Vision

Development that centers the community

Virginia Community Voice has been working for several years to see neighbors’ vision for the natural and built environment realized, by equipping local leaders with tools and building their advocacy and organizing skills.

We formed a Housing Working Group in 2019 with approximately 20 neighbors who meet monthly to share their experiences, learn about the issues surrounding development, housing, gentrification, etc., and make plans for collective action. HWG membership is representative of the South Richmond community and meetings are bilingual (Spanish / English).

This led to the creation of an Equitable Development Scorecard in 2021. The Equitable Development Scorecard was created to hold developers and the city accountable to neighbors’ priorities for development on the Southside. The scorecard is divided into six categories: community engagement, food access & security, safety, equitable jobs access, neighborhood & equitable development, and neighborhood infrastructure maintenance & resiliency. 

Today, RVA Thrives plays a crucial role in advocating for and facilitating community benefits agreements in local development projects. A notable example is the redevelopment of the Oak Grove apartment project. RVA Thrives Members utilized an Equitable Development Scorecard to assess the project, engaging in negotiations with developers to ensure a substantial portion of units were made affordable to residents earning 50% AMI or less. This approach ensures that developments contribute positively to the community by providing accessible housing options.

Why this matters

Housing Costs

Prior to the pandemic, the Southside of Richmond was more affordable than other parts of the city, yet home prices and rents were rising.

A 2018 community listening process surveyed 300 people who live along the Richmond Highway Corridor.

Most respondents said paying for housing was harder in the last two years (30%), while 28% say paying for housing has always been hard, but it had not gotten any harder in the last two years.

Of those that indicated paying for housing had gotten harder in the last two years:

• 37% said they are paying more for rent but their apartment size hasn’t changed

• 18% said they’ve moved into a smaller or lower quality apartment to afford rent

• 25% said their property taxes are increasing

Gentrification

The City of Richmond has a population of approximately 221,000. Our work focuses on an area in the city south of the James River along the Richmond Highway Corridor in Richmond’s 8th and 9th districts. The 8th District has a population of 26,546 (67% Black, 24% white, 16% Latino) and the 9th District has a population of 25,621 (60% Black, 29% white, 22% Latino). Virginia Community Voice has been organizing in this area, in legacy Black neighborhoods on Richmond’s Southside since 2017. Since 2019 we have also been organizing and building relationships in several apartment complexes where many Spanish-speaking immigrant families live. 

During this time we have seen the White population on the Southside grow, property values rise, and the Black population decline, indicating that gentrification is displacing people from this historically BIPOC community. This project builds on years of relationship building within Black and Hispanic / Latine neighborhoods and efforts to equip neighbors with tools to advocate for what they want and need for their families and neighborhoods so that they can stay here and enjoy the benefits of a revitalized community. 

Eviction crisis

According to RVA Eviction lab (run out of VCU), and the Princeton University Eviction Lab analysis of eviction case court records, Richmond has the second highest eviction rate in the country at 11% annually from 2000 to 2016. 

Approximately 30.9% of all renters in Richmond receive an eviction notice per year (Campaign to Reduce Evictions, 2018). According to the Virginia Poverty Law Center (VPLC), 56 families in Richmond were evicted from their homes every week in 2017 (Marra, 2019). Furthermore, families with children are evicted at double the rate of families without children. Eviction in Richmond is also a racial issue - eviction rates increase as the number of people of color increase, even when holding income and other factors constant (Campaign to Reduce Evictions, 2018).

According to VCU’s Eviction Lab, neighborhoods on Southside face higher than average evictions (see Figure 1, pulled from their report). Measured at the neighborhood level, evictions were greater than two times the average for the rest of Richmond (bright and dark red) (Teresa, RVA Eviction Lab). These neighborhoods are predominantly African-American, reenforcing multiple studies’ findings that evictions increase in minority neighborhoods.