RICHMOND, Va. — While walking down Chamberlayne Avenue on Richmond's Northside to get to a barbershop appointment, Travis Brandon and Lynwood Lee noticed there weren't too many places to take cover from the sun.
So, they carried an umbrella to block the sunlight.
“It's hot, it's hot, it's hot. That's all I got to say. We got an umbrella. No rain, but it is hot," they said. “It's all in the sun, and there's no shade."
Making matters hotter were the empty paved surfaces in their path, which city officials said are sources of urban heat.
“These dead properties, we need to do something with them," Lee said.
Another CBS 6 viewer also wrote in with complaints of hot vacant lots in the area, some located next to treeless bus stops, up and down the street. One man said he struck up a conversation with other neighbors about living in a heat island surrounded by "blazing hot concrete."
"All of us were wondering why there are so many open sidewalk cutouts overgrown with weeds where no trees were planted, talked about how on hot days like today, any tiny bit of relief with even a slight cooler breeze, is a Godsend," he said.
According to a new report from Richmond, the heat impacts some communities disproportionately with disparities and increased heat-related illnesses reported in disenfranchised neighborhoods. Many of those communities are suffering from the effects of racist policies such as redlining and highway construction through Black and Brown neighborhoods, according to the report.
"The average number of days over and at 100 degrees is increasing quickly here in the City of Richmond, and that has disastrous impacts, not just for our infrastructure, because it takes a beating and it costs a lot of money to ensure that those infrastructure elements, those assets, are hardened to that increase in heat, but more so than that, it's the people," said Laura Thomas, the city's Director of Sustainability. "These people are impacted by the heat."
To reduce surface temperatures caused by the heat, the city released a so-called "cool kit" which contains strategies to implement on city projects that plan, support, and maintain buildings and structures. While Thomas said city staff are the "primary audience" for the initiatives, she said private property owners are also encouraged to utilize the strategies.
“The overall goals are, of course, to reduce the disparate impacts of the urban heat canopy, reduce overall temperatures, and of course, to better understand health disparities across community and how we can reduce those differences," Thomas said.
The strategies in the cool kit include:
- Planting more trees and establishing more green space and water features
- Incorporating shade shelters to protect from direct sunlight
- Using smart surface technologies that reduce surface temperatures, such as a reflective roof
- Depaving, which is removing underutilized impervious surfaces like parking lots and sidewalk squares
While the last item is a measure that Brandon and Lee would like to see in the neighborhood they frequent, execution would be difficult since many vacant lots are privately owned.
"When it comes to private property, which is the majority of the vacant parcels in the City of Richmond, we don't have authority to depave, to require any sort of planting of trees or native pollinators. It is something that some folks have been in discussion about, different creative ways to address that. Because we live in a Dillon Rule state, we're not allowed to create our own policies or laws. We have to wait for the state to allow us explicit authority to do some of those things. So in the meantime, we have had internal conversations about how to incentivize that on private property, and we're hoping to find a creative solution to that," Thomas said.
In meantime, neighbors said they've be grateful for any type of relief.
“So, if they put up more trees, I think everybody will be way more comfortable, especially with the people that's catching the busses," Brandon said.
CBS 6 is committed to sharing community voices on this important topic. Email your thoughts to the CBS 6 Newsroom.
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