Richmond using federal recovery funds for grants to green its neighborhoods

When Duron Chavis started Sankofa Community Orchard two and a half years ago on a neglected plot of public land, he never imagined that one day his fast-growing community garden would one day host the mayor, city councilmembers, and other officials for the announcement of a new Neighborhood Climate Resilience Grant program.

As the single largest greenspace established under the Richmond Grows Gardens initiative, Chavis hopes that the symbolism of its Southside location and the Black leadership behind the space are signs of what the city’s Office of Sustainability aims to invest in going forward.

The program could become a model for other cities struggling with the lasting impacts of redlining and related policies, which left many Black and Brown neighborhoods significantly less shaded and hotter than white areas. In practice, this means communities of color often bear the brunt of climate change.

A 2019 study from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) found that formerly redlined areas were five degrees hotter in summer compared to non-redlined neighborhoods. Heat islands have been linked to increased pollution and a number of negative health outcomes including respiratory illnesses, heat exhaustion, and heat-related death. In Richmond, 42% of formerly non-redlined neighborhoods are covered by parks or greenspace, but only 12% of formerly redlined areas are similarly shaded. The city’s investment in community gardens can help lessen the green gap.

“It’s a breath of fresh air to see the city explicitly call out Black and Brown organizations and communities,” said Chavis. “I hope this means that the city recognizes that places like Sankofa can be all over the place: in Manchester, along Richmond Highway, off of Broad Rock. We want to dig in on not just the warm fuzzies of ecosystem services but actually dig into the big work of racial equity and justice.”

The details of the dollars

The $865,000 in funding for the first year of the Neighborhood Climate Resilience Grants comes from $1.5 million allotted to the Office of Sustainability out of Richmond’s American Rescue Plan Act monies. Although such federal funding runs out later this year, Mayor Levar Stoney committed at the Sankofa press announcement to recurring funding for the program through the city budget in 2024.

Since the completion of the RVAgreen 2050 Climate Vulnerability and Risk Assessment, the rest of the Office of Sustainability’s ARPA dollars will go towards onboarding the city’s first-ever urban forester, tree plantings on Southside, and updating Richmond’s outdated Urban Forestry Master Plan which should inform city officials on which species to plant and where to reduce flooding and the urban heat island effect.

According to ARPA guidelines, Neighborhood Climate Resilience Grants can only be given to eligible 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(19) entities such as nonprofits, foundations, or veterans’ organizations. Volunteer groups are welcome to apply if they find an eligible entity to partner with on their application.

“We want to support nonprofits on the front lines answering the call of community needs,” said Laura Thomas, the director of the Office of Sustainability. “We know during the pandemic that groups provided healthy and fresh food through community gardens, and we recognize that nonprofits bore a significant portion of the burden, so this money can further support the work they have been doing.”

Applications for the grants are now open, and two sessions for community partners to ask questions and get guidance are planned. The first is a virtual forum at 1 pm on Tuesday, July 11, and the second is in person at 5 pm on Wednesday, July 12 at the VCU health hub attached to the Market at 25th.

With a total of just nine straightforward questions in a Word doc available in English as well as Spanish, Thomas’ team designed the application to be quick and easy for local groups to fill out. Less cumbersome grant processes can help address racial disparities in nonprofit funding and allow local organizations to better compete for resources.

The deadline for the first round of funding is August 4, and grantees should be notified by the end of next month. The goal is to get the money into organizations’ hands by the end of the year.

But is it enough?

Although nearly one million in new grants may sound like a lot of money, Chavis warns that “$865,000 is actually not a lot for the type of work the city says they want to do.” His annual organizational budget of $180,000 only covers staffing and infrastructure work for five community gardens around town. Multiply that by four and the initial round of Neighborhood Climate Resilience Grants will have already been nearly exhausted.

“For what the city says it wants to do these are ideally multi-million dollar investments,” Chavis said. “There also needs to be resources to support the ongoing stewardship of these spaces. It takes years to build something like Sankofa. Here we are two and a half years later and people are just now seeing what we’re doing. Recurring funding would be the smartest way to make sure this work would be recurring.”

Thomas hopes the novelty of the new Neighborhood Climate Resilience Grants and the success of similar city programs launched to fund education and community wealth-building projects bodes well for the funding to become an annual initiative as promised by the mayor.

“The City of Richmond has never provided sustainability grants to the community before, and there aren’t many localities across the country doing this either, so I think it’s a really novel approach.”