It isn’t often that a bundle of maps writes a prescription for change. But that’s the takeaway of a new offering from researchers at the University of Richmond.

Put simply: The Richmond region’s opportunity landscape is destructively uneven. Children face some of the sharpest consequences. Real change must start by facing these realities.

Last year, I collaborated with the team at UR and colleagues elsewhere to produce the report, “Can We Live and Learn Together? 2.0” The title nods to an earlier study that took shape around the vision of the late Dr. John Moeser, a longtime Professor of Urban Studies and

Planning at Virginia Commonwealth University and a Senior Fellow at the University of Richmond’s Bonner Center for Civic Engagement until his passing in 2022.

Dr. Moeser thought, taught, and wrote deeply about Richmond’s bitter history of race and division. He posed the original report’s title question to focus on what’s at stake when we fail to mend our social fabric.

A collection of interactive digital maps released by the University of Richmond team this month helps us visualize the report’s most troubling findings:

● The most affordable neighborhoods in our region lack schools with top-tier scores for reading proficiency.

● Families with Housing Choice Vouchers typically can’t afford to live near schools with strong reading scores. Rents in those areas are too high for the vouchers to cover. This means many low-income children are blocked from getting a high-quality education.

● Children in high-poverty areas are more likely to have teachers who aren’t trained in the subjects they teach.

And here’s the real kicker: When we map where people live by race alongside data revealing access to education, the picture is clear — Richmond is still deeply segregated in ways that hurt kids and communities.

This isn’t inevitable. It’s the result of policies that allow the most privileged in our region to hoard opportunities from the rest of us.

Consider current zoning codes — the rules that determine what types of homes we can build, and where. In most of the predominantly white, high-income neighborhoods across our region, it is illegal to build affordable housing such as apartment buildings and modestly sized single-family homes. In these places — you know their names — a relative few enjoy access to well-paid jobs, chosen schools, and reliable healthcare.

Opportunity thrives, while area residents of more modest means are shut out. Many of the available fixes wouldn’t cost localities a dime. In fact, several of our proposed solutions would boost revenues and lower household costs by making affordable housing construction more possible in more places. This is particularly relevant now, with the City of Richmond along with Chesterfield and Henrico Counties all rewriting the rules about where we can build new homes.

In other words, the report calls our attention to a crisis of opportunity. But it also points the way to progress.

I hope you will check out the maps and the report’s executive summary, a readable handful of pages that could help shape your decisions as you vote this fall.

Then, ask tough questions of candidates, and ask yourself: What kind of community do you want to call “home” – one that expands opportunity to all, or continues to shut out many?

Most of all, I hope you will keep in mind that this report isn’t merely a collection of maps and stats. As we write in the report, “There are real students and real families…whose learning opportunities and future contributions to our community will be shaped by our choices today.”

We will not have a second chance to get this right.

The author is Director of Policy, Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia.