Richmond mayor appoints anti-poverty commission

Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones has formed a commission to help him assess the future of the city's pension system.

By: Will Jones | Times-Dispatch
Published: March 19, 2011

With one in five residents living in poverty, Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones announced Friday a commission that will be charged with identifying strategies for increasing employment, educational achievement, access to transportation and healthy communities.

"We've got to do something because we're living in a difficult time, a global community where we've got to promote economic parity and social justice," he told an audience at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Jones announced his commission at a program sponsored by Hope in the Cities and the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities.

As part of the program, John V. Moeser, a senior fellow at the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement at the University of Richmond, presented census and other data to spotlight the longstanding concentrations of poor residents in Richmond, as well as some of their causes, plus the pockets that are emerging in the older suburbs around the city.

Moeser said the city's concentrations of poverty disproportionately affect blacks and remain "deep canyons in the social landscape" as a result of the Civil War and public policies and private practices that were later outlawed through the civil-rights movement.

To begin to address the issues, Moeser called for the creation of multiracial coalitions to press for "concrete measures that break up high-density poverty through mixed-income, mixed-use development in every locality."

"Ultimately, what we need to do together — all of us — is to build not so much a great city but a good city," he said. "Actually, building good cities needs to happen across our nation. But why not start here, where the greatest of all national tragedies — the slave trade and the Civil War — were played out at such enormous human cost?"

Jones said his commission represents a first step in addressing a problem that has plagued Richmond for decades. He said his commission will focus on increasing public awareness about issues of poverty in the city and seek regional dialogue.

"If all you do is go to work and hang out in the posh, nice places in town, you could very well not know that [one in five city residents are poor] and not know … that we have more public housing than any community south of New York," he said.

The commission will be led by City Council Vice President Ellen F. Robertson and Deputy Chief Administrative Officer of Human Services Carolyn N. Graham. It joins other commissions appointed by Jones focused on tourism, pedestrian and bicycling issues, and health issues.

Robertson has been trying to get the city focused on reducing poverty. She said Jones' commission will absorb a commission that was authorized by council but has been inactive because of staffing limitations. She hopes the merged effort will help the city begin to employ various strategies, including one that allows developers to increase the residential density of a project if it meets certain standards for providing affordable units.

Jones noted that his administration is already taking that approach on projects that involve city funding. He noted that the city required a certain number of units for workforce housing when it provided funding to support a project that included housing and the restoration of the Hippodrome Theater in Jackson Ward.

"Anything we do in the city of Richmond, henceforth, is going to have that requirement in there," he said.

The members of the commission are:

•Rev. Wallace Adams-Riley

•Dr. Kevin Allison, Virginia Commonwealth University

•Elizabeth Blue

•Jackie Bolden, Capital Area Partnership Uplifting People

•Kimberly Bridges, Richmond School Board

•Rev. Ben Campbell, Richmond Hill

•Del. Betsy B. Carr

•Michael Cassidy, Virginia Public Policy Institute

•Peter Chapman, deputy chief administrative officer for economic and community development for Richmond

•Tom Chewning