Williams: Code Refresh must address redress and affordability

May 3, 2026, Richmond Times-Dispatch

Living on Tuxedo Boulevard in Richmond's East End, Sheri Shannon got an informal education in zoning-based inequity as a child during the 1980s.

Shannon, co-founder with Amy Wentz of the environmental justice nonprofit Southside ReLeaf, recalled a neighborhood bereft of trees. The only access to public green space was Oakwood Cemetery.

"I-64 ran behind our house," Shannon explained. "The old city landfill was down the street. As a kid, that was just what I knew. We didn’t have a grocery store within walking distance."

"All that was by design. And it really wasn’t until I got older that I thought, ‘This is environmental racism,'" Shannon said during a recent tree giveaway by Southside ReLeaf in the asphalt parking lot of a Midlothian Turnpike church — part of the nonprofit’s mission to reduce Richmond's documented "heat islands," a health-sapping residue of redlining.