The Land Use, Housing and Transportation Standing Committee met on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, at 3:00 PM in the Council Chamber, City Hall, Richmond, VA. The committee considered a presentation on senior housing and aging in place, and acted on nine legislative items, including approvals and continuances. The meeting adjourned at approximately 6:00 PM.
Amanda Wrinkle (Senior Manager, HCD) and Sara Link (Manager, Office of Aging and Disability Services) presented on the city's senior housing landscape and aging in place efforts. Key statistics:
Councilmembers asked about prioritizing home renovations vs. new housing, income levels, waitlist prioritization, outreach, and RDOT’s role. Presenters noted the upcoming Strategic Plan to End Homelessness (renamed Greater Richmond Plan to Address Homelessness and Housing Instability, October 2026), the Equitable Affordable Housing Plan update (December 16, 2026), and a new VCU training on older homelessness.
I can't tell if it was from that microphone or this one, but for some reason when these two are both testing, testing testing testing one, two, three. But yeah. I can respond to it. Yeah, we're talking about it. All right, Madam Clerk, we'll call this meeting to order. Can you proceed with the chamber emergency evacuation announcements? Upon activation of the emergency alarm signal, all persons should immediately exit the building. Please use the exit to the left or right front of the council chamber or the north or west stairwells outside of the rear doors of the chamber. Do not use elevators or escalators. At the exit in the building, security would direct everyone down Knife Street to the fence area located between Clay and Lee Streets. Able persons should say visually and hearing a pair of visitors with exiting the building. Persons wishing to speak during the public comment period and/or public hearings are generally allowed three minutes to speak. Persons appearing before the committee are not allowed to campaign for public office, promote private business ventures, use language of a personal nature, which is also means any person, including commerce directory public officials or staff members that are not related to their official duties or just to question staff members directly. All questions need to directed to the committee chair for you to adhere to the guidelines and result on speakers forfeiting any minute time and further discipline action as necessary, which could include a bar from attendance at future meetings of the committee for a period of six months. Members of the public who register in advance to speak virtually will be called at the appropriate time, either during the public comment period or during the public hearing for the legislation on which they signed the two address. Seeing none, the public comment period is now closed. All right, let's do the presentation. Would you like to do the approval of the minutes? Yeah, we want to do that too. Thanks. The minutes to be approved from July 21st, 2026 land use housing and transportation standing committee meeting at the No Memeso Corrections, then those meeting minutes stand if we were presented. Those minutes have been approved. Thank you. Now we'll do the presentation. It is senior housing and aging in place. Hi, everyone. Hi, Councilmember Brenton, Jones, Roberts, and Jordan. My name is Amanda Rinkel. I'm the senior manager for Federal Entitlement Programs with the Department of Housing and Community Development. We're here with you today to be able to talk on senior housing and aging in place. So for this presentation, for the first part, I'm actually going to call up my colleague Sarah to be able to give us a great overview of all the work that's happening with her with her program first. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for having me. I'm the manager of the Office of Aging and Disability Services for the City of Richmond. We are under the Department for Neighborhood and Community Services, and we work very closely alongside our Office of Homeless Services. We are very strong but mighty staff of one manager, myself, and two human service analysts, one who oversees aging, and another who we're hiring for right now who oversees disability services. I'm going to go ahead and take us into the next slide. This is my first time. One second, Nadia, can we get them on the screen over here? Great. Thank you. So our mission, our mission, excuse me. Our mission is to support older adults and individuals with disabilities to live with independence, dignity, and through advocacy of services and strong community partnerships. So outlined on this slide, you'll see some of ourselves as we are the connective tissue for informational referrals for the city of Richmond and individuals and older adults looking for some of those supports. That includes access to resources and benefits in health care, supporting safety and the rights of older adults and individuals with disabilities from abuse, neglect, exploitation for promoting health and well-being. We do that through programs, caregiver support groups, and social engagement. So I wanted to highlight for the group some of our demographics. An age wave. So over 22,000 plus households are age 65 plus, which represents over 21.7% of all Richmond's households. And 32.4% of homeowners are cost burdened, meaning they spent over 30% of their incomes on housing.