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Richmond Wins Cities of Service National Competition to Revitalize Neighborhoods

City will receive $25,000 plus other assistance and support to help fight blight

Richmond, VA – Cities of Service today announced Richmond as a winner of its Cities of Service City Hall AmeriCorps VISTA Love Your Block competition. Love Your Block enables local governments to engage communities in neighborhood revitalization efforts benefiting low-income communities.

In Richmond, the city will provide mini-grants to collaborative community organizations and other groups to address blight associated with derelict houses and businesses, graffiti, illegal dumping and trash in the public right-of-way. The Love Your Block investments will be made where economically, racially and culturally disadvantaged residents are concentrated, as well as where there is a diminished voice in influencing policy and investment.

Removing blight from the city is a top priority for Mayor Levar Stoney, who understands the adverse impacts of blight on individuals, families and communities in areas of health, employment, economic development, education and housing. Richmond is committed to creating neighborhoods that are aesthetically attractive, and where residents feel healthy, safe and proud to live.

“Thanks to Cities of Service, AmeriCorps and the tremendous efforts of our Neighbor-to-Neighbor program and Human Services team, we’re able to do more to benefit our low-income communities,” said Mayor Levar Stoney. “This is how we build One Richmond; the Love Your Block program and further investment in Richmond will make a needed difference in people’s lives.”

Indeed, a recent study from the Urban Institute found the connection Love Your Block forges between city leaders and citizens at the neighborhood level can be an essential catalyst for collective action by neighborhood residents.

The other winning cities are Buffalo, New York, Gary, Indiana, Hamilton, Ohio, Hartford, Connecticut, Huntington, West Virginia, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Newark, New Jersey and South Bend, Indiana.

For more information about Richmond’s Neighbor-to-Neighbor program and application of the Love Your Block initiative, please contact Paul Manning at paul.manning@richmondgov.com or (804) 646-6528. For more information about Cities of Service and the Love Your Block program, please visit citiesofservice.org or contact Karen Dahl at karen@citiesofservice.org or (646) 324-8390.

17 comments

Robert J. Smith III 07/19/2018 at 7:06 AM

Good on us!

Will the funds go to the Redskins? We all know that the Redskins, or even their friends, the brewers from California, fight blight and pave roads once you insert money in them.

Sorry for the snark, but I have to…

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Katherine Jester 07/19/2018 at 10:20 AM

Not helping.

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Robert J. Smith III 07/19/2018 at 10:34 AM

no kidding.

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Robert J. Smith III 07/19/2018 at 10:39 AM

Nothing helps the misappropriation of funds here. Not even snark.

Grateful for the $25k, yes.

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Shannon Secrist Cummings 07/19/2018 at 12:24 PM

Who are the Brewers from California? You mean the breweries?

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Robert J. Smith III 07/19/2018 at 12:25 PM

Stone.

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Katherine Jester 07/19/2018 at 10:19 AM

$25k won’t go far but grants could go out for
alley rallies, nutrition and exercise programs, community gardens, rain barrels and mulch bins, trap neuter and release volunteers and the many others who are ALREADY quietly making CH, Union Hill, Fulton and Peter Paul a good place to live. Once in a while I even see a man cleaning my street with a Pick-Stick. He told me that once upon a time they had been gifted by a Community Association and he still uses his. So you never know- big trees from little acorns grow.

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Susan Morgan Hoth 07/19/2018 at 11:37 AM

Please be aware of how many current residents will become homeless over this.

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Shannon Secrist Cummings 07/19/2018 at 12:28 PM

We can’t clean up the streets, alleys, vacant lots, and vacant crumbling buildings without making people homeless? Is this money going to developers or to smaller projects for actual cleanup? I love my neighborhood, but I hate the garbage in the street. I blame the individuals who choose to throw their garbage anywhere, but I wonder if some well placed garbage cans and possibly cleaning up some areas would help. It’s easier to say “what’s one more piece of trash” if things already look run down.

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Katherine Jester 07/19/2018 at 1:56 PM

Huh..? How’s that?

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Katherine Jester 07/19/2018 at 11:27 PM

Susan Morgan Hoth it’s a $25,000 grant to the entire city. You can rest easy. No one is being made homeless.

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Bill Hartsock 07/19/2018 at 1:27 PM

That pick stick you saw was donated by John Murden, former guru of CHPN. I got one, too, and still pick up trash on my block. If each one of us took ownership of our environment, even just a few minutes a day, we would have an even better neighborhood than we already do. Reminder, now that summer is in full swing, we are each responsible for the sidewalks in front of our houses. That means pick up trash, get rid of weeds, clean up tree wells (dog poop, excluded).And dog walkers, please clean up after your pets.

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Liz 07/19/2018 at 4:16 PM

Susan Morgan Hoth, can you explain why you think this?

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Kay 07/19/2018 at 7:11 PM

Cleaning up the neighborhood starts at home. Have you taken a walk down Broad Street and looked at yard after yard where things are just a complete mess? Weeds, trash, overgrown gardens, nasty, dirty, sidewalks, peeling paint, rotten porches, etc. Broad Street is NOT an impoverished area but some of these houses just look disgusting. I swear the owners have no pride…and, that’s just the front. Walk the alleyways and they’ll make you sick…the trash, the weeds, the broken down fences, inoperable vehicles. The homeowners just don’t care.

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Bill Hartsock 07/19/2018 at 8:52 PM

Liz, Because she is probably on the wrong website. she got here by mistake. We care about our community, not some bizarre rant that makes no sense.

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Running Dog 07/20/2018 at 6:49 AM

A good start would be getting rid of the abandoned cars on the streets and yards. On my daily run, I pass by 9 vehicles that have been setting for a long time. Yes, cleaning up properties will help detur drug dealers in our community.

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wobobee 07/20/2018 at 11:12 AM

I have a feeling that Susan Morgan Hoth may be referring to Richmond’s long and not-long-past history of aggressively fixing “blight.” Slum clearance programs from the 1940s to the 1970s battled “blight” by razing thousands of homes. When we say “revitalization” and “blight” in these current endeavors, we are using the exact same words from that sad era. And people who were affected by those past programs remember those words well… Anyway, that’s my guess.

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