the things UVA did was they built a wall,” he said. “With this community partnership, that wall is actually being tumbled down.”

In the early days of the university, according to early-20th-century historian Philip Alexander Bruce, town leaders posted a trumpeter on the road between Grounds and downtown Charlottesville with instructions to sound a warning anytime a large group of students approached. It seems that locals have long been suspicious of the intentions of UVA, wary of its relentless advance.

As UVA expanded its footprint and influence, the rising tide of university prosperity not only didn’t lift all boats, but it imposed costs in the form of higher housing prices and increased inequality, among other things, researchers have noted. Town and gown were intermingled but also separate, with the divide often occurring along racial lines.

When Ryan became president in 2018, he said, his view of the university’s relationship with Charlottesville was informed by the 15 years he spent on the UVA Law faculty before leaving to become dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His sense was that UVA was perceived by some as being both disconnected from and disinterested in the community.

When he pressed people on that point, Ryan said, they’d often praise the work of individual UVA employees or student volunteers. Their responses were akin to polls that show that people like their congressional representatives but not Congress as a whole.

“I think it was that it didn’t seem that important to UVA as an institution. And I just thought there was an opportunity to create a better relationship, and I thought it was important for both the Charlottesville community and for UVA,” Ryan said.

“Whether we like it or not, whether we celebrate it or not, our fates are linked. And the stronger Charlottesville is, the stronger UVA will be, and vice versa.”

Making being a better neighbor an institutional strategic priority in the 2030 Plan, which was approved in 2019, raised the effort’s visibility and also added accountability, with progress tracked by the vice president for strategic initiatives and reported to the Board of Visitors.

The effort began in 2018 with the University-Community Working Group, with 17 members representing both sides. Its first order of business was to survey the community to identify residents’ top priorities. The group reviewed more than 3,000 responses to a survey of residents, university employees and students; conducted focus groups; talked to people at local barber shops and libraries; and even surveyed inmates at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

The working group drew on the results of the survey and discussions, along with “decades of research and reports” and their own experience, to identify four priority areas in its report: jobs and wages; affordable housing; public health care; and youth/education.

The phrase “institutional accountability” appears 19 times in the 28-page document. The report called it the “bedrock principle” upon which improved relations with the community depended.

“To be a partner and anchor for social change … requires the University to hold itself accountable for past wrongs and current inequities. This includes engaging in fact-finding and truth-telling about exclusionary practices at the university—both past and present—related to race, gender and disability. An honest reckoning, though difficult and too easily avoided, is the only way to build the trust that undergirds any partnership for progress.”

For Ryan, trust and credibility also relied on prompt action on what he said emerged as the primary issue in his talks with members of the working group: the need for a $15 minimum wage for UVA employees and contractors.

UVA announced that wage increase in March 2019, just a week after the release of the working group’s report. It went into effect the following January.

“If we didn’t address that issue, we were never going to gain the trust of the people who were trying to create a better relationship between the Charlottesville community and the university,” Ryan said.

“Everything would have seemed like a dodge. Addressing that early and definitively cleared the way to address some of the other issues.”

With a higher minimum wage, UVA jobs became more attractive. The question for many local residents was how to go about getting one.

For UVA, the challenge was finding and retaining entry-level workers.

Ridge Schuyler (Law ’87), dean of community self-sufficiency programs at Piedmont Virginia Community College, had been working for some time to connect UVA with this pool of potential workers. When Schuyler worked as district director in the downtown Charlottesville office of U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello from 2009 to 2011, residents of the public housing community across the street would often walk in seeking help finding work, he said.

UVA would have been the natural place for them to look; as the area’s largest employer, it employed 14 percent of the region’s full-time workers as of Dec. 30, 2021, according to self-reported U.S. Census data. But many didn’t see university employment as a possibility for them, Schuyler said.

“I set about trying to figure out, ‘Where is the disconnect?’” he said. “Why can’t people of enormous potential find opportunities that are just down the street but for them might as well be on the other side of the moon?”

Schuyler served on the University-Community Working Group and continued when it morphed into the President’s Council in 2019, as a member of its employment working group. That group developed a program called Pipelines & Pathways , which was charged with increasing the number of disadvantaged community residents hired by the university, decreasing the rate of turnover, and helping workers already at UVA climb the income ladder.

Launched in January 2023, Pipelines & Pathways recruits at job fairs and gets referrals from Network2Work@PVCC, a program directed by Schuyler that uses neighborhood-based recruiters to identify job candidates.

“We have individuals who are completely unemployed, and we help them get an entry-level position and paid training,” said Hollie Lee, who runs the Pipelines & Pathways program through UVA Human Resources. “We have some who have jobs out in the community, maybe in fast food, and see getting a foot in the door at UVA as a start to a career.”

The program helps job hopefuls navigate an application process that can be intimidating. It also works with those who might have potential barriers to employment, such as a criminal conviction or a lack of English proficiency, Lee said.

Candidates are hired for a variety of jobs. At the UVA Medical Center, for example, placements range from entry-level jobs such as greeter or patient safety companion to paid training for careers such as certified nursing assistant or emergency medical technician, Lee said.

On the academic side, candidates are hired as bus drivers, custodians and on-demand drivers, among other jobs. UVA Facilities Management hires interns for skilled trades.

As of Nov. 30, 256 community members had been hired through the program, Lee said.

One of them is RaeJon Curry, who landed a job in the Facilities Management apprenticeship program. Curry, 34, grew up in Charlottesville and said there were pros and cons to being adjacent to UVA.

“Like any other college town, sometimes they don’t like locals,” he said.

Curry said he applied for work at UVA in 2016 and received a rejection letter. With the help of Lee, who was then working as chief of workforce development for the city of Charlottesville, he got his commercial driver’s license and was delivering ice cream across central Virginia before coming to UVA.

It was more of a job than a career. Curry reconnected with Lee at Pipelines & Pathways through the Virginia Employment Office and landed his current position as an apprentice. The four-year internship program covers the building trades: heating, ventilation and air conditioning; plumbing; and electrical work.

His goal is to be a project manager for UVA. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said.

Ryan called the program a spectacular success and cited the ripple effect that occurs when people land jobs and tell others that UVA is hiring.

“If you’re trying to change the perception of an institution, if you have a ‘Help Wanted’ sign out instead of a ‘No Trespassing’ sign up, it makes a big difference,” he said.

Ben Allen (Col ’08, Educ ’13, ’16, ’20), head of The Equity Center, notes that it’s more than just giving people jobs. It’s also important to make the process less difficult.

“I’m a pretty educated person,” he said. “When I applied through Workday, it messed up and didn’t attach my resume. I had to go through all these channels and call.

“If you don’t have that sort of understanding of how systems work, you’re like, ‘Oh, I think I’m good,’ and you don’t even get looked at for the job. There’s a lot of efforts to reducing barriers to employment as opposed to just getting folks jobs.”

While the Pipelines & Pathways program scaled up relatively quickly, other initiatives have been longer journeys. The effort to build affordable housing—the No. 2 priority identified by the University-Community Working Group—has been an ongoing process.

“I didn’t realize and I’m not sure that any of us who got involved realized just how complicated the affordable housing process is,” Ryan said. “I would love to be able to snap our fingers and produce more affordable housing overnight, but the amount of process you have to go through is a little astonishing.”

UVA has historically played both a direct and indirect role in rising housing costs in the region, a burden that has fallen disproportionately on Black residents, Andrew Kahrl, a UVA professor of history and African American Studies, and Brian Cameron (Col ’19, Law ’25) wrote in a 2021 article exploring the history of UVA and its effects on the neighborhoods of Charlottesville. The article was part of the “UVA and the History of Race” series, a joint project of UVA Today, the president’s commissions on slavery and on the age of segregation, and faculty members and researchers.

Kahrl and Cameron cited the razing of the Vinegar Hill neighborhood by the city of Charlottesville in the 1960s as one of the indirect instances. The displacement of 600 Black families coincided with the doubling of the UVA student population from 1965 to 1975, crowding the market and making it harder for those who were displaced to find housing.

Furthermore, the rapid growth of UVA’s student population from 2000 to 2020 did not come with a comparable increase in on-Grounds housing, they wrote.

“As more students entered the city’s rental market, more of its working-class population left,” they wrote.

UVA has set a goal of building 1,000 to 1,500 affordable units for community members over the next decade. In December 2021 it identified three university- or UVA Foundation-owned sites: 10th and Wertland streets in Charlottesville; the current location of UVA’s Piedmont Housing off Fontaine Avenue; and portions of North Fork, a university-owned business park on Route 29. The land will be leased at a nominal cost to developers who commit to building affordable housing for community members, said Pace Lochte (Educ ’05, Darden ’08), UVA’s assistant vice president for economic development.

Developers have been chosen for the 10th and Wertland and Piedmont sites. When construction begins depends on how quickly the developers can put the often-complex mix of financing together, Lochte said. If all goes according to plan, construction will start in 2026 at 10th and Wertland and in 2027 at Piedmont, said Rachael Hobbs (Col ’12), program director for economic development. The North Fork project is still in the planning phase.

The terms of financing the developers receive will determine how many units will be built at each of the sites, and to whom the rent will be affordable, Lochte said. The goal at 10th and Wertland, for example, is for all units to be affordable to those making 80 percent or less of the area median income, Lochte said, with some units available to those making 60 percent or less.

“People get very frustrated that we haven’t completed this already,” Lochte said. “It’s a very lengthy process.”

Lochte said UVA is taking care to ensure that agreements with the developers have enough teeth to guarantee that the units remain affordable over the long term. She also said UVA is asking developers to show that they have set aside enough money to ensure that the units will be well maintained.

“We want this to be property we can all be really proud of,” she said.

UVA also has a long-term goal of adding more housing on Grounds, which should ease pressure in the local rental market. At its December 2024 meeting, the BOV approved construction of a student housing project with up to 800 beds in the Emmet-Ivy corridor, showing progress toward UVA’s strategic initiative to require all first- and second-year students to live on Grounds.

The council’s work is ongoing in the areas of public safety, public health, childhood education and the goal of engaging with more local businesses.

In early childhood education, which Ryan called a “complicated landscape,” efforts have focused on how UVA can partner with those already doing the work and see what value, resources and expertise it can add, Ryan said.

The council launched a community safety working group in 2023, in response to increased gun violence in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, as well as the shooting on Grounds that claimed the lives of three UVA football players. It has launched initiatives focused on mental health, coordination among local law enforcement agencies and increased opportunities for youth. It has used data to identify and study the nature, scope and dimensions of the problem of gun violence locally.

Key to the efforts across all working groups is the idea of partnership, Ryan said. The council is not a chance for the community to lobby UVA to get things done, nor for UVA experts to tell the community what to do, he said.

“It’s really about how are we going to work together. … Anytime you approach the work that way, it’s going to be a little bit slower.”

Ryan said he’s “impatient in all these areas. The more progress, the better.”

Folley said serving on the housing working group opened his eyes to the fact that UVA cannot act unilaterally.

“We can shout about UVA not doing [stuff], but there has to be work by all communities—UVA, the city, county and state—to make things happen,” he said.

“These things are marathons. They’re not sprints.”

What else can UVA do to be a better neighbor? Some elected officials in Charlottesville recently have said the answer is direct payments to the city, in lieu of the real estate taxes the university is exempt from.

“I don’t discount what UVA brings to Charlottesville,” said Amanda Burns, city school board vice chair. “But we do not need more silos of work. We need money to do the work.”

Yale, Harvard, Brown and Boston University are among the private institutions that make such voluntary payments to localities. In a resolution two years ago, the UVA Student Council called on UVA to commit to paying at least $10 million a year by 2030.

“I understand the motivation behind it,” Ryan said. “You can have all sorts of debates as to whether it is appropriate or not. I just don’t know that it works within a public system.”

Ryan said that if UVA made such payments, it would in effect be handing over money it received from the state to another unit of government, the city of Charlottesville.

At least a handful of public universities make or have made such voluntary payments, said Adam Langley, associate director of tax policy at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a nonprofit think tank that studies land use. Among them: Penn State, the University of Massachusetts and the University of Vermont, Langley said.

“Public universities can make [payments in lieu of taxes],” he said. “The argument that the state government would not look fondly upon the university making a voluntary contribution that they’re not legally required to make, that’s a very understandable argument. It comes up in the context of private universities as well, in terms of: ‘What are donors going to think?’”

Located on the downtown mall, The Equity Center is a physical representation of UVA’s efforts to be a better neighbor—a “front door to the university”—as well as a hub for community engagement.

The center serves as the staff of the President’s Council. In the past five years it has produced 27 research reports addressing racial and socioeconomic inequality issues and collaborated with 183 community groups and university units on research and service projects. Among its best-known programs is Starr Hill Pathways, a college and career pipeline program for local students from seventh grade through high school.

The center also has meeting rooms available for use for free for its partner organizations. As of November, they’d logged nearly 1,500 hours of use.

Allen, who runs the center, grew up in Charlottesville. His four UVA degrees and local roots give him a perspective on university-community relations that few can match. He didn’t consider attending the university until his senior year at Monticello High School, when a teacher and counselor suggested he give his hometown school a look.

“When you go to UVA you realize that this really is like its own separate world,” he said.

Allen left a career in local public schools to become executive director of the The Equity Center. He was attracted to the mission of improving relations between the university and the community, he said.

“Yes, there is progress, and we have things to show for it,” he said. “We need to be doing more.”

Allen said he’s conscious of “not wanting to pat ourselves on the back.” Not with so much work ahead, and so much to overcome.

“Relatively I think it’s going well, but you have to keep in mind we’re working with the past 100 years of this fractured relationship,” he said.