SHINE THE LIGHT CHAT
SMBW sat down with Sarah Hale Executive Director at Urban Hope to discuss the housing crisis and its roots in Richmond, Virginia.
Tell us about your role at Urban Hope. am the Executive Director and have been at Urban Hope for seven years.
How did you come to work in housing equity? Why are you passionate about it?
Before coming to Urban Hope, I had a residential design business, which eventually led to my interest in affordable housing. What liked best about being a designer was the ability to help make clients’ lives less stressful and more connected. The home can be a great tool to make one's life better, though the opposite is also true. As I became more aware of poverty in our city, I began to wonder how I could help. I knew that decorating wasn't the answer, but the idea that design can have a positive impact was the start. I thought a lot about kids and how if we can give them a better start, they stand a much better chance of flourishing in life, and that's when affordable housing and Urban Hope caught my attention.
At the most basic level, having a home that you can afford and you can keep leads to all kinds of goodness in a person's life, and education, employment and health are all directly connected to housing stability. For me, access to affordable housing is a matter of justice. As a person of faith, I'm called to do justice, love, kindness, and to walk humbly. All our brothers and sisters in Richmond should have options for a safe and stable place to live, and nobody, especially children, should feel unsafe where they sleep.
What is the mission of Urban Hope?
Urban Hope's mission is to make home a cornerstone of opportunity by keeping it affordable. We envision a thriving community where everyone can find a home.
Can you describe some of the specific programs and offerings of Urban Hope?
Our main offering is affordable rental housing, which for those at lower incomes is a critical piece of gaining stability. We also do financial health counseling and have gotten more involved in helping people find pathways to homeownership. Our robust financial health counseling is accessible through one-on-one sessions, as well as a cohort program, where a group of 8 to 12 people set financial and life goals together and help hold each other accountable. The Office of Community Wealth Building talks about the different moves a person can make, from unstable to stable or from stable to thriving. Urban Hope has become successful at the unstable to stable component, and now we're focusing more on the stable to thriving part.
One way we're doing that is through developing more pathways to homeownership. We have developed a lease-to-own program that we're very excited about, and hope that it will open up more of those opportunities. Something we’re particularly excited about is our Opportunity House program. A family recently approached Urban Hope, asking, "We want to help a black family gain homeownership; how can we help?" So, they gave us a forgivable loan and now we essentially have a house for free. A portion of the rent is dedicated to what is necessary to run the house, like maintenance, taxes, and insurance. The rest goes towards helping the participants prepare for homeownership by paying down their debt, improving their credit score, and getting market-ready. So, by the time they leave our program they can go out into the marketplace and buy a house of their own choosing, allowing us to begin helping another family.
"Urban Hope's mission is to make home a cornerstone of opportunity by keeping it affordable. We envision a thriving community where everyone can find a home."
Sarah Hale, Executive Director of Urban Hope
What areas does Urban Hope serve?
We are focused on Church Hill and its surrounding neighborhoods, and we serve residents in the very-low (at or below 50% of AMI) and extremely-low (at or below 30% of AMI) income populations. Housing requires a lot of trust from individuals and the community, so Urban Hope's history within the community serves as an invaluable asset. Church Hill also fits into our vision for how our work can relate to justice. Consider the historic context of the area: at the top of the hill is St. John's Church, the area's namesake and a representation of liberty and freedom, while at the bottom of the hill is the site of the second largest [former] slave market in the nation. At the other part of the triangle that makes up Church Hill there are four of Richmond's six public housing projects, creating an incredible amount of concentrated poverty. With that and the rise of gentrification, economic pressures within these neighborhoods are intensifying. Urban Hope is working within Church Hill with the goal of working together toward a community where everybody feels like they belong.
Is Urban Hope interested in expanding?
would like to see Urban Hope, as well as other local organizations working in affordable housing, really go deep. We need more housing that is affordable because what is ideal for everybody, not just people of low means or higher means, is when we are in proximity to each other. I'd like to see Urban Hope expand in our number of properties and move further and further south in our neighborhood, closer to the river. Right now, because of economic forces, more and more of our properties have to be further north, but we want to keep integrating affordable housing into neighborhoods throughout Richmond.
As for expanding into other neighborhoods, one of the things that makes Urban Hope especially successful is that we're resident led. I'm actually the only person on staff who does not live in Church Hill, and the majority of our board lives in the neighborhood as well. People care about where they live, right? Being resident led allows us that extra motivation to help their neighborhoods be healthy and thriving. We would be happy to equip other neighborhoods, and I believe Urban Hope's next phase would be helping other organizations do this where they are, and providing a template for success whether it be for Northside, Southside, or even other cities.
What makes housing equitable or inequitable?
The basic difference between equality and equity is important, and sometimes they sound so similar that people forget that we're not talking about everybody having the same thing. That's equality. Equity is having the ability and opportunity to get to the same desired outcomes. Everybody having what they need to achieve homeownership; to me, that's equity.
How has the housing crisis effected affordable housing?
Rising interest rates are challenging even those who might have been well set up to buy a home before, forcing many to continue renting for the foreseeable future. This has as a result driven up rental rates and reduced inventory, affecting people with lower incomes the most. Even before the recent, major hikes in interest rates, we saw things starting to creep up and it's definitely had an effect on the people we serve, their ability to meet goals, and their prospects. It's also having an effect on construction costs: they don't make affordable 2x4s, only 2x4s.
Describe the specific changes you've seen in Richmond. Richmond has become an incredibly popular place to be, and you've got an influx of both affluent buyers and young renters. We've also started to see that venture capital is behind a lot of the investment in real estate in the city, meaning more out of state corporations are handling these properties, and as a result there are fewer landlords who actually know their tenants. Additionally, the eviction ban has been lifted, which is worrisome considering Richmond has historically had high eviction rates. There's also a plan to raze public housing and replace it with mixed-income communities, which is good, but it's not a 1:1 replacement plan. So, of the people who are currently living in public housing, not everybody gets a spot in the new development. What do they do? They could take their Housing Choice (formerly Section 8) Voucher elsewhere, but not all landlords in practice are amenable to that, even though it's against the law to discriminate against them. I want to say this loud and clear: Housing Choice Vouchers are great because their rent is always paid. We love our Housing Choice Voucher tenants.
What do you see as the short-term or long-term ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic?
One thing is that remote workers are moving to Richmond, a moderately priced city, with big-city salaries. They can afford so much, and that's definitely one of the causes for rising prices. It's also given way to tension, because while we want to be welcoming, how do we do that in way that isn't going to turn Richmond housing inside-out? The other thing that's been a pretty significant challenge is that people who received rental assistance during COVID are now ramping down off of that. Especially for those who have had interruptions to employment and child care, the loss of that assistance can have lasting effects and be difficult to recover from.
What are some of the physical, planning, and design limitations of affordable housing?
Access to land is harder and harder, especially in a place like Church Hill where it's all getting gobbled up as quick as it can be, and acquisition prices continue to rise. It also takes a long time to develop projects if government funding is involved, which is traditionally how affordable housing is developed.
From a planning perspective, how does increasing density play into this discussion?
It depends on how you go about it. I think Americans love allowing things like free market development, but if you don't preserve, ultimately you're going to lose. It's a balance. New Jersey is a great model for this, and is considered the gold standard for inclusionary zoning. They do not have the housing crisis that other places have because they require municipalities to include a certain amount of affordable housing in every jurisdiction, so it's sprinkled all throughout. And, if they don't do that, they lose their funding. To me, that makes all the sense in the world. For a city like Richmond, they might say, "We know that 25% or 30% of the housing that we allow to be built has to be affordable at this particular level", so whether you're in the West End or the Southside, that constraint on the market actually creates more affordable housing and allows more people to flourish. That's a longer-term vision, but think we could consider taking a page out of their book.
How can we foster more equitable housing practices?
Be friendly toward inclusionary zoning and understand that if we want long-term success, that's what is necessary. Also, for landlords and property owners, be more accepting of people with Housing Choice Vouchers. For designers and developers, build equitable projects into your business model and plan from the start.
Sarah Hale Urban Hope, Executive Director