Richmond’s housing agency is putting a freeze on evictions from public housing communities while staff recheck rents and arrears calculations that tenants and legal aid lawyers have said aren’t current.
A crime-reduction initiative that Mayor Levar M. Stoney has spurned apparently will come to Richmond after all.
The city’s housing authority is partnering with the nonprofit REAL LIFE to implement the same initiative in Richmond that is credited with dramatically cutting shootings and violent crime in Hopewell.
Steven B. Nesmith promised to transform the operation of Richmond’s public housing and the opportunities for residents when he assumed leadership of the authority last fall.
Richmond is preparing to become the first place in the country to test a revamped federal regulation aimed toward making it easier for people who hold housing vouchers or live in public housing to buy homes.
Describing it as a “groundbreaking and historic ini- tiative” that would build wealth for those who qualify, Steven B. Nesmith, the chief executive officer for the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority,