March 29, 2012. The Richmond Times-Dispatch.
A coalition of Richmond-area congregations made a formidable show of strength Thursday night in a campaign to pressure the City Council into following through on a public trust fund to create more affordable housing.
Hundreds of people from Baptist, Presbyterian, Jewish and Catholic congregations packed the Cedar Street Memorial Baptist Church in Church Hill, calling on the City Council to get the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, first created by the council in 2007, up and running. The trust fund’s board has yet to be appointed and a dedicated source of money has yet to be established.
“Tonight we come to our public officials with serious concerns about our communities,” said Levy Armwood, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church on Leigh Street. The group gathered Thursday, Richmonders Involved to Strengthen our Communities, is composed of 14 congregations and was founded in 2004 to tackle community problems.
According to numbers supplied by RISC, 46 percent of Richmond households pay 30 percent or more of their income for housing, and 22 percent pay more than 50 percent of their income toward housing. Of households earning less than $20,000 a year, 80 percent pay more than 30 percent of their income toward rent.
Housing trust funds established by local governments in hundreds of communities in the United States have been instrumental in providing low-income housing, spurring economic development and providing jobs, among other benefits, the group says.
The Rev. Micah Jackson, RISC co-chairman and pastor of the Seventh Street Memorial Baptist Church, said RISC members will attend City Council meetings to show “we mean business.”
Jackson said the group selected the Affordable Housing Trust Fund last fall as one of its major initiatives for the year.
“We have been and will continue to follow this through to the end,” he said.
Council Vice President Ellen F. Robertson, who represents the 6th District, introduced an ordinance Monday that sets up provisions for the trust fund and its board. It is scheduled for a public hearing April 23.
Fifth District Councilman E. Martin Jewell was the lone council member to attend the RISC meeting Thursday, and he challenged Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ plan for spending $62 million the city will get back from an early loan repayment by the Richmond Metropolitan Authority.
“You may have heard. We’re rich,” Jewell said. “A lot of the things the mayor wants to do with that $62 million is not going to fly.”
Jewell said that money could be a source of the seed money needed to get the housing trust fund going. Jones’ budget for the coming fiscal year includes $500,000 for the trust fund.
Council President Kathy Graziano, 4th District, who sponsored the original housing trust fund initiative in 2007, noted that times have changed in the past five years. She did not attend the meeting, saying she had a prior commitment.
“When the first paper was introduced, there was a totally different economy and totally different housing market than there is today,” she said.
“Is it possible to do it? I’m not sure. These are tough economic times,” she said.
