🍺 Good morning, RVA: Eviction freeze, RPS rezoning maps, and PBR sales

Good morning, RVA! It’s 42 °F, and the rest of today looks pretty nice. Expect highs in the upper 60s and some sunshine. Tomorrow though, hold onto your butts, because a cold front comes through and we might could even see some snow! NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says not to expect any real accumulation—but still!

Water cooler

It’s Veterans Day, née Armistice Day, aka Corduroy Day. This year marks the 101st anniversary since the end of World War I, and you can attend a ceremony at the Virginia War Memorial from 10:45 AM to 12:00 PM. I appreciate this reminder/FYI from the War Memorial website: “Veterans Day is the federally recognized holiday that honors, remembers and thanks all who have served and who are currently serving whereas Memorial Day remembers those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.”

Big news out of RRHA, the City’s public housing authority: “Effective immediately, the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority (RRHA) has implemented an agency-wide freeze on lease enforcement for nonpayment of rent. This freeze impacts each of the public housing developments under RRHA’s purview, including Creighton Court, Fairfield Court, Gilpin Court, Hillside Court, Mosby Court and Whitcomb Court. This freeze means that for the remainder of calendar year 2019, no public housing family will be removed from their home for debt owed to RRHA. During this time, residents who are in arrears will not receive late notices and no unlawful detainers will be filed. Pending court cases will be dismissed or postponed, and scheduled evictions will be canceled.” Wow! Folks who do owe the agency money will have until the end of the year to get current, and the agency will spend this time reevaluating its lease enforcement and rent collection processes. This is a big, big win for housing advocates who have worked hard to keep families in their homes and raise public awareness about the eviction crisis in Richmond. It’s also a big chance for the nascent eviction diversion program to do its work over the next couple of months. Here’s a question: How much total money is owed to RRHA across all of its public housing neighborhoods, and what would it take to just cover all of that debt?

After all of those many, many public meetings, RPS’s Rezoning Advisory Committee has landed on four proposed options for rezoning schools in Richmond. You can download the PDF of the options here. There’s a lot going on so block off some time to spend scrolling through that PDF—maps are at the bottom!

I think I linked to new GRTC CEO Julie Timm’s partial statement on NoBro last week, but Roberto Roldan has put her full statement up on Twitter. It’s a good statement and one worth reading. I appreciate the complex spot Timm is in and her need to carefully navigate a very public and political situation—while simultaneously getting to know all of the players involved. It’s not a job I would want, I tell you what. Regardless, I think she does a good job of noting that 1) Only five routes use the existing transfer plaza during the day, 2) The proposed Transit Center’s location could “lock the system into less than optimal connections to the Pulse,” and 3) There is still a need for dignified infrastructure (her words, which I really like) to help folks make transfers—especially at night. Moving forward, I’m super interested to see if there’s enough give in the current NoBro plans to accommodate rethinking the Transit Center portion of the project.

Also related to the non-arena portions of NoBro, Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says that the development doesn’t have enough affordable units to comply with City Council policy 💸. That policy, RES. 2018-R083, establishes that Council “will not consider any ordinance authorizing the execution of any agreement facilitating a development or project that includes a residential component and that involves the conveyance of an interest in City-owned real estate, the expenditure of City funds, in-kind donations from the City, or a tax credit or exemption without a contractual obligation that a minimum [percentage] of 15 percent of the development’s or project’s total residential units be reserved for affordable housing.” To make the numbers work, Robinson says the NH District folks would need to convert 39 of the planned market rate units into affordable units or build 46 additional affordable units. NH District says that breaks their financing. RES. 2019-R083 is just a resolution, so, technically, it’s non-binding, but I bet Councilmembers are not thrilled about NoBro violating a resolution that they just passed back in February.

Jonathan Spiers has an update on Henrico’s plans to build their own indoor arena—something smaller than what the City’s working on, think something the size of the Siegel Center. This and NoBro aren’t really comparable projects, but I can’t help myself from compare/contrasting!

Well, this is a heartwarming story from WTVR: A woman working the Children’s Hospital parking deck makes and gives out hundreds of piece of origami to visitors and patients every day.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Karri Peifer at the RTD says GWARbar and Sticky Rice both made the top-100 list in national PBR sales.

This morning’s longread

Ruth Winder’s National Championships Win Almost Didn’t Happen

This, about bikes and bike racing, is good advice about a lot of other things, too. Also, I hadn’t heard about RED-S until reading this piece, and then, over the weekend, saw this video from the New York Times about runner Mary Cain.

Sims wasn’t surprised by Winder’s result. “Ruth had been working really hard on the mental aspect [of her experience]. In my head I was like, if it clicks on that day, she’s going to fly. And it did. It clicked.” For Winder, maintaining a sense of balance, both mentally and physically, is a work in progress. “I’ve learned that it’s ok to let yourself feel something. That it doesn’t mean you’re weak. It doesn’t mean you’re not tough,” she says. For example, instead of worrying that she’s not perfect if she struggles during a workout, she has a new strategy: “I feel [my emotions]. Really, really feel them for 30 seconds and then I try and let it go.”

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This morning’s Instagram