Local developer (and UVA graduate) Vito Cetta has been building in Albemarle and Charlottesville for 16 years. His company, Weather Hill Homes, has developed many properties, including Wickham Pond in Crozet and White Gables near Farmington. As the County has established an affordable housing policy, Cetta, who serves on the County housing committee, has responded. “He’s excellent to work with,” says Marcia Joseph, chairperson of the County Planning Commission. Here’s some of what he had to say to C-VILLE.
C-VILLE: Which developers are building affordable housing?
Vito Cetta: Almost everything we do has some element of it, though I don’t know anybody who’s building new homes that aren’t required to be affordable [by County policy]. That’s just the nature of the market. An issue is, we live in a free market economy—we’re not socialist. There’s only so much you can or want to control in a community.
The goal is to increase the supply. Developers will tend to say, “I’m subsidizing the building of these units, and somebody else is going to gain the benefit down the road.” And that’s not right, that’s not the intent of any of that. So the key is that you have to build something that looks like and feels like and is, in fact, affordable—and will remain affordable.
Are affordable housing and profitable development mutually exclusive?
In terms of new housing, it is difficult if not impossible for anybody to build, from scratch, affordable housing—in our county, defined as $180,000. Even if a developer could do that, he would be offering something like an apartment, a stacked flat, for $180,000. And what people will do, they’ll say I prefer to just drive from Nelson or Greene County and buy a little house on a huge property.
Which planning division is harder to work with: City or County?
The County. The City used to be considerably easier, though they’re a little bit tougher now. The County has so many people, so many steps in the process. I happen to like it that way, because not many people are prepared to tackle that. We know we take a long time, we know how to get ourselves through the system, so it doesn’t bother us.
Some say, because of difficult County processes, it’s easier to develop the rural areas.
Yes—if you do it that way, you don’t have to provide affordable housing, you don’t have to do cash proffers. And that’s not healthy, because we have a master plan, and if it’s followed, you’re going to have a nifty community.
Builders are going to build. They’re going to find the lots where they can get them, whether it’s the rural area or the urban areas.
Are you sympathetic to the complaints of Crozet residents to your Wickham Pond II development?
They’re only complaining about growth. Both the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission want to see building in the growth areas. The County consistently builds 500 to 600 homes a year, and the average person doesn’t want to see another house built. “Not in my backyard”—it’s all understandable.
