Homes for All Our Neighbors warmly invites you to our upcoming event, Drawing Lines: How Zoning Shaped Richmond — and What Comes Next. Share this invite with a friend or neighbor and join us for an evening of investigating the past and envisioning the future.
When? Wednesday, May 6th from 6:30 - 8 p.m.
Where? Virginia Museum of History and Culture, 428 N Arthur Ashe Blvd
How did our city get its shape — and what will change it over the next 50 years?
On Wednesday, May 6, three local thought leaders will come together to talk about housing, fairness, and how zoning shapes who gets to live where.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Paul Williams will lead the conversation. He'll be joined by LaToya Gray-Sparks, an historian whose research on the roots of Richmond's zoning helps explain why so many residents today face barriers to finding safe, stable housing. Thomas Okuda Fitzpatrick, executive director of Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia, will share how zoning laws can limit housing choices for people across Richmond and the surrounding region.
Homes for All Our Neighbors, a coalition of 23 area nonprofits working toward zoning in Richmond that opens doors for everyone, presents this conversation in partnership with the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.
Speaker bios:
Michael Paul Williams is a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, acclaimed for his writing on race, inequality, and community in Richmond. A longtime observer of the region, his work has profoundly shaped public understanding of Richmond’s history and the challenges and opportunities facing its residents today.
LaToya Gray-Sparks, Community Outreach Coordinator for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, is a preservationist, cartographer, and urban historian. Her digital project, Planned Destruction, received first place in the Environmental Systems Research Institute’s Educational Map Contest. She was also an inaugural fellow with Preservation Virginia’s African American Fellowship Program, further deepening her commitment to equity in preservation work.
Thomas Okuda Fitzpatrick is executive director of Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia (HOME of VA), where he leads efforts to expand housing access and fight housing discrimination across the Commonwealth. Since joining HOME of VA in 2022, he has focused on strengthening fair housing enforcement, advancing policy solutions, and using litigation to expand housing choice, drawing on a background that includes civil rights work with the ACLU of Virginia and leadership roles in state and local government.