Government
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…
A series of recently proposed housing developments along Macdonald Avenue in downtown Richmond could spur a business renaissance in the struggling district if city and local business leaders’ predictions ring true. In a city desperate for affordable housing, the developments reserve only about one quarter of the total number of units for residents making below the median income. The rest of the apartments would be rented at market rates. Still, Richmond leaders are supporting the proposals on land that has…
Jovanka Beckles, who served on Richmond’s City Council for eight years, is running for California’s Assembly District 15 with the support of Our Revolution, a progressive platform backed by Bernie Sanders. She’s one of hundreds of candidates across the country trying to push a progressive agenda ahead of the November election.
Her family dialed 911. But when paramedics reached the seven-story affordable housing development, they found its elevators malfunctioning yet again. In fact, the elevators at this federally funded housing development had not been working for one week, residents say, and they often break down. The building houses some of the city’s most vulnerable residents — low-income seniors and people with disabilities.
North Richmond is an unincorporated community in West Contra Costa County and is almost completely surrounded by the City of Richmond. The idea of annexation, or integration, of North Richmond into the city has been raised for decades. In 2017, it came up once more and residents are currently discussing the possibility.
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.
The Citizens Police Review Commission voted to send the Richmond Police Department recommendations that emphasize the use of non-lethal force and new officer training Wednesday night. These recommendations come several months after the commission ruled that Officer Wallace Jensen used excessive force in the September 2014 shooting death of Pedie Perez.
The monthly vigils were started seven years ago by the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity as a way to show support for undocumented immigrant detainees held inside the West County Detention Center.
As rents and home prices continue to skyrocket across California, a major ballot fight is brewing between tenants and the real estate industry over the state rent control law Costa Hawkins. The law prohibits cities from implementing rent control on single family homes as well as homes or apartments built after 1995 (or the year the city passed it’s rent control law, which, in Oakland, is 1983), resulting in 100% or more rent increases for tenants in these dwellings. The…