Good afternoon President Newbille and Members of City Council; Mr. Jackson and Commissioners of the RRHA; CEO Nesmith; staff members of the RRHA and the City of Richmond;  

• I appreciate the opportunity to be with you all this afternoon 
• Today feels like a historic gathering, we are on the cusp of some incredibly important work  

I want to start by framing just how important the thoughtful redevelopment of public housing is to the future of our city. 

As I often share, my vision for Richmond is a city in which all people and all places thrive. Pillar Two of our Mayoral Action Plan is all about building Thriving Neighborhoods—not just in a handful of neighborhoods, but across the city.  

In Pillar Two, we specifically name the redevelopment of our large public housing communities that commits to 1:1 replacement of our subsidized housing units. 

But this is more than just a bullet in our strategic plan. I truly believe that creating better, more stable, long-term housing options for our most vulnerable residents is a moral imperative.  

We have lived with the reality of racially segregated, hyper-concentrated poverty in the City of Richmond for so long, it’s easy for all of us to normalize it. To become numb to its human impacts. To succumb to the belief that public housing is just part of the landscape in Richmond, and that it’s never really going to change. 

• It’s now been over forty years since the RTD, back in December of 1985, published an extensive series on life in Gilpin Court.  At the time, it was considered both a tragic unveiling of life in disinvested housing, AND a community wake-up call. 
• It’s been well over thirty years since senior leadership at RRHA announced that communities like Gilpin Court were obsolete and that the era of large public housing complexes was over.  
• There have been multiple efforts to redevelop Gilpin Court in the past quarter century.  

And yet, here we are in 2026, still struggling with the same issues city leaders have wrestled with for decades. 

I’m encouraged by the fact that this group is gathered today. And I’m encouraged by the productive conversations our team has had with RRHA leadership over the past few months to lay the ground rules for a long-term partnership. 

Through this work, we have outlined 3 really important ideas: 

1.  a shared commitment to the resident-centered transformation of Gilpin Court, and eventually all of the public housing communities  

2. a shared understanding that our task is to dramatically improve the quality of deeply affordable housing without reducing its supply, and  

3. that our efforts will not be successful if we do not center the voices and experiences of residents  

But I am imploring us to have a sense of urgency about this work.  The fact that we have collectively made such little progress on redevelopment efforts in 30 years should nauseate us. 

We cannot keep kicking the can down the road. You know the conditions. You know the statistics. You know the direction of current policy in Washington, DC. 

If we cannot get it together as a City to tackle our most serious long-term challenge in a meaningful way, then we, as leaders, will have failed. And, frankly, we should not be in these seats. 

Public housing residents are depending on us to meet the challenge of redeveloping public housing the right way. Because if we don’t do it the right way—a people-centered way-- we know it will eventually happen the wrong way— buildings will become completely unlivable and have to be condemned, or redevelopment will be rushed along, both of which will result in the tearing down of buildings and the displacement of people.  

One of the biggest lessons from COVID was that we are collectively capable of remarkable things when we are focused and aligned on solving a problem together.  

Whether it was the rapid scaling up of a medical response, or the record breaking timeline for the creation of a brand new vaccine, or the proliferation of mass vaccination delivery that led to 4.5 B people-- more than half of the entire world -- being vaccinated by the end of 2021. 

Now obviously the world being shut down and the life-or-death crisis we were all facing was a huge motivator. But many of our public housing residents ARE in crisis.  

The 20 yr lower life expectancy that Gilpin residents compared to other neighborhoods around the city- is a crisis! The lack of economic mobility, and being entrenched in multigenerational poverty—is a crisis! 

But it’s a crisis we know how to solve. 

The remarkable work by Raj Chetty and his colleagues looking at 30 years of outcomes from HOPE VI redevelopment efforts across the country, show us that kids from low-income families who move to opportunity-rich, mixed income neighborhoods earn more as adults, are more likely to attend college, and are less likely to be incarcerated.  

The path is clear.  The need for urgency is clear.  Now we’ve got to execute. 

And doing so is going to require all of the leaders in this room to operate at the highest levels of commitment, alignment, integrity, and accountability. 

So I want to share today, what our administration is committing to, to meet this moment: 

First , I have assigned our senior policy strategist, two of our deputy chief administrative officers and our housing director to work with RRHA leadership to develop a shared governance framework for the Gilpin Court redevelopment, codified in a Memorandum of Understanding. 

That MOU does a couple of important things. It outlines our commitments to residents: 

• 1-for-1 replacement 
• strong support for residents in the process through coaching and case management 
• centering resident voices in the process 

And it delineates how the City and RRHA will work together. While this work must be incredibly collaborative, the City will take the lead on implementation of the People Plan, the Neighborhood Plan, and those components of the Housing Plan that extend beyond the Gilpin footprint.  

This is a huge commitment, and a huge assumption of responsibility, because i dont believe that public housing redevelopment is RRHA’s alone to carry. The City taking on these responsibilities will allow RRHA to better focus attention on the components of the housing plan that fall within the Gilpin footprint.  

Second , we have already started the process of capacity building. Edward Richards, our People Plan Manager, started work earlier this summer and has already built strong relationships with residents.  

I’m also happy to announce that we have hired Kevin Marchman to serve in a brand-new position: Senior Advisor for Public Housing Transformation. Kevin has had a long career as one of the most accomplished and most respected public housing administrators in the United States, having served as Executive Director of the Denver Housing Authority, Assistant Secretary over Public Housing at HUD, and as founder of the National Organization of African Americans in Housing. He is one of the most knowledgeable practitioners in the nation on public housing redevelopment, and I’m thrilled he’s agreed to serve in this important role. 

Please know-- DCAOs Sharon Ebert and Amy Popovich, our Housing Director Merrick Malone, Thad Williamson, Sarah Carpenter, Edward Richards will all continue their work on this. But in Kevin Marchman, we now have a senior leader, representing the Mayor’s Office, who will wake up every day focused on accelerating redevelopment.  

Third , as I prepare the FY 2028 budget, supporting Gilpin Court redevelopment and especially the People Plan will be a major priority. As I will share in more detail next month, supporting Gilpin’s redevelopment through workforce development, holistic case management support, and resident engagement, will be a major focus of our Office of Community Wealth Building going forward.  

Finally , while the MOU is an important step forward, we have more work to do to improve our overall governance structure. We need closer alignment of the City and RRHA, and we need clearer standards of accountability. Here, City Council, which under our Charter has oversight responsibilities through their appointment power over the RRHA Board, must play an expanded role. 

Later this fall, I’ll be bringing forward to Council for consideration a framework to strengthen our governance structure, in support of the vision that we have to be in this together.  

As I look back over the 17 years that I’ve personally been involved in supporting public housing communities, I have seen how personal agendas, interagency politics, and blame games have veered us off course, and we owe it to our residents to do better.  

Over a century ago, Maggie Lena Walker founded the St. Luke’s Penny Savings bank that sits at the edge of Gilpin Court. 

Her vision was a comprehensive one—to create financial growth and opportunity for black Richmonders, to expand home ownership, to fuel entrepreneurship by financing black-owned enterprises, to provide generational wealth that could be passed down. 

Her efforts helped create the black middle class, and the thriving community of Jackson Ward. And her innovation and perseverance is embedded in the DNA of our city. 

 So I’m calling on all of us now to honor her vision and legacy. To lean into this work, and to do it together.   

Because I absolutely believe the future of our city depends on it.   

Thank you.