As mentioned previously my randomly assigned topic at the Greater Richmond Challenge II was “Workforce Housing.” Real quick: workforce housing is housing for people that form the backbone of society (think teachers, police, fire, clergy). Workforce housing is different than affordable housing. Affordable housing is for the guy who sells you beer at 7-11.
Our day was filled with meetings all over the region with interesting people: the publisher of the RTD (aside: I was really hoping that Tom was going to be lame. But he is awesome, intelligent, and funny. I don’t know how good he is going to be at running the ol’ paper but as a dude: he rocks.), the head of planning for Hanover County, an employee of St. Joseph’s Villa, the head of the Department of Revitalization for Henrico. That was all before lunch.
We had lunch at the FRIENDS center in Gilpin Court. While there we spoke with the property manager of Gilpin, some representatives from the RRHA, the director of the Department of Community Development, as well as a resident. I’ll share some demographic stats from Gilpin in another post. They are eye opening.
After lunch we went to a successful affordable housing neighborhood on Jeff Davis called Winchester Greens. The Better Housing Coalition renovated a depilated apartment complex to some pretty awesome Fan-esque apartments — that rent for 700$. It is probably the most “successful” workforce housing option in the region.
The final place we toured was the South Richmond SRO. A SRO, “single room occupancy,” is a renovated hotel where each resident lives in one room. These facilities cater to the homeless and provide social services as well as extremely cheap rent. An astounding 96% of people leaving the South Richmond SRO are self sufficient after one year. !!! . That is amazing to me. The other great thing is the whole renovation cost 1.9M$ This isn’t a convention center, or a performing arts center sized project. We could plop these down across the city for basically nothing and move a lot of people off of the streets.
I’m back from the Greater Richmond Challenge II. I had an excellent time and met some pretty awesome people. We traveled all around the the area to each of the three counties and city. We went to Gilpn Court. We went to Winchester Greens on the south side.
I’ll be back early next week to give a good brain dump of things I learned. It’s still kicking around in my head at the moment.
Tomorrow I take part in the Greater Richmond Challenge. Basically I pay the Chamber of Commerce a bunch of money so I can brainstorm ideas to make Richmond a better place to live. I will be there because I am Richmond’s number one fan/cheerleader. NUMBER ONE.
There are 95 participants and 5 topics; making two tenish person groups for each topic. My topic is “Workforce Housing.” Last year “Workforce Housing” was called “Affordable Housing” which is way more interesting to me. Workforce Housing: teachers, firemen, police, other people necessary to our society can’t afford to buy the median priced house on their median incomes. That is the issue. (Affordable Housing was a broader issue, something like “poor people are being priced out of owning a home.)
Does that suck? Should the rent? Should we/government give them some sort of helping hand? Should we/government give developers tax incentives to build affordable housing? These are the kinds of questions we are going to be asking several Richmond area officials/peeps.
It should be fun. Do you have any questions you’d like answered/asked? Drop a comment and I’ll see what I can do.
The Richmond Chapter and the Richmond Hokie Club will be holding a Virginia Tech alumni meeting on Tuesday, April 17, 6:00pm at the Virginia Tech Richmond Center, located at 2810 N. Parham Road Suite 300 (3rd Floor) in Room 306.
I’m hosting the 5th edition of the RVA Blog Carnival — get excited. While the name “RVA Blog Carnival” looks like “RVABlogs” the two are not related, except topically. JUST HAD TO GET THAT OFF MY CHEST.
Anyway, Haduken is looking for this week’s excellent posts. If you know of one, or even wrote one yourself, use this form to submit it to me. You could also email me, if that is your fancy: maxpower [at] haduken [dot] com.
The carnival should go live Monday. Posts are due to me Sunday sometime.