🌞 Good morning, RVA: Learning Recovery Grants, point-in-time count, and an urban solar field

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and highs today might hit 60 °F. Tomorrow (Friday!) looks colder, wetter, and less pleasant all around, so you might want to take advantage of what we’ve got today. Looking at the extended forecast, by the way, and four of the next nine days have lows sitting just below freezing. March: Winter is…kind of coming back?
 

Water cooler

Yesterday afternoon, Governor Youngkin announced “the upcoming release of $30 million in Learning Recovery Grants to parents to be used for qualifying education services intended to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ educational progress and well-being.” I’ve read the press release, like, six times and still don’t really understand what all is actually happening. Here’s the vaguest of gists: Families making less than 300% of the Federal Poverty Level could (will?) receive $3,000 to spend on “vetted and approved education services they need to address the negative effects the pandemic has had on their educational progress and well-being.” All other qualifying students, which I assume means families making more than three times the FPL, will receive $1,500. Obviously folks will have a million questions about this initiative—especially what’s a “vetted service,” who are “qualifying students,” and where is this money coming from. Unfortunately, all we’re told in the release is that we’ll get a website (aka a “parent-friendly, accessible, and secure online service”) at some point. If I try to set aside my bias, look past some of the weird language in the press release, and squint a little, these Learning Recovery Grants sort of seems like a child tax credit—something I’m very supportive of! Of course, it could be something entirely different and nefarious, and, for now, we’ll just have to wait for the Administration to release more details or for reporters to dig in to really understand what the Governor has planned.
 

Homeward has released its 2023 Winter Point-In-Time Count of people experiencing homelessness in our region, and, overall, they recorded “690 people experiencing homelessness, which is 1% lower than the PIT count in January 2022.” However, while the total number of folks stayed mostly the same, Homeward found a “121% increase in the number of people who were staying in unsheltered conditions…the largest number of people staying outdoors, in cars, and other places not meant for human habitation in the past 15 years.” Jahd Khalil at VPM has some more details and talked with some of the folks at Homeward about what’s driving this year’s numbers. Unsurprising to anyone reading this newsletter, the region’s lack of deeply affordable housing is one of the big reasons for the higher rates of unsheltered homelessness.
 

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports on an interesting new development planned for the site of the once-decrepit, now-demolished Days Inn right off of Chamberlayne Avenue and I-95. The interesting bit: the 186 lower-income apartments (for folks making 60% of Area Median Income) will be powered by an adjacent solar field. Fascinating! The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act makes this proposal possible, and, if this project works out, I wonder if will see more of the same elsewhere in the region. Part of me wonders, though, if we should just build 50 more homes on this land and put the solar panels somewhere further out. Regardless, it’s great to hear developers talk about affordable housing like this: “There’s still a lot more needed to solve the affordable housing crisis. We’re able to pull it off because of things like the IRA, but still, more is needed to truly provide quality, safe, affordable housing for the folks who need it most.”
 

Do we really need to keep TikTokifying every app? Spotify says yes! I mean, I am verifiably an old man, but I do not need more reasons to stare at my phone while mindlessly swiping.
 

This morning’s longread

How the ring got good

Some more writing advice, this time taken from the process of the J. R. R. Tolkien himself! I saw this piece about the history of Lord of the Rings—like how it was written, not the fictional history of Middle Earth—pop up in a couple of internet places and am so glad I tapped through. Like the author says, it’s reassuring, inspiring, and hope-giving that Tolkien’s first (and fifth!) drafts were a mess, too. Just like the rest of us!
 

It’s fine, as far as it goes; he could have made it work, probably? Possibly? But it is not COOL in the way that the final formulation is COOL. It has none of the symmetry, the inevitability. It does only the work it has to do, and nothing else. It is not yet aesthetically irresistible. There are several revised approaches to “what’s the deal with the ring?” presented in The History of The Lord of the Rings, and, as you read through the drafts, the material just … slowly gets better! Bit by bit, the familiar angles emerge. There seems not to have been any magic moment: no electric thought in the bathtub, circa 1931, that sent Tolkien rushing to find a pen. It was just revision. I find this totally inspiring.
 

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Picture of the Day

Nervous for my little buds.