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Legislators Continue to Address High Eviction Rates in Virginia

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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

Westboro Baptist Church Hurls Slurs Ahead of Richmond Visit

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Westboro Baptist Church is planning to visit Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia State Capitol on March 11, though it’s unclear how much access the group will have to university grounds.

The Westboro Baptist Church is infamous for its posters that feature slurs against the LGBTQ community and its practice of picketing soldiers’ funerals. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the church “arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America.”

According to the VCU policies and events website, members of the public may use university property “only by invitation” from a university employee or student.

However, the public may reserve the Park Plaza amphitheater without an invitation “no more than five days in advance of the desired date of use.”

VCU prohibits expression that is not protected by law, such as obscenity and fighting words.

VCU officials tweeted that they are aware of the WBC’s plans to demonstrate “on City of Richmond public property, near campus.”

“While their views are antithetical to VCU’s core values of diversity and inclusion, their free speech — and ours — is a guaranteed constitutional right,” the tweet said.

A press release from Westboro Baptist Church for the State Capitol event includes hateful language toward Del. Danica Roem, D-Prince William, Virginia’s first transgender woman elected to the General Assembly.

Roem, who has inspired the LGBTQ community, said in a 2017 MSNBC interview: “You can champion inclusion, you can champion equality and equity and you can win.” She has also said that she wants the press to focus on her policies, not her gender.

She defeated 13-term incumbent Robert G. Marshall, who unsuccessfully sponsored legislation known widely as the “bathroom bill,” which would have required people to use the restroom that corresponded with the gender on their birth certificate.

When members of the Westboro Baptist Church visited Richmond in 2010, they encountered hundreds of counterprotesters. They visited the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Shockoe Bottom along with other Jewish cultural centers.

The group’s final stop during the 2010 visit was Hermitage High School on Hungary Spring Road in Henrico County, where church members faced hundreds of young counterdemonstrators. Westboro Baptist Church did not visit VCU that year, but students staged a silent anti-hate rally anyway.

By Rosemarie O’Connor, Capital News Service. Photos via Westboro Baptist Church’s website (unlinked on purpose, google it)

What Happens When A VCU Employee Calls Security On A Black Professor

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There’s been a recent, yet not new, trend in people calling the police on black. Whether it be for falling asleep in their own dorm, brushing their backpack up against a white woman in a store accidentally, waiting for a business meeting in Starbucks, or having a barbeque at the lake — black Americans have had the police called on them for many reasons.

The latest example: last week at Virginia Commonwealth University, an associate professor in the School of the Arts called campus security on artist and visiting professor Caitlin Cherry. 

Cherry was invited to teach a graduate critical theory seminar course and conduct graduate studio visits for painting and printmaking grad students during the fall semester. She commutes from New York to Richmond every two weeks to teach at VCU. Last week, she was beginning her day by sending out emails, sitting in the adjunct lounge of the Fine Arts Building. The room is code-access only, for faculty, administration, and graduate students.

As Cherry was working, an older, non-black gentleman entered the lounge. 

“I say hello and he sort of comes in, doesn’t do anything, doesn’t verbally acknowledge me and walks back out of the room,” Cherry said. 

Minutes later, campus security arrived to ask Cherry to show her VCU identification card. After providing it, Cherry began to absorb what had happened.

“I left the classroom to walk around, and I saw the same gentleman in a classroom. I realized he was a fellow painting and printmaking professor,” Cherry said. “I didn’t know his name, so I looked at him to make sure I could say who it was. I was going to send an email to the chair of my department and tell him what happened.”

Cherry sent an email to Painting and Printmaking Chair Noah Simblist, who apologized for the incident and said they would look into the matter.

After giving security the name of the man she thought made the call, Simblist confirmed it was associate professor Javier Tapia. The reason why Tapia, a Peruvian-born Associate Professor in VCU’s Painting & Printmaking Department, called campus security is still unknown at this point. Tapia did not respond to RVA Magazine’s requests for comment.

“If I didn’t have my ID on me at the time, it would have been possible that I would have been removed from my own classroom — or removed from the building until somebody identified me,” Cherry said.

“It’s a greater issue of what Javier Tapia had to have thought… To think that not only did I not belong in this locked classroom — but that I wasn’t even given the privilege of looking like a graduate student, or any student in the building. I think he was shocked to find out that I was a visiting professor.”

While Tapia is of Peruvian heritage, there is still a bigger racial issue of non-black people calling law enforcement on black people that must be dealt with. When George Zimmerman killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, many people tried to write off his act as racially motivated because Zimmerman is Hispanic. However, acts of oppression and anti-blackness can be perpetrated by anyone.

After posting about the incident on her Facebook, the response from students, other faculty and friends was swift. Many have e-mailed VCU Equity and Access about the occurrence, demanding that action be taken.

PHOTO: Caitlin Cherry, Facebook

“Later that morning, I started my studio visits and felt like I had to suck up a little bit to continue doing my grad student visits,” Cherry said. “Probably the saddest thing is that I had to walk past the man who called security to go to the bathroom, so there was a moment where I had to use the restroom, and I tried to hold it in so that I could avoid him.”

Cherry is taking this experience as an opportunity to not only foster a dialogue about racial tensions in the School of the Arts, but also put measures in place so that this doesn’t happen to any other professor or student. In a political climate hostile to many minority communities, this is an opportunity for a bigger conversation to take place about the power that other people feel over marginalized groups.

Entitlement over spaces and who can be in them is an issue that America needs to address: because it’s not new, and it’s getting black people killed. While it’s a more extreme version of these situations, the shooting of a black man, Botham Jean, in his own apartment in Dallas, Texas is a perfect example of power and entitlement. If someone can have such a strong sense of ownership that they can claim someone else’s home as their own, then kill them, where are black people safe?

“I think that’s why the response is so strong — not because of what could have happened,” Cherry said, “but the fact that there is anxiety around people in positions of power feeling possessive of spaces that they feel are theirs.”

An email was sent out internally by VCUArts Dean Shawn Brixey informing VCUarts students and staff about the situation at hand. It read:

“In light of a recent event involving individuals in one of our departments, which was reported to the School of the Arts administration on Thursday, October 25, we have asked VCU Equity and Access Services to conduct an inquiry into the matter.”

Cherry is making her formal complaint this week with VCU Administration, and says that both the Chair of Painting and Printmaking and the VCUArts Dean have been supportive.

Top image by Jeff Auth at English Wikipedia, CC by 3.0/via Wikimedia

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect new information regarding the race of the VCU professor in question. 

VCU Arts Adjuncts Rally For Fair Pay Outside Cabell Library

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In a demonstration of communal solidarity, nearly 80 members of the VCU School of the Arts (VCUarts) community gathered in front of VCU’s Cabell Library Friday morning in support of fair pay for adjunct professors.

The ‘Adjunct Fair Pay Rally’ was organized after over 1,400 people signed a petition in support of the cause, demanding that adjuncts be paid at least $2,000 per credit hour, or over double what they are paid now.

Adjunct speaks at Fair Pay Rally

“There are some adjuncts right now who are one emergency away from being homeless,” said Heide Trepanier, 48, former art adjunct in the Department of Paint and Printmaking.

The majority of rally attendees were students. According to Trepanier and a recording of a meeting with VCUarts chair people, legal counsel advised that adjunct professors who canceled their Friday morning classes to be at the rally or brought their students to the rally should be fired.

“I think with student involvement, more people can know about it and the cause can spread throughout the university quicker than if it was just adjunct faculty talking about it,” Eric Eckhart said, a VCUarts freshman. “I feel like if adjuncts feel comfortable knowing they can survive in Richmond, then they are far more capable to teach the classes that they have been given to teach.”

Eric Eckhart, VCU freshman

As of now, adjunct professors at VCU earn less than half of the average rent cost in Richmond per month. Currently around 120 adjuncts in the School of Arts teach over 60 percent of all classes in what is ranked as the number one public arts school in the country, each earning between $750 and $900 per credit hour without benefits. Since the number of classes an adjunct may teach is capped at two or three per semester, their yearly wages are around $15,000, or just above the federal poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“You’ve got adjuncts who in order to survive are working at two and three different colleges,” Trepanier said. “They’re worn out, they’re tired, they’re broke, and you want to give your students the best education possible, but you can’t necessarily do that if you don’t have the resources to get the materials that you need, or the time to research to give a quality lecture to your students.”

A group of VCUarts adjuncts formed the organization, “VCUarts Adjuncts Organizing for Fair Pay” and sent letters with their demands to VCU President Michael Rao’s office, as well as to VCUarts Dean Shawn Brixey.

“Adjunct faculty currently account for the majority of instructors in the VCUarts departments, yet are still paid significantly lower than other top-rated public universities in Virginia,” the letter to Rao stated. “The University is sending a clear message to us, and the public about the value of its educators by underpaying adjuncts despite consistently increasing tuition.”

In response, Rao cited shortfalls in the budget as to why the minimum salary for adjuncts would be raised only to $1,000 per credit hour. According to Trepanier, Brixey stated in a meeting with adjuncts that to raise wages, student tuition must to rise. In a separate meeting between VCUarts legal counsel and chairpeople, it was suggested adjunct wage raises would have to come out of full-time faculty’s research budget.

“There are departments who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment they don’t use,” Trepanier said. “If they just had some oversight and they just lowered the amount of administration, VCU could pay a decent wage to their faculty.”

The imbalance between adjunct and full-time faculty affects multiple schools within VCU, including the Robertson School of Media and Culture, who recently found issue with their faculty ratio after undergoing the re-accreditation process.

University accreditation is the official process by which universities and colleges are recognized as being qualified to grant degrees. Robertson school recently took part in the voluntary process to become re-accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC).

ACEJMC has nine accrediting standards, only two of which Robertson school did not fulfill at the time of the site visit, in which professional representatives from ACEJMC visited Robertson school to conduct an examination after Robertson’s detailed, 300-page self-evaluation. The school has several months to correct any issues before accreditation is granted or denied, one of which is having over 50 percent of all classes at Robertson taught by adjunct professors.

“There are limited resources for higher education,” said Hong Chen, professor, and Robertson School director. “Then the university probably does not have enough funding for full-time faculty professors. After the site visit, the university immediately worked together to provide new faculty positions for us.”

According to Chen, Rao created room in VCU’s budget to provide extra full-time positions in Robertson after a private meeting with representatives from ACEJMC. Tim Bajkiewicz, professor and Robertson School associate director, also noted that historically, ensuring funds for a large number of full-time faculty is a struggle for all universities.

VCUarts has a similar requirement within their accreditation process with the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), but is not scheduled to have another comprehensive review until 2025, according to the NASAD database.

“The artists that teach absolutely love teaching, but the arts don’t bring in any money,” Trepanier said. “Sometimes the only money [artists] are making per year is this adjunct money… So when they don’t pay their faculty a decent living wage, what they’re doing is starving them out of these positions.”

Trepanier also observed that unless VCU is able to increase adjunct pay and faculty ratio, VCUarts could lose their high ranking as U.S. News and World Report is likely to begin including adjunct pay rates into their ranking standards

“A good school can’t pay their teachers less than poverty wages and offer their students a good education,” Trepanier said.

VCU Back To School Fashions Fall 2017

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School is back in session, which means everyone is busting out there best gear for fall. We recently took a look at fashion trends from students over at the University of Richmond so we thought we’d see what the students at Virginia Commonwealth University were wearing and how they compare. Take a look below to see if you’re keeping up with the latest fashions. 

Name: Natasha Levandoski
Age: 21
Major: Graphic Design
School Year: Senior
Levandoski’s style: These are my favorite jeans and I had them forever I got them from the thrift store. That’s where I get everything…shoes …thrift store, pants… thrift store, and the shirt I got from the thrift store. The only thing I didn’t get from the thrift store is my glasses, I guess. I’m inspired by 90 and early 2000s, the 2000s are back and just like the hyper feminine over the top, not today it’s a lazy day, but usually that’s how I dress.
Her look: Her outfit screams 90’s with a touch of modernity

Name: Charisma Grooms
Age: 21
Major: Fashion Merchandising
School Year: Sophomore
Grooms on her style: I really love black so I just put on black, Nothing really inspires me, Its just whatever I feel like putting on I just take it out and put it on.
Her look: Her love for the color black is hard to miss, and her style definitely helps bring out her personality.

Name: Marco Lim
Age: 20
Major: Health Physical Education and Exercise Science (HSPES)
School Year: Junior
Lim on his style: Something that is weird, but comfortable. I like to use style as self-expression, if you are comfortable what I am wearing even if it is not normal, we can break down of visual judgement, maybe we can delve into deeper cool conversation, deeper than looks, deeper than the shallow visual appeal
His look: Lim’s flamboyant outfit shows he is free while drawing in attention just as he intended.

Name: Irena Schunn
Age: 20
Major: Journalism
School Year: Junior
Schunn on her style: I made this(her shirt) and I go thrifting a lot, whatever I see I take it
Her look: Thrifting seems to be in style and Irena gave it her own touch with her custom shirt.

Name: Mofi Jones
Age: 21
School Year: Senior
Major: Political Science
Jones on his style: Break the mold, wear stuff that is alternative, I try not to come to school in just t-shirt and jeans, I’m really into presenting myself well and sometime weird I don’t just like to throw on anything, I like to wear necklaces, bracelets I wear a variety of things.
His look: With the temperature cooling, Mofi decided to rock the plaid long sleeve and rolling the sleeves is stylish as it gets.

Name: Marcella Pham
Age: 21
School Year: Senior
Major: Fashion Merchandising
Pham on her style: This outfit I just rolled out of bed and put it on, Fashion ads and celebrities and my peers inspire me, I go through a lot of fashion magazines.
Her look: For a day of just rolling out of bed, she looks still manages to look stylish, as expected for a fashion merchandising major.

Name: Forest Givens
Year: Senior
Major: Creative Advertising
Givens on his style: I wear what I wear is to give a positive perception
His look: Solid colors highlights Forest’s confidence

VCU Faced Federal investigation over Title IX violations related to sexual assault and discrimination by faculty

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“When I met with the commonwealth’s attorney after filing the police report, she compared VCU’s response to the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky cover-up,” stated a VCU employee and ’08 alumna who asked to remain anonymous, in an email to an attorney advisor of the Office of Civil Rights(OCR). “That was difficult for me to hear, because I had believed — and want to believe — that VCU has a stronger ethical backbone than that.”

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