Good morning, RVA: 1,101↗️ • 11↘️; housing prices; and an old plantation within the city limits

Good morning, RVA! It’s 75 °F, and rainy. You can expect at least a chance of rain from now until probably Monday. Blech! Double trapped indoors by both pandemic and weather! I suggest you keep your favorite radar app nearby, wait for a break in the clouds, and get outside for a while if you can.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,101↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 11↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 141↘️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 37, Henrico: 72, and Richmond: 32). Since this pandemic began, 308 people have died in the Richmond region. I’ve got two interesting bits of coronanews as we head into the weekend. First, the Governor announced the interim results of an adult COVID-19 serology studylaunched back in June. This study looked at 3,113 people and estimates that 2.4% of adults statewide have antibodies to COVID-19. You’ll remember from this piece in the Atlantic, that antibodies are produced by your immune system as a response to a pathogen: “In several studies, most people who are infected develop reasonable levels of coronavirus-specific T-cells and antibodies.” You’ll also remember that immunology is complicated! Anyway, the breakdown of folks with COVID-19 antibodies is interesting, especially that "antibodies are 13.1 times higher among Hispanic adults (14.4%) than non-Hispanic adults (1.1%). The Governor also says VDH will begin a pediatric version of this study so we can get an idea of how COVID-19 spreads among kids and teens. Second, and speaking of, Emily Oster has another excellent email worth reading, this one in response to a recent headline about children testing positive for COVID-19. The most interesting takeaway for me: “Put simply: children were more than 5 times as likely to be hospitalized for flu over this period than for COVID-19.” Over the past couple of weeks Oster has become an indispensable resource for helping me understand what’s really going on behind the coronavirus headlines. You should subscribe to her email!

Colleen Curran at the Richmond Times-Dispatch (which just got a nice, NYT-inspired redesign) has a piece about home sales across the region. Laura Lafayette, CEO of the Richmond Association of Realtors, says “We just don’t have enough inventory to satisfy the demand.” I’ve been out of the home-buying market for a long time, but this, from prospective homebuyers, seems bananas: “We found a place in Bellevue that we really loved. It was listed at $330,000. We put an offer on it for $345,000, but somebody came in over $40,000 and waived the appraisal. It sold at $375,000.” Part of the issue here is the incredibly low interest rates, but another part is the preponderance of low-density development spread thin across our entire region. Remember the longread from yesterday about Portland’s newly-passed zoning reform that makes it easier/legal to built two, three, four, and even six homes on one lot? That’s the sort of thing that would help open up the supply of homes here in Richmond and drive down the cost of housing. The City’s new draft master plan, Richmond 300, does inch us forward by recommending accessory dwelling units most everywhere and designating duplexes and “small multi-family residential (typically 3 to 10 units)” as a secondary use in a lot of our current single-family neighborhoods. That’s good, but to reach our affordable housing goals we need to be bold and our elected officials need to be courageous (seriously!) when working on the actual zoning reform to implement these changes. What a boring sentence, but without structural change to the kinds of housing we can build in our low-density neighborhoods we won’t be able to address our (current and ongoing) housing crisis.

The RTD’s Holly Prestidge writes about the really interesting history of Brookbury, a house with a name hidden away on the city’s Southside. This home dates back to the early 1800s and was recently owned by James Sheffield, the first Black judge appointed to the Richmond Circuit Court. Brookbury also contains surviving, unaltered outbuildings that were homes for enslaved people who lived there when the property functioned as a plantation. As a descendent of Sheffield says, “You don’t have that many African American families who owned an old plantation with slave quarters.”—especially within the city limits.

The Virginia Employment Commission posted the new unemployment insurance claims numbers for the week ending in August 8th. It’s another steep, steep drop in claims, which you can see in my faithfully updated graph. Overall, claims have plummeted 28% since the previous week (by 77,644) . I wondered last week why Virginians had suddenly stopped applying for unemployment insurance, and a couple folks wrote in suggesting that the end of the federal unemployment benefit made the hassle of applying for just the smaller, state-based benefit less appealing. Could be!

This is neat: Esquire talked with a handful of Black, Southern, male mayors (including Mayor Stoney) who keep in touch through a group text. It’s hard for me to remember sometimes, but mayors and councilmembers are just typical people with atypical jobs. Just like the rest of us, they need to sympathize and empathize with their peers, too.

We’ve got a couple candidate events taking place over the weekend. They’re mostly in-person events, so keep an eye on the weather, which is a weird and unfamiliar thing to think about.

This morning’s patron longread

We Asked a Gyno About “WAP”

Submitted by Patron Susan. I really enjoyed this delightful and frank conversation about “WAP,” the new single from Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. Content warning, I guess, if you’re concerned about a discussion of female anatomy, which, bummer, because that’s exactly the point of this whole entire discourse!

After conservative commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted that his “doctor wife” had diagnosed a WAP as a dangerous medical condition, it occurred to me that it might be fun to speak to an actual medical expert in WAPs, both to weigh in on the truly idiotic discourse and to get her unique take on the song’s important message (that WAPS are great). So I reached out to Dr. Lauren Streicher — medical director of the Northwestern Medicine Center for Sexual Medicine and Menopause and author of “Sex Rx: Hormones, Health, and Your Best Sex Ever,” and also my mom’s boss — to ask about her impressions of the song, its accuracy in reflecting WAP culture, whether Shapiro’s doctor wife should have her license revoked, and whether we should be concerned about hitting that little dangly thing that swings in the back of our throats.

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.