Schedule

Dr. Ben Teresa, co-founder and director of the RVA Eviction Lab, will be presenting on “Housing in a Time of Monopoly Power: Emerging Threats and an Agenda for Housing Justice." As affordable and decent housing falls outside the reach of an increasing number of households, the housing crisis is transforming the meaning and experience of owning and renting a home. This talk explores housing markets at the cutting edge of these changes within expensive gentrifying cities, declining postindustrial regions, and growing single family suburban neighborhoods to show how the housing system is shifting the costs of housing onto renters and localities, reducing housing choices, and creating precarious housing tenures, often on the basis of racial difference. By focusing on the public and private actions that support the expansion of this monopoly power in housing markets, the talk outlines an agenda for addressing housing problems and achieving housing justice.

Housing

Crime/violence
Health

Social Services
Youth

The State of Housing in Virginia, 2025 brings together experts from across the housing landscape to examine the challenges and opportunities facing communities across the Commonwealth. This timely panel features an urban planning scholar specializing in eviction and displacement a fair housing attorney advocating for tenants’ rights and a leader from a housing-focused nonprofit working on the ground to expand access and affordability. Together they will explore the intersections of policy law and lived experience offering insights into Virginia’s crisis of affordable housing and the paths forward toward more equitable stable and inclusive communities.

Housing

Criminal Justice
Housing

Community Organizing

Pick up a box lunch to enjoy during our film screening

Lunch time film screening and panel discussion of American Coup: Wilmington 1898. This new documentary film tells the little-known story of a deadly race massacre and carefully orchestrated insurrection in North Carolina’s largest city in 1898 — the only coup d’état in the history of the US. Stoking fears of “Negro Rule,” self-described white supremacists used intimidation and violence to destroy Black political and economic power and overthrow Wilmington’s democratically-elected, multi-racial government. Black residents were murdered and thousands were banished. The story of what happened in Wilmington was suppressed for decades until descendants and scholars began to investigate. Today, many of those descendants — Black and white — seek the truth about this intentionally buried history.

Community Organizing

Criminal Justice
Youth

Criminal Justice
Victimization

Housing
Race

Criminal Justice

Gender/Sexuality
Victimization

Food Justice

Social Services
Victimization
Youth

Faith
Housing

Race

Criminal Justice
Education

Education
Community Organizing

This session brings together Greg Jarrell, author of “Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods”, and Lorenzo Watson, President and CEO of the Christian Community Development Association. Our Trespasses uncovers how race, geography, policy, and religion have created haunted landscapes in Charlotte, North Carolina, and throughout the United States. How do we value our lands, livelihoods, and communities? How does our theology inform our capacity--or lack thereof--for memory? What responsibilities do we bear toward those who have been harmed, not just by individuals but by our structures and collective ways of being in the world? In conversation, Jarrell and Watson will reflect on the theological, historical, and community dimensions of justice, repair, and belonging.

Faith
Housing

Education

Gender/Sexuality
Race
Identity

Race
Identity

Crime/violence
Community Organizing

Criminal Justice
Youth