Southwood Mobile Home Community Redevelopment

Southwood Mobile Home Park, five miles south of Charlottesville, is a community of 341 mobile homes and 1,500 residents. It is a creative, complex community of primarily Spanish-speaking residents, and it also the largest concentration of poverty in Albemarle County. In 2007, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville was able to take over ownership and maintenance of the property and made a promise to residents that no one would be displaced.

brwarchitects has a long history with Habitat—Bruce Wardell is one of the co-founders and former President—and so Habitat reached out to brwarchitects in 2017 to bring in a sensitive, skilled firm with experience in affordable housing. They knew that they could trust brwarchitects to listen first and prioritize residents’ desires and vision.

Lead by Whitney McDermott and Habitat’s support team, brwarchitects embarked on a transformational, multi-year process to demystify the knowledge and skills around neighborhood planning and design. Southwood’s residents became Resident Planners, and the power normally controlled by “expert” professional planners flourished in the hands of the community members.

Southwood residents have designed the Master Plan for their neighborhood as well as a Code of Development. They have developed specific guidelines for other entities who may want to build in their neighborhood so that they integrate and respect the community and culture at Southwood. And—nearly unheard of in redevelopment projects nationally—this project upholds the fundamental promise that Habitat made to Southwood: that no one will be displaced.

A poignant result of this process has been that the City of Charlottesville has recognized the value of resident-led redevelopment. They have partnered with brwarchitects to implement a similar strategy for replacing and adding to the public housing in Charlottesville.