Governor Abigail Spanberger has signed legislation that aims to help those facing eviction.
In the last month, Virginia had more than 8,000 evictions according to the Eviction Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University. And advocates worry about those 8,000 families that have now lost a sense of stability and are in danger of falling into poverty.
"Evictions are not just the result of poverty. Evictions can also be the cause of poverty," says Christie Marra at the Virginia Poverty Law Center. "The only way to keep people from eventually getting evicted for not paying their rent is to help them pay their rent."
That's why she's celebrating a bill signed by Governor Abigail Spanberger this week establishing the Eviction Prevention Program that will identify factors contributing to evictions and provide interventions to prevent them. Thaler McCormick is CEO of the Hampton Roads nonprofit ForKids, which received money from a pilot version of the program that's existed since 2020.
"It's super important when you are trying to deliver services to know if a funding stream is going to continue to be available," McCormick says. "So, once we establish that any kind of public policy is really working for the folks who actually deliver those services, we need to be able to plan for it year to year."
Now that the governor has signed the bill establishing the program, it’s expected to have a budget of $3.5 million each year from the general fund.
