Richmond City Hall
by Jon Baliles
We can be thankful for a weather warm-up this week after last week’s bitter cold. Maybe it will help thaw the brain freeze at City Hall and enable them to fix the shelter situation before the next bitter cold arrives (hint, it’s coming back).
Last week, after Tyler Lane at CBS6 filed a cringeworthy report about the failure of the City to provide enough shelter and people being turned away, City Hall was opened at the last minute for the two days over the Christmas weekend for people to warm up. But then those in need were turned back out into the cold at 4 p.m. each day just as the temperature fell back into the teens.
The City did get two shelters open in Manchester with a capacity of about 100 beds in November (with about 450 needed total) through two non-profits. The excuses from the Administration for not opening the other shelters and expanding capacity were legion. The City is still quibbling with one non-profit over contract terms before they can get funding and open for the winter (they opened last week briefly with private funds to get through the cold spell).
So, observing the bewildering (and appalling) situation and the lack of providing shelter, knowing months ago that winter was coming (as it does every year), the following questions came to mind:
- Does the City have contracts in place with the two shelters that have already opened and are operating?
- Are those contracts available for review?
- Has the City provided partial/all of the funding to those shelters, with or without a contract?
- One non-profit opened with private funds for the cold spell; did the other shelters open with private or public funds?
- Can we see the amounts and dates of any disbursement checks made by the City to all shelters?
- *The Free-Press asks “why Fifth Street Baptist needed a special use permit [to open a shelter] or why that permit was more important than keeping people from freezing to death?” (A zoning amendment in 2020 allowed for such emergencies.)
- Is/was opening the Coliseum and using a part of it as a temporary homeless shelter an option? (The City took developers on a tour of it after Thanksgiving — the lights still work and no one looks cold in the picture).
- Does the Mayor have anything to say about this situation (directly, not through his press office)?
If I were an enterprising young reporter, I would ask those questions and more and see what kind of answers you get. But don’t hold your breath.
This column by former Richmond City Councilman Jon Baliles first appeared in RVA 5×5 and is republished with permission.
