An abundance of reclaimable homes sit vacant in the Roanoke Valley and Alleghany Highlands, waiting to help fill the need for affordable living, if only someone or something would regionalize an approach to bring together those and other pieces of the housing situation, said the findings of a study from the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission.
Across the studied regionâs counties â Alleghany, Botetourt, Craig, Franklin and Roanoke â and its cities and towns â Covington, Roanoke and Salem, Clifton Forge, Rocky Mount and Vinton â one-third of all vacant housing units are classified by U.S. Census data as âvacant other,â with potential for rehabilitation and reoccupancy, the 2020 study said.
Abby Hamilton, president and CEO of United Way of Roanoke Valley, answers a question about how Roanoke s human services nonprofits handled the COVID-19 pandemic over the last 13 months.
The worried man on the phone asked Anne Marie Green whether he could safely make himself a ham sandwich.
The call had come in on the 211 line during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under a contract with the Virginia Department of Social Services, the Council of Community Services in Roanoke runs Virginia 211, a helpline that refers callers to health and human service agencies that can meet their needs. Administrative staff, including Green, the councilâs president, were personally fielding calls about COVID.
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The Council of Community Services in Gillette provides a lot of critical services to the community. It focuses on homelessness and poverty, like running a food pantry and the city s only homeless shelter.
Mikel Scott, the council s executive director, said for years, its building has been falling apart. The flooring of the shelter was so old that I honestly laid just a big thick piece of plywood down under the washing machine because the flooring was like bowing into the basement, she said.
So back in late 2019, when the city gave them $250,000 to cover some upgrades, they were excited. But then the COVID-19 pandemic started hitting the community and the people they serve hard. The council went ahead and allocated $50,000 of that money to be used to keep people in their homes.
Eight years after moving into her Old Southwest apartment, Roanoke resident Rhenda Milman hopes a rent relief application or a long-awaited backlog of unemployment payments due to her will clear an outstanding balance with the landlord.
With a court hearing scheduled next week, Milman is one of hundreds of city residents facing the possibility of eviction. Although a recently extended federal order has stopped landlords from evicting pandemic-impacted tenants for now, the moratorium will end eventually â and tenants will still be responsible for paying all of their back rent.
âTrouble with unemployment,â Milman said. âIâm still waiting for months. Iâve not been able to get in touch with anyone from the unemployment office.â
Addled PM must bite the bullet on womenâs rights
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March 17, 2021 â 12.10am
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Credit:Sydney Morning Herald
The Prime Minister has shown that he doesnât have any serious intentions of changing the culture of discrimination, sexual assault and harassment against women (âPMâs tin ear on display as crowd vents angerâ, March 16). If he did, he would have accepted the invitation to attend the March 4 Justice rally. He could have listened to the voices of the women and, having heard their stories, responded with an undertaking to bring forward reform, showing a determination to change the current toxic climate. Instead, he tells us how lucky we are to live in a country where you are not going to get shot for attending a protest. Really? Such a complete lack of understanding and empathy fills me with despair. We need to keep pressure on the governme