Mayor Levar Stoney cuts the ribbon on the housing resource center at 1900 Chamberlayne Ave. alongside officials with the city and Salvation Army. (Jonathan Spiers photos)
Nearly a year after opening a new long-term home for Richmond’s cold-weather shelter in Northside, city leaders returned to 1900 Chamberlayne Ave. to celebrate the opening of a city-run housing resource center there.
Mayor Levar Stoney, city administrators and members of Richmond City Council gathered again with officials with Salvation Army to mark the opening of the on-site resource center and the launch of the city’s new Office of Homeless Services.
The office, led by homeless services liaison Dianne Wilmore, will oversee the Community Resource and Training Center that is now housed within the building that’s also Salvation Army’s local headquarters.
The building also serves as the city’s inclement weather shelter and remains open year-round as a 150-bed shelter and physical point of entry for the regional Greater Richmond Continuum of Care services network.
In a ceremony in recent days, Stoney lauded the opening along with councilmembers including Stephanie Lynch, who works for the Virginia Department of Social Services and has helped steer the city’s shelter efforts.
“Today we are taking another giant step forward to help provide resources to unhoused individuals and to those experiencing housing instability within our city limits,” Stoney said. “There’s no lack of compassion from the City of Richmond, but there is at times a lack of capacity. Today we are bolstering that capacity.”
Last week’s ceremony followed the opening of the city’s cold-weather shelter at the building last fall.
Added Lynch: “It is the community center that we are building that is going to be that resource that is able to help even more people and meet people where they are.
“The underpinning of this building is the radical notion that human services should meet human beings where they are,” Lynch said. “Not a phone line, not an internet, not an email, but come and walk into this center, get the help and care that you need, get the coordination that you deserve, right here on site.”
Housing advocates have said the resource center is needed to provide a physical point of entry for those seeking services and case management in the Richmond region’s network. That point of entry had been the Commonwealth Catholic Charities building at 511 W. Grace St., which Daily Planet Health Services purchased in 2020.
The center is part of a larger plan by Salvation Army to turn the Chamberlayne building into its planned Center of Hope, a renovation of the former Eternity Church building that would provide more program space, access for people with disabilities and capacity to keep families together.
The city is providing $7 million toward the nonprofit’s $15 million rehab, though a grant contract that City Council approved last year. The arrangement added 100 beds to the roughly 50 that the Salvation Army already offered there.
The city’s deal with Salvation Army includes an option that, if the nonprofit doesn’t raise its portion of the $15 million Center of Hope project within three years, the city would be able to purchase the Chamberlayne property for $4.5 million at the end of its three-year lease for the housing resource center.
The Salvation Army building is on Chamberlayne Avenue near its intersection with School Street.
Other speakers at the ribbon-cutting included Lincoln Saunders, Richmond’s chief administrative officer, who described the arrangement with the Salvation Army as “the right mix of funding, facility and partner to make the center work.”
“Building this resource center – so that we have the opportunity to provide the sort of case management wraparound support for every individual, so that we’re not just providing them a bed for a night but that path to permanent stability – it takes a lot of effort, and it takes a huge team to do it,” Saunders said.
“That’s why there’s 27 organizations that are funded through the city’s non-departmental process for a total of $2.95 million that provide the wraparound support that this resource center will tap into, to make sure that individuals that come through our doors get all the help that they need and that they should be entitled to.”
Adding to the city’s shelter capacity is the former HI Richmond Hostel building at 7 N. Second St. downtown, which was opened last year as a 50-bed year-round family shelter. HomeAgain, which operates a 35-bed shelter nearby at 2 E. Main St., operates the Second Street shelter.
The Chamberlayne shelter and resource center is beside the Wells Fargo bank branch at the intersection of Chamberlayne and School Street. That intersection is slated for safety improvements and signal upgrades by the city’s public works department, which was scheduled to start the project this month.
According to a city alert about the project, improvements will include pedestrian countdown signals and push buttons, vehicle detector sensors, high-visibilty retroreflective backplates and crosswalks, and new accessible curb ramps. Work on the $400,000 project is expected to finish by next spring.