Economy
After several hours of confusion and bickering, last week the Richmond City Council approved a housing element—a part of the general plan that will address land use and housing development throughout the city—just in time to meet a deadline to be eligible for a state-issued $44 million grant. But although the entire housing element contains more than fifty sub-sections, there are still four sections of the plan the council left undecided, which could affect rent control, eviction laws and low-income…
Luis Moreno brought his 17-year-old stepdaughter to Doctors Medical Center last Monday after she missed two days of school due to flu symptoms. She is not a Richmond resident—she lives in Pinole—but Doctor’s Medical Center is the closest emergency room. And she is uninsured. Like her, nearly a quarter of the patients Doctors Medical Center sees every day are uninsured and an additional 30 percent are underinsured, meaning that Medicare or MediCal covers a portion—but not all—of their hospital costs,…
After running out of time to officially declare the council seat left by Gary Bell as vacant at last week’s city council meeting, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin announced a special meeting to be held this Thursday at City Hall to discuss the issue. The time for the meeting has not been specified yet. “This process is very important and I look forward to getting it started by way of establishing some dates for the process to begin to move forward,” McLaughlin…
What should the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) take into account as it begins the environmental review for its new Richmond Bay Campus? Wildlife and birds? Noise pollution and new traffic? These are question for Richmond residents, who have until February 4 to make suggestions. Last January, LBNL chose Richmond as the preferred site for its second campus, which will consolidate several bioscience facilities now scattered throughout the region. Richmond aggressively sought the lab–which city officials hope will be an…
An empty chair sat on the dais of Richmond City Hall Tuesday night during the inauguration of re-elected councilmembers Tom Butt and Nat Bates. Outpourings of well wishes for its intended occupant, Gary Bell—who won the November race but is in a medically induced coma following a bacterial sinus infection—dominated public speeches and the hushed conversations in the gallery.
When Oakland resident Debi Mason set out to prevent mortgage associates from the Bank of America from foreclosing on her sister Patricia’s Maxwell Park home in 2007, she had only a few friends, neighbors and advocacy groups to help fend off the foreclosure. But last week, Mason, along with thousands of homeowners in Bay Area cities like Oakland and Richmond that have been profoundly effected by foreclosures and the ensuing blight, welcomed the new Homeowner Bill of Rights, a state…
Chevron awarded grants totaling $1 million to six nonprofits Wednesday morning for programs aimed at helping students and residents in Richmond.
The site of a former Stauffer Chemical Co. plant in Richmond is still contaminated with a huge amount of toxic waste. Sherry Padgett, whose office is across the street, has spent the last decade trying to get the site’s current owners and environmental regulators to clean it up. Click the arrow to hear Padgett and other local residents tell their stories.
The white-collar crime of identity theft, which has increased dramatically nationwide in the last decade, has not spared Richmond. Richmond Police Detective Jeffrey Whitson calls Richmond one of the identity theft epicenters of the West Coast. With the technological advances that come with smart phones, online banking, and other exploitative tools, Whitson said he’s getting far more cases across his desk. “It’s an epidemic,” Whitson said. Whitson said that from last November to the present he has seen more…