RVA Mag

Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

Menu

Stonewall Rising: Showing Support With Pride

|

Topics: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Last weekend’s Stonewall Rising march was an act of solidarity by Richmond’s LGBTQ community, which took this opportunity during Pride Month to march in support of Black lives.

On Saturday, June 27, Richmond’s LGBTQ community commemorated the last weekend of Pride Month with a march demonstrating solidarity with the Black community of Richmond and beyond. Stonewall Rising: LGBTQ March For Black Lives was organized by a variety of Richmond LGBTQ advocacy and support groups, including Diversity Richmond, the Richmond LGBTQ Chamber, Nationz Foundation, Black Pride RVA, VA Pride, Equality Virginia, Virginia Anti-Violence Project, Southerners On New Ground, Health Brigade, Minority Veterans of America, Richmond Triangle Players, Richmond Lesbian Feminists, and Stonewall Sports.

The march began with a gathering at Diversity Richmond on Sherwood Ave, where local LGBTQ activist Rebecca Keel rallied the crowd with a speech about how the LGBTQ rights movement began 51 years earlier — almost to the day — at Stonewall Inn with a riot against police oppression. After a few other speeches, the crowd formed up and began marching toward the Richmond Police Training Academy on Graham Rd, just over a mile away from Diversity Richmond.

Jennifer McClellan speaks at Richmond Police Training Academy.

The crowd, which numbered at least 1000 at the peak of the protest according to local LGBTQ activist Joseph Papa, carried signs featuring slogans like “Black Trans Lives Matter” and “Pride For Black Lives,” as well as posters depicting Breonna Taylor and Marcus-David Peters. The protest was greeted at the Police Training Academy by a line of police in riot gear, but things remained peaceful. Several leaders spoke to the assembled crowd, including Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jennifer McClellan. Alexsis Rodgers, who is currently running for mayor of Richmond, was also in attendance. The evening ended with a march back to Diversity Richmond.

Here are some photos of the evening’s events, captured by Richmond photographer David Kenedy.

Rebecca Keel.

The Truth About Abortion, and Why It Matters

|

Topics: , , , , , , , ,

Protecting reproductive rights requires accurate knowledge, and shows like Shrill help shed light on facts about abortion and contraception that are largely absent from political debates around the issue.

In the first episode of the Hulu comedy series Shrill, writer Annie Easton learns that the morning after contraceptive she took didn’t work, and now she has to decide whether to have an abortion. Ultimately she does, and is seen walking into the clinic freely, with her best friend and roommate by her side as her emotional support.

Shrill, which stars Saturday Night Live’s Aidy Bryant, has been applauded not only for its accurate depiction of abortion but for bringing to light little-known facts about contraceptives and the abortion procedure itself. As it seems like every morning these days starts with news about more restrictive laws being placed on the bodies of women, these little beacons of light in media are like a warm blanket in the cold.

However, with so much inaccurate information about abortion spread around our society, I was curious about how accurate Shrill’s depiction of abortion access really was. Who better to call than the experts themselves?

“I think in the media … we are getting to a place where more shows are wanting to destigmatize abortion and lift it up as it is, which is a normal procedure. One in four women within their lifetimes will have [this procedure],” said Michelle Woods, Communications Director for NARAL Virginia. “We hope that people in the media will portray it as a normal healthcare procedure, that it’s a necessity, and how common it is… I think it’s a slow process in terms of lifting up something we don’t talk about, but it’s a conversation that we need to have.”

The biggest battle that those fighting in the healthcare arena are going to face is at its core the simplest — not just for abortion to be legal, but for it to be seen as a normal, routine procedure. However, if abortion and other forms of contraception are to be seen as normal in our society, we’re going to need to have a more accurate understanding of how they actually work.

Photo by Allyson Riggs/Hulu

An alarming moment in that first episode of Shrill is when Annie’s pharmacist points out to her that one of the reasons why the morning after pill did not work is because she exceeds the recommended weight limit for the medication. Apparently this limitation is very real, despite the fact that it is not taught in sexual education courses. Who knew.

“In Annie’s case, despite her readily accessible access to emergency contraception — in this case the brand Plan B — it was ineffective due to a lack of critically necessary medical information,” said Galina Varchena, Policy and Communications Director of NARAL Virginia. “[It was] not presented to her. Annie purchases emergency contraception multiple times, and at no point does the pharmacist mention that emergency contraception is only effective for women of a certain weight, under 175 pounds. Plan B and its generic counterparts are the most readily available form of emergency contraception in the country, but they are also the least effective for women with a high body mass index.”

Varchena notes that there should be an increased responsibility amongst pharmacists and drug companies to clearly explain the product’s effectiveness for different users. At this time, there are effective contraceptives available for women with high BMI; however, they are only available with a prescription.

“A common one is called Ella,” said Woods. “It works up to five days after unprotected sex. It works for women with high BMIs, so women who would not necessarily be protected in that event, but it requires a prescription. At Planned Parenthood, if you get a prescription you can go back at any point in the next calendar year and get it from Planned Parenthood, but you cannot get it over the counter at a pharmacy.”

Media absolutely affects the way we not only view the world but how we interpret and think about laws in our area and across the country. Portrayals through film and television create conversations and in some cases offer the only education many people have about certain issues. Conservative media certainly understands this, and has often pushed anti-abortion talking points regardless of whether or not the information presented is entirely accurate.

“Media coverage helps how people think about certain issues so if media coverage is inaccurate you’re going to have a medically inaccurate understanding of an abortion procedure,” said Katie Buie of NARAL Virginia. “I think we’re seeing that far and wide — people covering and speaking about realities of abortion, and spreading misinformation. It’s definitely an intentional campaign to mislead people on abortion, and I think that’s where we see representation of abortion in less than accurate ways [having] a negative effect on policy.”

In 2019, a variety of legislation was proposed with the intent of heavily restricting abortion rights, and some of it passed, including several “heartbeat” bills, which prohibit abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected — generally about six weeks after conception.

“I think the louder we are as a movement, and the louder we are speaking out while amplifying the voices of education and doctors to break ground on culture changing projects the better off we are,” said Buie. “We all need to do a much better job in expressing how severely detrimental these bills are, especially the six-week bans in different states. We need to make sure we are listing off the realities of how these bills are harming women.”

Sen. Jennifer McClellan (Photo via jennifermcclellan.com)

In 2019, Virginia voted a record number of women into the General Assembly, and this is already having positive results for abortion rights in the Commonwealth. Bills currently working their way through the state legislature are intended to roll back a variety of restrictions on abortion in Virginia.

“These laws have been about shaming women, stigmatizing abortion, shutting off access, discouraging doctors from providing this care. And we say, we’ve had enough, the voters in Virginia have had enough, and now we’re going to act on it,” NARAL Virginia Executive Director Tarina Keene said at a press conference last week. For Keene, the current moment offers Virginia a chance to become a “safe haven” for women in surrounding states who face more restrictive laws around abortion.

Reacting to the fact that in March, the US Supreme Court will hear its first major abortion case since President Donald Trump appointed two conservative justices to the court, Sen. Jennifer McClellan said, “If ever there is a time to protect a woman’s bodily autonomy, that time is now.” McClellan is the sponsor of the state Senate bill that would roll back several of Virginia’s restrictions on abortion, including a 24-hour waiting period and an ultrasound requirement.

Earlier this month, Virginia also became the 38th state to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, which puts that amendment over the number of individual states that need to ratify it for it to become part of the Constitution. Since there was a deadline placed on its ratification originally, one that has long passed, the fight to add the ERA to the Constitution will continue. Still, it’s an important step, for Virginia and the United States as a whole.

Meanwhile, coincidentally enough, the second season of Shrill was released Friday, January 24 on Hulu. It’s a reminder that we must continue to tell our stories, because despite positive progress, the battle for women’s rights is far from over.

Top Image via Broadway Video/Hulu

Virginia LGBTQ Advocates Hoping For Big Gains in General Assembly This Year

|

Topics: , , , , , , , , , ,

For the first time in over a generation, Democrats control both houses of the General Assembly, and advocates are working to ensure that this has positive results for Virginia’s LGBTQ community.

It hasn’t been all that many years since the dawn of a new General Assembly session meant just as many proposed bills designed to diminish LGBTQ rights and further discrimination against us as bills designed to improve the lives of LGBTQ Virginians. That’s changed in recent years, notably with the ending of Bob Marshall’s term in the House Of Delegates, but continued Republican control of both houses of the General Assembly meant that the many pro-LGBTQ bills that were proposed never made it out of committee.

This week, everything changes. The Democrats are in control not only of the Governor’s Office but both houses of the General Assembly. This is the first time that’s been true since 1993, before many of our readers were born, and it has the potential to make a lot of improvements in the civil rights and legal status of LGBTQ Virginians.

State Senator Jennifer McClellan agrees, and called the Democratic electoral victory a “huge deal” in a recent conversation with Virginia Mercury. McClellan has sponsored SB 66, which would amend the Virginia Fair Housing Deal make it illegal for landlords to refuse to rent to someone on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“I think that is an area where we would have been able to make some progress had it not been for Republicans in the House who wouldn’t even hear legislation,” McClellan told Virginia Mercury.

Indeed, many of these measures passed in the state Senate in previous sessions, even when it was under Republican control. However, Republican leadership in the House Of Delegates often refused to even hear discussion of pro-LGBTQ bills, either in committees or full sessions of the House. Now, with Democrats in the driver’s seat, LGBTQ advocates see hope on the horizon.

James Parrish. Photo courtesy Equality Virginia.

“There is an opportunity to pass legislation that supports Virginia’s LGBTQ community more broadly than just nondiscrimination protection,” James Parrish told the Virginia Mercury. Parrish, until recently the executive director of Equality Virginia, stepped down on January 1 in order to lead the Virginia Values Coalition, a newly formed pro-LGBTQ advocacy organization bringing together groups like Virginia’s ACLU, Human Rights Campaign, and the National Center for Transgender Equality under a single banner.

Indeed, many issues are on the table for this upcoming session. Currently, only employees for the government and state contractors are protected from firing based on sexual orientation or gender identity — and those employees are only protected in a temporary fashion. One of Ralph Northam’s first acts as governor was to sign an executive order replicating one previously signed by Terry McAuliffe during his gubernatorial administration, protecting LGBTQ state employees from firing. However, if a less LGBTQ-friendly governor were elected in 2021 and decided not to sign a similar executive order, that protection would disappear.

The new Democratic leadership of the General Assembly are certainly in a position to create a more permanent law protecting public employees against discrimination; indeed, SB 159, introduced by Senator Jennifer Boysko, does exactly that. But advocates see an opportunity to protect more than public employees; Parrish told the Virginia Mercury that advocates are hoping for the passage of a bill that protects all LGBTQ employees, public and private. “We anticipate getting a lot of corporate support for it,” Parrish told the Mercury.

SB 23, introduced by Senator Adam Ebbin, would enact exactly this sort of employment protection. Ebbin, one of five LGBTQ members of the General Assembly, says that a positive change like this has been a long time coming.

“It’s a big deal to know that you can’t just be swept aside as a second-class citizen,” he told the Virginia Mercury. “And it’ll matter. There’s a lot of people older than me who thought this kind of environment would never come.”

Senator Adam Ebbin. Photo By EbbinForVirginia, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia

Another big push from advocates is to ban conversion therapy in Virginia. While the Virginia Board of Psychology and multiple other state agencies within the Department of Health Professions have released guidance stating that conversion therapy is considered a violation of standard practice, it is still technically legal within the state. Both Richmond and Virginia Beach’s City Councils have passed resolutions asking the General Assembly to ban the practice, and Senator Scott Surovell, who has been attempting to pass a ban for multiple previous sessions, has introduced SB 245 in hopes of doing exactly that. A similar bill in the House Of Delegates, HB 386, has been proposed by Delegate Patrick Hope.

There are other issues on the table as well; bills in both the House and Senate would require the Department of Education to create a statewide policy determining how Virginia’s schools would interact with transgender students. Both bills mandate “a safe and supportive learning environment free from discrimination and harassment for all students.” Bills introduced in the House and Senate also add sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as disability, to the list of classes protected by hate crime legislation.

Multiple bills and resolutions in the Senate attempt to remove the Marshall-Newman Amendment, the 2006 amendment to Virginia’s Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman, from the constitution. While this may seem strictly symbolic now, the Supreme Court’s more conservative shift in recent years, with the addition of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, leave some concerned that federal protections for marriage equality, currently protected only by Supreme Court precedent, may be challenged in the near future.

If the Supreme Court overruled its previous decision in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges case, Virginia’s Constitution might once again become the top legal authority on marriage within the Commonwealth. If the Marshall-Newman Amendment remained on the books in such an event, all same-sex marriages within Virginia would immediately lose government recognition. This isn’t an outcome anyone wants, and therefore the passage of bills like Senator John Edwards’ SB 39, which repeals the Marshall-Newman Amendment, are more important than some might think at first.

While not all of the pro-LGBTQ bills currently facing the General Assembly will necessarily pass, it seems likely that the overall legal picture for LGBTQ Virginians will be considerably brighter by the end of the 2020 General Assembly session. And that’s a wonderful thing.

“We’ve come forward. We’re not going back,” Ebbin told the Virginia Mercury. “And I think there’s momentum to bring us to where we should and need to be.”

Top Photo By Varmin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia

100 Years After Women Earned the Right to Vote, Will VA Legislators Pass Equal Rights Amendment?

|

Topics: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

With a new Democratic majority in the General Assembly, Virginia could become the 38th state to ratify the ERA. Generation Z, people of color, and the LGBTQ community are leading a new generation in the decades-long fight to add the amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

University of Virginia student Emilia Couture had no idea what the Equal Rights Amendment was before her sister told her about the amendment a few years back.

Now as the outreach director of Generation Ratify, a youth-led movement created to ratify the ERA, Couture and many others are leading a new generation in the decades-long fight to add the amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“It’s time to change the face of the movement by including the next generation — the youth,” Generation Ratify said on its website. 

The ERA seeks to guarantee equal rights in the U.S. Constitution regardless of sex. The amendment was introduced in Congress in 1923, roughly three years after the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. It took Congress nearly five decades to pass the amendment, which still needed to be approved by 38 states. Two deadlines passed without the required approval. By the 1980s, 35 states had ratified the amendment, but it wasn’t until recent years that the movement gained more momentum. Nevada and Illinois ratified the ERA in 2017 and 2018, respectively. With a new Democratic majority in the General Assembly, Virginia could become the 38th state to ratify the ERA. 

Despite being born nearly two decades after the ERA’s last ratification deadline in 1982, Couture believes young people are aware of intersectionality, and want to implement inclusivity in the ERA.

Members of Generation Ratify at a VA Ratify ERA rally (via Generation Ratify/Instagram)

According to Generation Ratify, gender equality is an intersectionality issue, which means that when social categorizations like race and gender combine, members of more than one minority group experience other disadvantages than just gender inequality. 

“I think for a long time, the ERA movement has largely been a white women’s movement, and it’s really problematic that it has been,” Couture said. 

The amendment has diverse support in the state legislature, including men. According to a 2016 poll conducted by the ERA Coalition, the ERA is supported by a majority of men and women. Sen. Glen Sturtevant, R-Richmond, sponsored ERA legislation in 2019, and Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, introduced bills in the past two years to ratify the amendment.

 Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, said African American women and women of color were overlooked in the building of the ERA and women’s rights, but now these women are leading the push for the ERA. 

Sen. Pat Spearman, D-North Las Vegas, an openly lesbian, African American woman, led the fight in Nevada to ratify the ERA. Spearman served as the chief sponsor of the 2017 resolution to ratify the ERA in the Nevada Legislature, approved that year.

“It is a symbol of the fact that we are becoming a more perfected union and we understand that equality matters,” Spearman said.

Long-time ERA advocates and new advocates for the amendment join together to discuss the history of the fight for equality. (Photo by Christopher Brown)

Virginia legislators have made multiple attempts to ratify the ERA. This year, Senate Joint Resolution 284 to ratify the ERA passed the Senate, but never made it out of a House subcommittee. Four Republicans voted against the resolution in a subcommittee, while two Democrats voted for it. During the vote, Del. Margaret Ransone, R-Westmoreland, said she voted against the resolution because she doesn’t need words on a piece of paper representing women’s equality because “God made us all equal.”

Del. Hala Ayala, D-Prince William, one of two Latinas elected to the General Assembly in 2017, said in a recent interview with Capital News Service that she doesn’t understand why some members of the Republican party would “argue the moral obligation that we have to not only look towards our constituents, who overwhelmingly supported this, but also women, who wanted their voices to be heard.”

Democrats then filed motions for rule changes that would have the amendment heard on the House floor and give delegates a chance to vote on it, but the motions failed.

Several members of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus are leading the push to ratify the ERA in the upcoming General Assembly session. Ayala is chief co-patron on House Joint Resolution 1, sponsored by Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D- Prince William. McClellan and Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, are chief patrons of Senate Joint Resolution 1, which seeks to ratify the amendment in the Senate.

Carroll Foy said that she believes that the ERA has a far-reaching impact on women of color than other marginalized groups due to inequality in pay.

“As an African American woman, I am paid approximately 60 cents to a man’s dollar,” Carroll Foy said. 

While the ERA does not explicitly talk about equal pay for women, Carroll Foy said she believes that adding the amendment to the Constitution would be the anchor when it comes to passing equal pay legislation. 

R to L: Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, former Illinois Republican House Rep. Steven Andersson and Nevada Democratic Sen. Pat Spearman. (Photo by Christopher Brown)

However, not all women advocate for the amendment’s passage. Anne Schlafly Cori, chairman of the Eagle Forum, an advocacy organization for conservative values, said the ERA would harm women.

“ERA does not put women in the Constitution, ERA puts sex in the Constitution,” Schlafly Cori said. “Sex has a lot of other meanings besides men and women.”

Schlafly Cori’s mother, Phyllis Schlafly, founded the Eagle Forum. During the 1970s, Schlafly was a strong opponent of the ERA. For the new generation, Schlafly Cori said she believes that the ERA, if ratified, would give constitutional rights to what she called “a group of people who didn’t exist in the 1970s,” transgender people. 

The amendment bans sex-based discrimination; however, it does not specify what sex is. According to the National Institutes of Health, sex refers to the biological differences between females and males, while gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of gender. Del. Danica Roem, D-Prince William, a co-patron of HJ1, said people think LGBTQ people are “subverting social norms” when it comes to gender and sex. 

“Discrimination in regards to sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression are all inherently discrimination on accounts of sex,” said Roem.

Roem said that discrimination against LGBTQ people justifies ratifying the ERA.

Del. Mark Cole, R-Fredericksburg, believes the ERA will be ratified in 2020. However, Cole said that ratifying the amendment will lead to a series of “costly and divisive lawsuits.” Since the ERA’s last ratification deadline passed in 1982, the amendment is considered expired, according to Cole. He also notes that five states rescinded their ratifications. 

“Regardless of who wins these lawsuits, a large portion of the country will consider the Constitution to be tainted,” Cole said in a statement on his website posted in January. “Either with an amendment that is not valid or because an amendment that should be included was not.”

During the 2019 General Assembly session, Cole  proposed HJ 692, which would have Congress  re-submit the amendment with “language that addresses the concerns that caused the old ERA to fail,” but it died in committee. ERA Advocates, however, said they believe that the original amendment can still be ratified. Supporters have cited U.S. Supreme Court cases like Coleman v. Miller, where the Supreme Court decided that it’s up to Congress to decide an amendment’s ratification period.

Photo via VA Ratify ERA/Facebook

Generation Ratify wants to remove the ERA’s ratification deadline. In November, the organization wrote to members of Congress to support resolutions which would remove the amendment’s deadline from the ratification process. 

“People of all genders deserve constitutional equality,” said Rosie Couture, Generation Ratify’s executive director. “It is that simple. Period.”

It’s unclear what Congress will do if the ERA is ratified by 38 states or what impact the amendment will have if it makes it into the Constitution, but many state Democrats are determined to approve the amendment. McClellan and other Virginia Democrats said they feel confident that the ERA will pass in the upcoming General Assembly session.

“To do it in the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, I think it is very appropriate,” McClellan said. “While it’s long overdue, I think getting it done in 2020 is a little bit of poetic justice.”

Written by Christopher Brown, Capital News Service.

New Coalition Calls on Lawmakers to Support LGBTQ Equal Rights

|

Topics: , , , , ,

With the new Virginia Values Coalition, Equality Virginia has created a statewide advocacy group to demand laws protecting LGBTQ rights in Virginia.

Bianca Rey, chair of Capital Trans Pride, understands firsthand the struggle to live with equal protections. The constant worries of being fired from a job or treated differently are thoughts individuals in the LGBTQ community deal with on a regular basis, Rey said. “Is today going to be the day where somebody is going to approach me and tell me, you can’t come to this coffee shop anymore and buy coffee, because you’re trans, or gay, or you’re bi?” 

Rey, a Virginia resident, said she feels fortunate to live near the D.C metro area, where resources are easily accessible for the LGBTQ community. Still, Virginia is one of 30 states in the country without specific laws to protect LGBTQ residents. 

“We’re professionals, we’re teachers, we’re veterans, we work in healthcare, we’re physicians,” Rey said. But, she said, the LGBTQ community worries about access in a way the straight community doesn’t.

“I think, as a state, our top priority is to legalize a policy where LGBTQ Virginians are free to work and not be discriminated for being who they are,” she said.

That is why advocacy group Equality Virginia recently formed the Virginia Values Coalition, which is calling on state lawmakers to establish legal protections for the LGBTQ community from employment and housing to public spaces like stores or restaurants. 

“We hope to arrive at the General Assembly with thousands of people behind us,” said James Parrish, executive director of Equality Virginia. 

Last February, the group pushed for several bills to end discrimination in work and housing that did not make it past Republican-led House sub-committees:

  • Senate Bill 998 and House Bill 2067: Both aimed to prohibit employers from discriminating based on sexual orientation or gender identity. SB 998 passed the Senate but not the House. HB 2067 died in committee.
  • SB 1109 and HB 2677 both aimed to make discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity an unlawful discriminatory housing practice. SB 1109 passed the Senate but not the House. HB 2677 died in committee. 

Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, supported legislation to protect Virginia’s LGBTQ community. McClellan said she plans to reintroduce the housing bill in the upcoming General Assembly session.

“I plan to reintroduce my housing discrimination bill in 2020 and if Sen. [Adam] Ebbin reintroduces his, I will once again be a co-patron,” she said. “Virginia’s LGBTQ citizens have the right to fair housing and fair employment, and if Democrats have the majority, we will finally be able to push the needle forward on many of these protections.”

Over 20 other bills supported by Equality Virginia failed to advance in the 2019 General Assembly session.

Parrish said last year was his 10th session lobbying for a housing bill and the first time the General Assembly had not allowed the coalition’s priority bills to be voted on before the House.

“We had the votes necessary both in the committee and on the floor for the housing bill, and they would not let it come up for votes,” he said.

Republicans hold a slim majority in the state legislature — 51-49 in the House and 21-19 in the Senate. Advocates for a number of causes believe that flipping control of the General Assembly could impact the policies and legislation being passed.

Equality Virginia Executive Director James Parrish. Photo by Michael Key, via VCU CNS

Right now, the Virginia Values Coalition field team is signing up people who support LGBTQ non-discrimination protections. Later in the year, it will host events highlighting individuals and organizations who join the coalition.

The coalition also will host panels across the state to educate people on the challenges transgender people face and how Virginians can support the community. 

Equality Virginia also has two programs to get business owners and elected officials to demonstrate their support for LGBTQ nondiscrimination legislation: 

  • Equality Means Business, which allows any small business owner to pledge online that their establishment does not discriminate against employees, customers and clients based on sexual orientation or gender identity. 
  • Local Leaders for Fairness, which enables elected officials to state their support of the General Assembly passing nondiscrimination protections for the LGBTQ community related to employment, housing and public spaces. 

Currently, 24 districts and 46 elected Virginia officials have signed the online statement.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on three employment discrimination cases. Arguments in the cases asked if Title VII protections extend to gay, lesbian and transgender employees. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans discrimination on the “basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.”

The case could be significant because fewer than half of the nation’s 50 states have laws in place that prohibit discrimination based on gender and sexual identities, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Written by Aliviah Jones, Capital News Service. Top Photo via VCU CNS

Legislators Continue to Address High Eviction Rates in Virginia

|

Topics: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

One in ten Richmonders who rent faced eviction notices in 2016. We all know this is a problem, and Virginia’s legislators are searching for ways to fix it.

Scholars, lawyers and lawmakers are still grappling with high eviction rates in Virginia and how to enact solutions. A panel Thursday at Virginia Commonwealth University addressed the Eviction Lab at Princeton University’s findings that five cities in Virginia ranked in the top 10 for national eviction rates, including Richmond, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk and Chesapeake.

The local eviction rates ranged from 11.4 percent in Richmond to 7.9 percent in Chesapeake. The rate represents the number of evictions per 100 rental homes in an area. 

About 150 people attended the event, which included three panelists: Six Points Innovation Center director Jackie Washington, Virginia Poverty Law Center attorney Phil Storey, and Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond.  

From left: Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, Jackie Washington, Phil Storey, and moderator Megan Pauly at “Eviction Beyond the Numbers: Community Impacts and Policy Landscape of Housing Instability” (Photo by VCU CNS)

McClellan highlighted seven bills that passed the recent General Assembly session and were signed into law. The legislation included bills that made written leases required, reduced the number of eviction cases a landlord could file, created the opportunity for tenants to submit unpaid rent and fees prior to eviction, and allowed tenants to recover their possessions.

“This is not really a partisan issue,” McClellan said. “Where there is disagreement, it’s really sort of the landlords versus tenants, and I don’t mean to say that all landlords are bad or all landlords are predatory.” Of the seven housing laws signed by the governor last session, four were introduced by Democrats and three by Republicans.

McClellan also said in a phone interview after the event that more bills to address eviction, including a bill to address the habitability of a rental property, are in the drafting and planning stages now.   

Though legislators passed a flurry of bills last session to reform landlord and tenant laws, Storey said “way too many people are on the knife’s edge because of the way the system is designed.”

Much of the discussion at the panel held at VCU’s W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts centered around how tenants fall behind on rent payments.  

“Two-thirds of the people who call our hotline are behind on rent, with the average caller being around two and a half months back,” Storey said. 

Storey also said that on average their clients are paying 58 percent of their monthly gross income to rent, with some paying as much as 70 percent.

Panelists also discussed the link between discriminatory housing policies and the eviction rate today, which according to the RVA Eviction Lab increases as the share of the African American population in a neighborhood increases. Washington highlighted historic redlining in Richmond’s Jackson Ward neighborhood, where banks would avoid making real estate investments based on neighborhood demographics, as “an intentionally racist housing policy.”

“If we don’t connect the dots from historic housing policy, then we just might miss it,” Washington said. “But those who experience it will never miss it. Folks of color will always know that it’s racist.”

Storey agreed, saying that “things that seem sort of natural and immutable are often not, and are based in some pretty ugly root causes.”  

Dr. Benjamin Teresa, co-director of the RVA Eviction Lab, introduced the panel “Eviction Beyond the Numbers: Community Impacts and Policy Landscape of Housing Instability” (Photo by VCU CNS)

The panel was sponsored by VCU’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, VCU University College, and Virginia’s home for Public Media. The panelists were introduced by Benjamin Teresa and Kathryn Howell, co-directors of the RVA Eviction Lab at VCU, which opened this year and provides eviction data and research.  

“One of the goals of the lab is to do research that is relevant to Richmond and other cities in Virginia, as well as outside of the state,” Teresa said.

The panel was connected to this year’s VCU Common Book, a program that selects a new book each year for incoming freshmen. The initiative is intended to foster awareness and engagement around important issues.

Incoming freshmen received a copy of Evicted, a book by Matthew Desmond, the founder of the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. Freshman-level courses incorporate the book into coursework and discussion. Desmond is scheduled to visit VCU on Oct. 16.

Candidates from many Virginia House and Senate districts will have a chance to weigh in on evictions at a forum on Oct. 10. Candidates from 11 House districts and from six Senate districts have been invited to participate, though the list of confirmed attendees has not been released yet.

The event will be moderated by VPM and held at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Written by Jason Boleman, Capital News Service. Top Photo: Attendees marked where they live on eviction maps of Richmond neighborhoods in the lobby of the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts. Photo via VCU CNS