Editorial: In Richmond, a failing bureaucracy was always the point (2024)

TIMES-DISPATCH EDITORIAL BOARD

Forget the headlines for a moment. Yes, a steady stream of corrosive dysfunction is pooling around City Hall. The disturbing lack of accountability in the mayor’s office over abuses in the purchasing card program — on the heels of the meals tax billing fiasco — is once again undermining public trust and Richmonders’ faith in city government.

But it’s a distraction. The main thing isn’t the main thing.

All the noise at City Hall is a problem, but not for the reasons you might think. While the mayor, who is currently running for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor, is busy shooting himself in the foot — and it’s important to note the deafening silence coming from City Council chambers — the collective city is rubbernecking.

We see the accident, but not the structural damage that caused it.

P-cards, meals taxes and bloating salaries at the top, despite staffing shortages just about everywhere, are drowning out deeply ingrained, systemic problems — such things as the growing affordable housing crisis, rapid displacement and gentrification, poverty-racked schools, a tax base disproportionately consumed by non-taxpaying property owners.

Richmond is a city on the rise. The local economy is strong. The population is growing. Richmond’s arts and food scene, despite the extortionary billing practices of the finance department, are thriving. The surrounding counties are diversifying and politically aligning with the city (both Chesterfield and Henrico now have boards controlled by Democrats).

The city, meanwhile, is stuck wading through the cesspool.

Gentrification and housing

Mayor Levar Stoney has made affordable housing a priority. A year ago, he unveiled a plan to carve out $50 million to incentivize affordable housing construction. In a city that could simply do nothing — developers are more than happy to line their pockets building high-end apartments and condos to meet surging demand — this is actual progress.

In January, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies released a study that found 52% of renters in Richmond were “cost-burdened,” meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on housing. When you consider that Richmond has a higher percentage of cost-burdened renters than New York City (51%), Chicago (49%) and Washington, D.C. (46.5%), another vexing problem comes into focus: Out-of-control housing costs are fueling gentrification.

Over the past 30 years, Richmond’s growth has led to displacement of Black residents across the city. According to a study released earlier this year by Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia, Richmond’s growth since 2000 has come at the expense of Black residents — net losses in some of the city’s historically Black neighborhoods ranged from 18% to 45%.

“Using net population loss as an indicator of displacement, HOME found major losses of Black residents from a central portion of the city covering the Stadium, Carillon, Byrd Park, Maymont, and Randolph neighborhoods, as well as a portion of the northside that includes the Providence Park, Brookland Park, Ginter Park Terrace, Northern Barton Heights, Virginia Union, and Chamberlayne Industrial Center neighborhoods,” the report found.

The city now has more white than Black residents, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. Poverty has declined in recent years — it’s now just under 20% — but that’s largely due to displacement. Lower-income families have been forced to vacate the city for the counties, where housing, particularly in the outer-ring suburbs, is cheaper.

Richmond doesn’t have an anti-displacement strategy. It desperately needs one.

‘Double-segregated’ schools

The overall decline in Richmond’s poverty rate masks another problem — condensing extreme poverty, particularly in the East End where most of the city’s housing projects are located. And this problem is most acutely felt in our schools.

Seventy years after Brown v. Board of Education, the region’s schools are more segregated than ever. From 1969-70 to 2022-23, the three largest jurisdictions — Richmond, Chesterfield and Henrico — saw a 1,000% increase in the number of students attending “intensely segregated” schools, according to a May report from the Lee Enterprises’ Public Service Journalism team and the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

When you delve deeper into the numbers, you discover this leads to a bigger problem: “double-segregated” schools, where at least 75% of the student population is economically disadvantaged and 75% a single ethnic minority. There are 15 such schools in metro Richmond, 11 of which are in the city.

Richmond continues to harbor the worst of the region’s poverty, and our schools pay the price. Growing up in economically depressed neighborhoods leads to all manner of trauma — emotional and physical. Redistricting city schools would help, but it’s not enough.

A depleted tax base

For all of Richmond’s growth, there’s a ceiling. The city’s tax base is pockmarked with tax exemptions, thanks primarily to being the seat of state government and Virginia Commonwealth University’s ever-sprawling footprint. Neither pays real estate taxes.

All told, more than 20% of the city’s real estate is off the tax rolls. The state controls roughly $3.7 billion worth of property in Richmond, representing $45 million in lost tax revenue, according to a financial analysis by the finance department. According to 2022 real estate data, VCU sits on roughly $2.5 billion in real estate, representing more than $30 million in lost taxes.

That’s one of the primary reasons why Richmond has the highest real estate tax rate in the metro region — $1.20 per $100 of assessed value.

The higher tax rate means the city is less attractive than the counties when it comes to commercial investment. It’s why bilking restaurant owners through compounding late fees on meals tax bills — and not notifying them for months on end — hurts so much. When you take advantage of your existing businesses, luring new ones gets appreciably harder.

Dispelling the ‘narrative’

This is what happens when your city is economically isolated for 75 years thanks to segregation-era state policies. In Virginia, cities and counties are separated by law. Chesterfield and Henrico, in other words, have been allowed to grow unfettered by crippling poverty and aging infrastructure, enabling the kind of economic and managerial stability that has long eluded Richmond.

“The thing that (state leaders) did was basically prohibit Richmond from participating in the economic growth and renewal of the metropolitan city at the moment that they got Black leadership,” says the Rev. Ben Campbell, former pastoral director at Richmond Hill and author of “Richmond’s Unhealed History.”

“What happened, and you can track it around the country, is they left these center cities with all of the old infrastructure and all of the poverty and no capacity for significant percentage growth in new population. Almost to a city, they became more and more difficult to function and administrate.”

The narrative became “Black people couldn’t run things,” Campbell explains. The persistent challenge of running a city with fewer resources and all of the headaches turns to a loop of constant bureaucratic turnover and dysfunction, tinged with racist dog whistling.

“If you take all of the growth, all of the income development, and all of the rhythmic energy of new and greenfield development, and you separate it off from all of your historic costs — that is your old infrastructure, that is your density costs and your poverty — this is what you get,” Campbell says. “It really isn’t rocket science.”

If Richmond’s leaders can’t bring themselves to confront the operational issues, the day-in-and-day-out challenges and mishaps, the systemic problems will continue to go unaddressed.

This is why the p-card scandals and tax collection bungles are so damaging. It reinforces the old narrative by skipping over the structural underpinnings — and pushes the metropolitan city further out of reach.