A coalition of Richmond groups is advancing a policy agenda they hope can be a blueprint for City Hall’s efforts to reduce evictions and make affordable apartments and homes more available.

The coalition includes the Partnership for Smarter Growth, Richmond for All and the Virginia Poverty Law Center, and plans to launch its efforts to gain government and public support for the proposals next Monday, March 29.

As outlined in a 17-page plan, key proposals the coalition wants to see enacted include:

• Creation of a program to supplement rents of poor house- holds to prevent evictions and increased homelessness;

• Ensuring individuals and families facing eviction have access to a lawyer by beefing up city support for legal aid;

• Mandating one-for-one replacement of any public housing that is slated for demolition and replacement to prevent a reduc- tion in housing for poor families;

• Upgrading the Richmond 300 master plan and any future zoning laws to include affordable housing; and

• Making it easier for affordable housing developers to purchase public property at a lower cost to boost the number of units they can create.

The coalition is the latest to weigh in on an issue that has continued to gain attention in the city and suburbs.

With home prices and apartment rents soaring, affordable housing has become a top agenda item for Mayor Levar M. Stoney and the City Council. The mayor has set a goal of having 10,000 new units of affordable housing developed in Richmond by 2030 and has committed to beefing up the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund to $10 million a year within five years to support the effort.

Richmonders Involved to Strengthen Our Communities, a faith-based coalition known as RISC, is pressing for City Council to boost the trust fund to $10 million in a far shorter time to bring more resources to bear.

The new coalition believes its recommendations could put policies in place to support increasing the numbers of affordable units.

“It is essential that the City Council and Planning Commission focus their efforts on the small number of affordable housing tools that have the biggest impact,” said Stephen Wade, board vice president of Partnership for Smarter Growth.

That includes the policy of replacing public housing units on a one-for-one basis, he said, using housing dollars to provide rental supplements and putting in place zoning that encourages affordable housing development.

As others have found, the coalition sees evictions and housing affordability reaching a crisis level for a city where one in four households lives below the poverty line and where more than half of all households are earning less than the area’s median annual income that tops $80,000 a year for a family of four.

Evidence of the crisis, according to the coalition, can be found in the eviction notices that yearly go out to nearly one-third of Richmond renters because they are delinquent on rent. While the majority are not evicted, Richmond still ranks among the top cities for its eviction rate.

Prior to COVID-19 and the temporary moratoriums on evictions, up to 17 people a day were being evicted for having an average of $1,000 in past-due rent.

For such families, finding replacement housing is an increasing challenge. According to the coalition, currently there are only 30 affordable housing units for every 100 households earning less than 30 percent of the area’s median income. For families making 50 percent of the area’s median income, there are only 63 units for every 100 such residents.

The supply of such units is far below the demand.

The result: More than half of Richmond’s households are cost-burdened for housing, meaning they pay more than 30 per- cent of income for housing, with Black and Latino households impacted to a greater extent than white households.

The coalition is pushing for a more targeted approach from the government to help deal with the issue.

Laura Wright of the Virginia Poverty Law Center noted that “local rent supplement programs provide financial assistance to families earning 30 percent or below of median income.

“Such a program would pay the difference between their rent and what they are able to pay,” she continued. “This program, along with funding for housing attorneys to represent such families in court, is essential” to reducing evictions.

Quinton Robbins of Richmond For All noted that any city policy agenda for affordable housing must include protecting the availability of affordable housing in the form of public housing. Such housing continues to be one of the key elements of providing safe and affordable housing for individuals and families at the lowest end of the income scale.