Good morning, RVA: 67, 2; less than 10, and a virtual house show

Good morning, RVA! It’s 49 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday. Expect highs in the 60s, some clouds here and there, plus some rain overnight.

Water cooler

Richmond Police are reporting that Rushard O. Grant, 40, was murdered in an abandoned semi-tractor cab on the 2400 block of Lamb Avenue. Officers arrived on the scene and found Grant dead, suffering from “apparent trauma to the body.”

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 67 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and two people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. The number of folks tested more than doubled yesterday, from 489 to 1,028. You should expect the number of positive cases to increase as the number of tests increases—this make logical sense but feels scary to watch the numbers tick up rapidly. I don’t know what it means other than “it’s where the people are,” but the current spread of the coronvirus in Virginia is pretty much along the I-95/I-64 corridor.

Yesterday, the Governor issued an Executive Order restricting “the number of patrons allowed in permitted [restaurants, fitness centers, and theatres] to 10 patrons or less.” The restriction is not a suggestion and comes with a threat of revoking permits and charging violators with a set of misdemeanors. But how many restaurants are even still open at this point? A ton have shut down, according to RVAHub’s evergrowing list of corona-closures. /r/rva has the details on how Gold’s Gym in the Fan will handle the new restrictions: “We will be open on a first-come-first-served basis, allowing 10 patrons in the gym at one time. Each member will be allowed 30 minutes to work out.” The Governor also suggested folks limit their own gatherings to less than 10 people (excluding “essential services such as manufacturers, distribution centers, airports, bus and train stations, medical facilities, grocery stores, or pharmacies“) and that folks with chronic health conditions or aged 65 or older should self-quarantine. He also lifted some of the restrictions and timelines associated with unemployment benefits and closed all of the DMVs. You can read some more of the details in this press release. At some point, you’d think, the General Assembly will have to convene a special, socially-distanced session to start unlocking cash to keep social programs, small businesses, and critical local services operating.

But! The executive branch is not helpless! The State’s Department of Rail and Public Transportation just unlocked $11 million to help pay some of the operating costs for local transit systems. GRTC will take home about $1.2 million out of that bucket. While we’re talking transit, GRTC has shut down the Kings Dominion 102x Express bus, and fare enforcement will occur on the Pulse platforms not on the Pulse buses. Hold the phone on that last bit, as Councilmember Jones said, relating to bus fare, that “Richmonders need help and if not today in the coming weeks.” Hmmmm. Possibly related: Charlottesville Area Transit just eliminated front-door boarding on all of their buses to protect operators from the coronavirus, and, as a result, will go fare-free “during this time.” If we wanted to do the same thing here in Richmond, I thinkeliminating GRTC fares would require City Council (plus Henrico and Chesterfield’s Boards of Supervisors??) to pass some legislation. Assuming they’re able to get together to do so in the coming weeks, maybe they could also talk about restoring some of the local funding to GRTC the Mayor and County Manager cut? I’m going to continue to bang this drum: This seems like the worst possible time to cut funding for bus service. Who knows what the future will bring and how much revenue will be generated by regional sales fuels taxes this coming summer and beyond. There’s just too much uncertainty to go screwing around with something as critical as bus service.

RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras has started pointing towards how the federal government can help public schoolsmoving forward: 1. A bailout package for money being spent on non-reimbursable (but essential) food for kids, and 2. A policy package to waive testing and other requirements that are impossible to comply with right now. Luckily, the State’s Department of Education will “seek maximum flexibility for schools and students to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 (DOCX), including relief from federal and state requirements related to testing.” It’s wild thinking about how this cohort of students, across all grade levels, will just have an asterisk next to them whenever they show up in future datasets.

Looking for a way to connect while wearing your pajamas and staying isolated in your living room? Local all-everything-man Prabir will host some of his musical friends for a virtual house show today at 3:30 PM(Facebook) over on Grid’s Instagram page. I think this kind of thing is rad, and, after we get over some of initial awkwardness, will be pretty important to keeping everyone’s spirits up over the next couple of weeks.

Finally, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts have set up a Coronavirus Hotline (804.205.3501) that you can call to get answers to your public health questions, every day, from 8:00 AM–8:00 PM.

This morning’s patron longread

Go big, or no home: How Americans are limited by super-sized homes

Submitted by Patron Suzanne. Another piece on making cities affordable and sustainable, but this one focuses on getting developers to build smaller places to live.

“The development industry still thinks that people want big, and they’re in a state of denial and don’t want to change their business model,” he says. “We see a tremendous market untapped for high-quality small units, and very few builders see that.” According to an Urban Land Institute report, builders today are building less and less of the smallest category of homes. Homes under 1,400 square feet have typically represented 16 percent of new construction in the U.S., but since 1999, they’ve only made up 8 percent of new construction. During the same time period, homes measuring 1,800 square feet or less made up just 22 percent of new construction, while they have traditionally been 40 percent of the market. During the last two decades, homes over 2,400 square feet, which in the past represented roughly a third of new homes, now comprise half of the market.

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