One year after Hurricane Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico, painter Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez returned to her homeland to paint portraits of 16 Puerto Ricans from different corners of the island.
For the first time since he was a toddler, 25-year-old Sedzi Solomon McNair has a home to call his own.
A group of Richmond residents gather every Saturday afternoon at the park on the Greenway to give out hot meals, fresh food and a toilet to any neighbor that needs it.
Vivan Nishi was best known for her daily bike rides across Richmond, where she made frequent stops to visit with her son and friends. Then suddenly one day in September, the 73-year-old died of a heart attack in Brookside Homeless Shelter. Because her face bore a shallow cut from her cheek to her mouth and bruising around both eyes, Nishi’s son and daughter wanted to know more about what happened before she died. Her children paid for a private autopsy…
Sedzi-Solomon Mcnair stood in front of his tent in September as police and city workers forced him to pack up and move out without proper notice or help. While his neighbors in the Richmond homeless encampment rushed to break down their tents and gather their belongings before the city threw them away, Mcnair stood with his arms crossed, hood pulled over his head and feet firmly planted in the dirt. It was obvious Mcnair had been through this before. And…
The house on South 37th Street is the ninth one rebuilt under the housing renovation program that turns abandoned, uninhabitable homes into livable ones and sells them to local, lower to medium income, first-time homebuyers.
As city workers continue to uproot the homeless from encampments around Richmond, at times without any warning or help, Mayor Tom Butt is pushing to raise $1.5 million from local companies to pay for a managed homeless encampment. He has asked several local companies, including Chevron Corporation, Kaiser Permanente, Blue Apron, Costco Wholesale and Sims Metal Management to donate $154,000 each—to build and run a camp serving 100 people for a year. As a group of homeless people were being…
Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez, a local painter, paints portraits of Latinos living or working in Richmond as a way to fight against discrimination in her community. This fall, the Richmond Art Center is exhibiting a selection of Garcia-Gonzalez’ portraits as part of Califas: Art of the US-Mexico Borderlands.
Richmond residents will vote in November on a vacant property tax that could raise $5 million in revenue for homeless services and code enforcement. While almost everyone agrees that homelessness and blight are major issues facing the city, there’s a debate over whether taxing property owners is the most effective way to address the problem.