The following is an updated version of the piece in our January issue, on newsstands now.
Heather Mullins Crislip is CEO of Housing Opportunities Made Equal. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
Since a 2018 study by Princeton University revealed that Richmond has the second-highest eviction rate of all major cities in the United States, local leaders have scrambled to find solutions. Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney responded last January by announcing the Eviction Diversion Program, implemented by Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) in partnership with Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, Firms in Service and the court system. With the help of a $485,140 City Council grant, the program launched last October and in its first three months, nearly 500 people called looking for help. The program has since made a dent in the city's eviction crisis, successfully helping 76 Richmonders sidestep eviction in 2019, 49 of whom are Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority tenants. The average rent amount owed by those helped was $866.91, a HOME report states, and the program is on track to divert a targeted 300 evictions in its first year.
In November, Stoney also announced the formation of an Eviction Task Force to address the causes of evictions and develop solutions. Heather Mullins Crislip, president and chief executive officer of HOME and a member of the task force, talked recently with Richmond magazine about efforts to reduce evictions.
Richmond magazine: A Princeton Eviction Lab study said Richmond had the second-highest eviction rates of all major cities in the country. How did that news hit you?
Heather Mullins Crislip: Obviously, we have a lot of work to do to re-balance the power between tenants and landlords, and that’s something both we and a lot of our partners [have] been working on. The fact that we had a huge eviction problem wasn’t news, but knowing that we were an outlier and that this didn’t have to be the natural state of things was an important moment.
RM: How does the eviction diversion program work?
Crislip: The general breakdown has been that the tenant needs to show up in court with 25% of the judgment or the back rent that is owed. HOME, then, is prepared to pay 50% of the deficiency, and then the remaining 25% is on a 90-day payment plan.
RM: Are there other facets to HOME’s involvement in this program?
Crislip: No, it’s supposed to be a pretty quick intervention, and the point is to save some families from the spiral of poverty that can happen as a result of an eviction. This is not going to solve Richmond’s eviction crisis. I think we’re going to need more tenant empowerment, we’re going to need more basic, affordable housing. This is really a symptom of the affordable housing crisis in Richmond.
RM: Is there any sense yet of how this program might overlap with Virginia’s eviction diversion pilot program announced by the governor?
Crislip: We tried to design this program so that it would dovetail pretty well, and actually, it’s kind of a beautiful social science experiment. If the state program goes through as is without funding, you’ll have one funded program and one without the resources to address the back rent.
RM: What was your reaction to the news about evictions issued by the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority to residents at Creighton Court and other public housing complexes?
Crislip: We would really encourage better record keeping, because there is a lot of disagreement about what’s owed on the judgement by the court versus the record keeping at RRHA. I’m glad that they did the moratorium on actual evictions [through January 2020], and I hope that we’ll be in a position after that to be able to rely on the records and be sure we’re treating those public housing residents with respect, but also with some transparency about what’s owed and for what.
RM: What are your goals for the eviction diversion program?
Crislip: I think we need to get our processes down so that we’re able to do these a little quicker, but our hope is that this would remain as a one-time quick intervention; our original goal was to be able to do 500 diversions per year, and I think we’ll be able to do that.
Image courtesy Woody Rogers/RVA Eviction Lab
Eviction Analysis
The RVA Eviction Lab, formed at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center for Urban and Regional Analysis in response to Princeton University’s national study, examines Richmond’s housing instability crisis by looking at how factors such as affordability, foreclosures and the stock of rental housing in city neighborhoods can contribute to eviction rates.
According its findings, evictions disproportionately take place in the eastern and southern portions of the city, and areas with high eviction rates also tend to experience higher rates of foreclosures. Additionally, city neighborhoods with high levels of rental housing — particularly in the South Side and North Side — tend to see high eviction rates compared to the West End, where eviction rates are lower, and rental housing is limited.
To learn more about the issue, see an exhibition called “Eviction Crisis,” which will be installed by Housing Opportunities Made Equal from Jan. 3 through the end of March at the Richmond Public Library’s main branch on East Franklin Street.
