Dear Entrants,

Every year, across the United States, affordable housing is lost and low-income families are displaced when trailer parks in high cost areas are bought for redevelopment. We want to prove that it is possible to transform a trailer park into a desirable, sustainable, and very livable urban neighborhood with diverse uses and income levels without displacing any of the trailer park residents.

Here in Charlottesville, we hope that a new development model for Sunrise Park will enable us to pursue additional similar sites. We propose to do this by using the very market pressures that threaten to displace trailer park residents in growing communities. Here is how it will work: Habitat donors will help fund the affordable housing at Sunrise Park, while the units that are sold on the open market will help fund the affordable housing for the next mixed use community we develop. This is just one of the aspects that we believe is unique about this concept for Habitat for Humanity.

Using the Habitat model at Sunrise, we will create homeownership opportunities for all eligible residents and provide low-cost rentals for the others. Including commercial space and selling condominium units at market value will create a stronger neighborhood and a financially sustainable model we can then use in other areas where low-income families are in danger of displacement. The mixed-income nature of Sunrise Park will fit right in with the growing economic diversity of the Belmont Neighborhood surrounding Sunrise. Young professionals who have fallen in love with our community will be the new neighbors of people who have lived at Sunrise for 30 to 40 years. That combination will form a strong neighborhood.

We need your help. Your designs for this neighborhood will be the tools that will help transform Sunrise Trailer Court into Sunrise Park and create a new model for the transformation of an American trailer park. For many years to come, when someone proposes a land use that would displace trailer park residents, or other low-income people anywhere in the United States, someone may stand up in a public hearing and say, "There may be a better way to do this. In Charlottesville, Virginia, a trailer park was redeveloped and no one was displaced."

Many people in Charlottesville know Sunrise as the trailer court with the great view of Monticello. In the future, people will know Sunrise Park as the innovative community with the great view of Monticello. And perhaps, when they think of good architecture in Charlottesville, both Monticello and Sunrise Park will come to mind.

Sincerely,

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF GREATER CHARLOTTESVILLE

Overton McGehee
Executive Director