Casa Alma is a Catholic Worker community and all-volunteer non-profit located on .6 acres in a diverse neighborhood in the city of Charlottesville. We host a community house for resident volunteers and two houses of hospitality for homeless and low-income families. Our guests are typically African-American or Latina single parent families who live onsite for up to two years. Guests leverage a more stable future by paying down debt and saving funds for future housing.
Surrounding the houses, we cultivate a shared urban homestead which includes extensive gardens, a mini-orchard, berry patch, rainwater catchment, a flock of laying chickens, miniature dairy goats, and honeybees. We garden and care for backyard animals not only to provide healthy food for guest families and resident volunteers, but also to inspire people to connect to the abundance of the land.