For nearly two decades, as the downtown Fredericksburg churches that comprise Micah Ecumenical Ministries worked to address street homelessness, their efforts consisted in large part of securing housing scattered throughout the city.
During that time, they’ve come to realize that while shelter is perhaps the most glaring need shared by those they serve — it’s not the only one.
“The reality is we have moved plenty of people off the street, and they’ve done fine in housing, but we have watched many of them die very lonely,” Micah Executive Director Meghann Cotter said.
For all its pitfalls and perils, explained Cotter, the street and those who survive on it forge a bona fide community.
“And to some degree, we take that away from them when we move them into an apartment that’s detached from that,” she said. “And then we tell them you can’t have all your friends over because you’ll get evicted. And they struggle in a lot of ways that we can’t even begin to fathom.”
Those struggles led Micah to reconsider its approach to helping the unhoused. Six years ago, the vision crystallized as Jeremiah Community, a neighborhood-style supportive housing community modeled after successful developments launched elsewhere in the United States.
In 2022, Micah entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the city, Mary Washington Healthcare and Virginia Supportive Housing to begin the search for a suitable parcel. They considered 17 sites throughout the region, weighing factors such as access to public transportation and shopping.
“It was a challenge in this region to find a place that had the combination of things we needed and was something we could afford,” Cotter said.
Finally, on July 10, the Fredericksburg Planning Commission held a public hearing on the project, which is proposed for 31.7 acres in the Bragg Hill area and will include 109 single- and double-unit small homes and an 80-unit apartment complex to be built by Virginia Supportive Housing. A health center will provide on-site services to residents.
A namesake, home at last
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus spread unabated throughout the Fredericksburg community. Street homelessness, on the other hand, was effectively eradicated.
Rigid public health guidance and unprecedented federal aid helped organizations like Micah reach even the most chronically unhoused and vulnerable.
“We had just about everybody we knew in a hotel,” recalled Cotter, “and there were really very few people that were left on the street.”
One of the final holdouts was Jeremiah Blackstone.
Jeremiah, an Army veteran and graduate of North Stafford High School, arrived back in Fredericksburg 27 years ago and has been downtown ever since. He spent most of his days at the Visitors Center on Caroline Street before retreating underneath the Galleria overhang across the street at nightfall.
“He wasn’t one that bothered anybody or anything like that,” Cotter said. “He doesn’t say a lot or whatever, but he’s just this fixture.”
Volunteers initially lured Jeremiah by hiding lunches in the dumpsters he was known to frequent. That kernel of trust led to him attending weekly meals at the churches and finally venturing into Micah, where he was able to fill out the paperwork required to receive Social Security payments.
Still, said Cotter, Jeremiah would never check into a hotel during Christmas and his acceptance of housing was limited to brief stays in cold weather shelters. Around that time, Micah rented a home on Virginia Avenue that was owned by a church member.
Every day for six months, volunteers took Jeremiah to see the house — his house.
“And, one night,” recalled Cotter, “he said, ‘Sure, I’ll try it.’”
Jeremiah has been there for three years, during which time he’s continued to receive daily support. Micah celebrates his little successes: taking the trash out, hanging a birdhouse, mowing the lawn.
“It just seems so simple, but that is the level of vulnerability that we’re talking about that exists among many of our in-house people in different ways,” Cotter said. “And we fundamentally believe we have to create places that work for people.”
The community that bears his name will cater to the chronically unhoused, defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as individuals who have been homeless for more than a year (with no breaks longer than seven days) and who have at least one disability.
“I tell that story because if anybody was never going to go into housing from people’s perspective,” said Cotter, “it was Jeremiah.”
It takes a village to make a village
On a recent weekday morning, 12 people were queued up outside Micah’s headquarters on Princess Anne Street.
“Just waiting for that [church] bell to ring,” one man said, referring to the 10 successive chimes that would precede doors opening.
Most, explained Cotter, were there to take a shower. But others had appointments with probation officers, social services or the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board (RACSB).
It’s the same type of support network that Micah hopes to replicate — albeit on a much grander scale — with Jeremiah Community.
While Jeremiah Community will be the largest development of its kind in Virginia, the model has already proven successful in seven other counties or cities throughout the Commonwealth.
The average stay in supportive housing is six years, and 94 percent of residents did not return to homelessness, according to Virginia Supportive Housing Executive Director Allison Bogdanovich.
“We’ve been doing this for 36 years and this supportive housing, it’s not considered really controversial,” Bogdanovich said. “It’s not considered, you know, will it work? It’s the evidence-based solution for ending homelessness.”
In the project’s nascent stages, Cotter visited two communities — Eden Village in Springfield, Mo., and Community First Village in Austin, Texas — and conducted case studies to determine what made supportive housing work.
She also read, “Welcome Homeless: One Man’s Journey of Discovering the Value of Home,” by Community First founder Alan Graham. The stories it contained were hauntingly familiar.
“They were the people I know in Fredericksburg and the deep, devastating loss of relationship that they had experienced,” Cotter said. “And I know people that are just like the people he was caring for in Austin.
“It just began to really shape our perspective on what we needed to do and who we needed to be in the community.”
A concentration of support
With a framework in place, Micah began to assemble support partners.
Per the MOU, the city will pledge $2 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds toward the project, which would be built in phases. Mary Washington Healthcare came on board to facilitate partnerships ensuring on-site access to medical care.
Cotter said that Micah’s current capital campaign is for $17 million, with approximately $10 million coming from major gifts and other contributions. The project will also tap grants, and Virginia Supportive Housing’s involvement with the apartment complex will result in a significant infusion of state and federal dollars, said Bogdanovich.
“We’re doing some creative financing to address a really dire situation in Fredericksburg,” Bogdanovich said.
According to Sam Shoukas, the housing and community health program director for the Fredericksburg Regional Continuum of Care, the city hovers around 30 chronically unhoused people in the winter — a number that doubles during the summer months.
Shoukas noted that a development on the scale of the Jeremiah Project will create second-order effects relating to available housing stock. While the small (450-square foot) homes won’t be available to families, they will house individuals who might otherwise occupy larger units scattered throughout the community.
“What would it look like if we no longer had to house two and three people together in an apartment in order to help them make the rent, but have them in Jeremiah?” she said. “Then, that actually frees up a three-bedroom apartment for families in our community.”
Shoukas anticipates a similar ripple effect in the efficiency of support services.
“Right now, we are throughout the region and our case managers are going everywhere trying to support multiple people,” she said. “But what it would look like if they spent less time in the car trying to get to people and more time being present in the community?”
A ‘unique’ project
Much of the conversation during the July 10 Fredericksburg Planning Commission meeting centered, somewhat predictably, on land use.
As part of its application, Micah is asking for the parcel to be rezoned from R-2 to planned development residential, a classification that would allow for both the apartment buildings and small homes. An associated special use permit would allow for institutional housing.
In particular, plans call for the small-house units to be built either alone or in pairs with the entrances facing outward, a design choice intended to minimize the feeling of shared walls.
“This is probably one of the most unique projects I’ve worked on,” said attorney Charlie Payne, who represented the applicants (Micah, MWHC, and Virginia Supportive Housing) at the meeting.
Planning Commission Chair David Durham voiced concerns about bike storage, noting many of the residents don’t drive but will still require regular access to services in Central Park and downtown.
When Peg Phillips, Micah’s servant leader of neighbor care, stepped to the podium during the public comment session that followed, she offered a firsthand perspective on the issue.
“I’ve slept on the ground and am now one of many boots on the ground caring for neighbors overcoming homelessness,” said Phillips, who shared that she lived outside in the city for five years before her employment with Micah.
Supporters of Jeremiah Project hold a silent prayer vigil before the Fredericksburg Planning Commission Hearing on July 10. (Submitted Photo)
Phillips noted that many of those who would reside in Jeremiah Community have serious health issues that would preclude them from riding bicycles in the first place.
“I think the concern should really be that we have enough rollator walkers to take care of the people who are going to be in this community,” Phillips said.
Nearly all those who offered comments supported the project, including representatives from several regional agencies. Brian Carrico, an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Fredericksburg, noted the effects of homelessness on the criminal justice system.
“We see on every criminal docket, there’s always an interaction with mental health, with substance abuse, with homelessness,” Carrico said. “Having the sort of supportive housing Micah will bring helps with all of those issues. It’s something we see as a major asset to improve public safety in the city.”
Around 11 p.m., after more than two-and-a-half hours spent discussing Jeremiah Community, the planning commission moved on to its next agenda item.
“I think we’ve said enough,” Durham said of extending the public hearing until its next meeting, on Aug. 28.
If, on that date, the Planning Commission votes to recommend the rezoning and special use permits, the project will go before City Council for another hearing and approval. Cotter estimates that site work would take four to six months before construction begins.
“Built out, this will functionally end street homelessness in our community,” she said.
The Free Press discloses that Meghann Cotter, an individual or organization central to this story, is a member of the Free Press’s journalism advisory committee.
