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RVA's Got Issues: Meet mayoral candidate Andreas Addison

A portrait of Addison
Shaban Athuman
/
VPM News
Andreas D. Addison is photographed on Thursday, September 5, 2024 in Richmond, Virginia.

For the next several weeks, RVA's Got Issues and VPM News are teaming up to bring you special coverage of the Richmond mayoral election.

"Who's Got Your Vote?" takes voters inside Richmond's race for mayor. Host Rich Meagher interviewed each candidate to get closer to the issues and faces that want to shape the future of Richmond.

The RVA's Got Issues series continues with City Councilor Andreas Addison, who is currently representing Richmond's 1st District.

You can listen to or read Rich's interview with Andreas Addison here. A longer, video version of the interview is also embedded below.

Find RVA's Got Issues wherever you listen to podcasts — or on the RGI website.

Editor's note: This transcript has been lightly edited for style and length.


Rich Meagher: Welcome to RVA's Got Issues, a podcast about politics and public affairs in and around Richmond, Virginia. I'm your host, Rich Meagher. On this special election episode, RVA's Got Issues with the Richmond mayoral election. Five candidates are vying to be Richmond's next mayor. Each one wants to be the key decision maker that will shape the future of the city and the region.

We're joined now by Andreas Addison, a small business owner and the current Richmond City Council representative for the 1st District. Welcome, Andreas. 

Andreas Addison: I'm glad to be here.

Andreas, you didn't grow up in the city. You actually grew up in a rural part of Shenandoah. Now you're a city boy, right? A city resident, a representative. I mean, you worked for the city for a while. Let's go back to that. 

Sure.

What drew you to the city? What drew you to work here and to live here? 

You know, I was a Virginia Tech student and I was studying political science. And when I graduated in 2004, I really wanted to continue my work as a public servant, or actually really just use my degree — because not many people use their political science degree in the field of politics.

I know I'll tell my students you can, but they don't always do it. 

Yes. And so at the time I just worked in restaurants: I was a waiter and bartender, so I thought, “I could do that pretty much anywhere.” So I moved to Richmond and in that move, really started applying for jobs and starting to find ways into government.

And three years later, I landed a job as a management analyst too, under Gov. [Doug] Wilder's administration. And he came in to try to change things in City Hall. And I quickly found that that was a really great energy around that. And so we worked on trying to start the 3-1-1 call center and work on some other government projects.

But then, you know, Dwight Jones came in, I worked throughout his entire administration, and a lot of times it was about innovation and operations and poverty work.

And what really stood out to me was a lot of times when we looked at poverty, I was able to look back at my childhood. I grew up with a, you know, a SNAP/TANF/WIC — it was food stamps at the time for me — and got Social Security checks from my handicapped father. And so through that experience, when I looked at what was dealing in Richmond, I saw a difference. I had a lot of opportunities and access. I was, you know, part of a community. I was not separated and isolated.

So when I looked at Richmond and their poverty, I also learned about its racial past of creating public housing neighborhoods and isolation, and then realizing that this issue we're trying to solve today has been going on for a long time. And so that's really what started my career and that's what I think catapulted me to want to run for city council, because I wanted to be part of the change.

Yeah. And you've written about this, right? You used to run a blog. We could tell the kids later what blogs were, but you kind of articulated a philosophy there, right?

I think the term you used was like a Kurt Vonnegut term, like a “karass.” What does that mean to you? Like how does that work and fit into the experiences you had? 

Andreas Addison: So in the Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, there's a phrase used throughout the book called a “karass.” And a karass is a group of individuals who are unknowingly connected, but they just haven't been found yet, right? So you haven't had the introduction.

And so “cultivating the karass” is what my phrase has been. And I think in that capacity, it's really understanding that there are people all throughout our community that have a passion, that have an idea, that have a desire to want to make a difference. But sometimes they just don't know how. Or they don't know who to talk to, and it's our job to go find each other.

And so when I talk about cultivating the karass, it's going out to ride the bus, it's going to sit in a lobby waiting with other people for social services, to observe and listen and talk.

It's a way to go find what is going on around your city, and then take those ideas and take those individuals and engage with them to find out what's next.

When I talk about cultivating the karass, it's going out to ride the bus, it's going to sit in a lobby waiting with other people for social services, to observe and listen and talk.

During this journey with the karass — it wasn't a straight line, right? You documented a time where you really thought about leaving, right? You were so frustrated with city government, with your experiences, that you had maybe another opportunity.

What happened there? And why didn't you leave? 

So. It was probably the biggest project I ever led, and it was one of my proudest moments: Code for America. It was a project focusing on improving access to health care for uninsured residents in Richmond.

This is 2015. So this is before Medicaid expansion. I was out in the community working on this project, very competitive application process, had the mayor's support, had leadership support — and then when it came time to actually getting the funding in line, I was left with an empty bag.

And I really felt that, you know, this is not a hard funding project: It's in line with exactly what you care about with addressing poverty concerns and access to services. And I just got fed up with bureaucracy finding a reason to just put a wet towel on a really bright new idea. And so I put my name out there and a friend of mine who was the chief innovation officer in Kansas City was leaving for another job in LA.

That was an amazing opportunity. So I applied for it and, lo and behold over the next four weeks, I went from the phone interview 1, to the phone interview 2, to the screen interview with them. Booking a flight to go for an in-person interview and I quickly realized this could be my next step in my career. But do I want it?

And what I really came back and had to wrestle with was, “Do I want the title in a new city or do I want to do the work here in Richmond?” And that's really what I think was a big catalyst for why I ran for city council — I've been involved with Richmond for longer than I can imagine. And I didn’t want to give up on the city because I don't think me leaving would help it any further.

And I think it would be just another example of someone using Richmond as a stepping stone or getting frustrated and leaving to go somewhere else to do the work they really care about.

Instead of sort of taking your bag to another place and trying to work on issues there you thought, “I'm going to try and take this other role on city council.” So what was it about that role that was attractive to you? 

Because that's where policy and budget and programs come from. That's where change really originates. And if you look at the form of government and how things really happen, you know, the effectiveness of the mayor is their collaboration and cooperation with city council. Because at the end of the day, that's where the vote happens.

No matter what goes on in City Hall, what priorities you want to focus on, if city council does not fully support, or you're able to get five votes of the nine, that's where the vote happens — and then you really can't move forward with it. So that's where I saw an opportunity to kind of put my flag in the ground and really start working on some good policies and really lead some initiatives and change and focusing on how we can invest in the future.

So let's talk about that sort of future focus, because you talk a lot about civic innovation, right? Civic technology, you think about open data, you've talked about competition to streamline government. But I think some people might wonder: Is this too technical? Is this the approach that we need? Can you solve issues of equity through technology or technical solutions? 

So what would you say to someone who would say that your approach isn't the right fit for an entire issue like the North-South divide in Richmond, right, or the rich-poor divide in Richmond?

I think the biggest piece is to understand that, you know, city government is probably the biggest creator of data and information that you can analyze and figure out what's really going on. It can be the age of streets that we haven't paved. It could be sidewalks. It could be schools. It could be demographic information, but combined what we can see is a story.

And a lot of times that was one of the things I learned when I did the call center under Dwight Jones, it was called impact. It's what mayors always like to change the name, but under impact, what I learned was 3-1-1 was led by SeeClickFix. And SeeClickFix was an app that just worked on your mobile phone. It was only eight request types, but one of my first reports I gave to city leadership was a map of all the requests over a six-month period of time. And they looked at it and were very intent on like, “OK, here's the issues with potholes, and here's the issues with, you know, bulk trash, and here's the issues with, you know, abandoned cars.”

And I said, “You're missing one point.” And they're like, “What?” And I go, “Where is the data not coming in?”

And what we found was it was a lot of the public housing, lower-income neighborhoods. And so the question then came into, is it too technical? Is it that because you need to have a mobile phone that people don't know this exists?

You have to have a laptop, or you don't know this exists. And so what we found was that there are technical barriers, but it took technology and information to tell us that there is a technical issue.

It sounds like a good approach, right? But don't we already know that those neighborhoods are the ones left out, you know? So it can't just be that the technology we need that to tell us. How do you get the political will to follow up on the knowledge that you're gaining, whether it's through the technical or technology solution or whether through other means?

Let's give another example. So we look at public housing neighborhoods, right? You know, they were created mostly out of a temporary housing need as we displaced Black residents when we put the highway where we put it, and so through that, we've now created a formalized neighborhood around where public housing exists. And pretty much since it's been created, we haven't really invested anything around there.

What if the first real big economic development project we did was to create a neighborhood in public housing? Where we really looked at the opportunities of what's needed here: Do they have access to pharmacies medical services? Do they have child care or early childhood development centers? And we look at the data of what they don't have and go, “Well, government can zone and we can develop and we can plan and collaborate and invest to make that happen.”

And because we haven't done that for so long, it's what the situation is today, I believe the information that can show what's needed and where things are not is the best opportunity we have to then make good change of investment.

I've worked in City Hall for the last 16 years. And in that experience, I've always seen big, shiny projects, suck up all the resources and nothing else can happen.

I mean, that's a really intriguing idea, of investing in a neighborhood. But how do you, as mayor, resist the other kinds of pressures — on mayors, on administrations, on cities — to direct your resources elsewhere, say to a casino or an arena?

These sort of big projects that draw the attention of, you know, not just the government, but the powerful people outside government who make stuff happen in the city. 

So how do you resist that and say, no, actually let's direct ourselves to something else?

I've worked in City Hall for the last 16 years. And in that experience, I've always seen big, shiny projects, suck up all the resources and nothing else can happen. It stymies everything else we need to do as mayor. You will see me focused on getting away from that aspect.

If you want to come in and do this type of project, then you need to invest in the resources and staff and talent to make that project possible. Don't absorb all of my staff, because we've got neighborhoods to develop. We've got quality of life to improve. And that's what my focus will be.

Let's say you do train your staff on these kinds of neighborhood investment projects. How do you get the community themselves involved? Because that could still be elite imposing on a neighborhood. 

How do you get the folks who are affected involved and engaged — and trusting that the government has their best interests at heart? 

One of the first things I did at my first term was I started participatory budgeting: The People's Budget of Richmond is what it's being called. It's starting out this fall, nd it democratizes $3 million in our budget. It puts it in the hands of the residents to say, “I want to see this park bench. I want to see this playground fixed. I want new street lights.” Whatever the thing that the neighborhood sees as a priority.

And then they vote on what their priority for the projects are. And that's one way I think we can start really meeting people where they live.

I teach at UVA, and I teach a class on entrepreneurship, and the first class I always tell my students: You gotta focus on empathy and trust. And trust is a bridge built between two people, over time, until it's strong enough to carry the truth across.

And what that takes is building each side back and forth until you can really get to the root cause of what they really care about. That takes time, and I don't think we've ever given people of Richmond enough time to have that conversation.


Welcome back to RVA's Got Issues. We're with Richmond City Council member, and candidate for Richmond mayor, Andreas Addison. 

Andreas, we were talking about trust before. It is a key ingredient for any mayor, but especially in Richmond. And there's been some high-profile stories lately — meals taxes, finance departments, and others — that may weaken residents’ faith in city government.

How do you plan on rebuilding that trust? 

The biggest thing I feel is that we've created a workforce around paper. We've created a workforce around faux-solving problems rather than being preventative and thinking ahead of time. And so what I look at fixing this trust in city hall is: It should work.

The other part, though, is with restaurants. You know, one of the biggest things we did in 2018 — when the meals tax rate was increased — was we asked specifically as council to improve the accessibility for people to make those payments, get a credit card discount for how much it costs them to recapture that money, and all of these steps along the way that we expected as part of the approval.

Now we're finding out they aren't really being followed. There's issues with communication and the fact that, even right after that was approved, there are businesses that were paying taxes when that change happened that were now recruit accruing penalties, fees and interests for that many years without any communication.

That is not good government. I don't want to hear a situation where we're not thinking about the customers — more importantly, the businesses we depend on that put us on top 10 destination lists, and treating them like we've been seeing them and treating them the last six months. That's the first thing I'll fix.

And as a small business owner, I know firsthand how difficult it can be to work with City Hall: I was delayed nine months to figure out where to put a bathroom and an ADA ramp. And as a small business, it almost tanked my business dream.

And so I understand that frustration, but more importantly, I want to really fix that.

As a small business owner, I know firsthand how difficult it can be to work with City Hall.

But that's painful, right? Change can be painful, and you know, there's been some discussion among candidates for mayor about changes at City Hall, possibly changing personnel.

I mean, you've quoted, I think when you're writing, a former boss who said like, “If you can't change the people, change the people,”

Change the people.

Right. So what did you mean when you say this? Are you thinking that we're going to need big changes at City Hall? 

When I'm saying changing the people, it's more about making sure that it's the right people to lead the change that I want to see happen. I don't want to make the decisions of these people who are being fired — I'm replacing this, everyone's out — but I do want to make it be that you have to earn your job.

You have to show that you're going to be willing to work for the change that I want to bring.

Another issue that's really been important is housing, right? All the candidates agree we need some reform. We need to address the housing crisis in Richmond, but everyone seems to have a slightly different approach.

You focus on getting people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing, making it easier for those in housing to make critical repairs on their home.

Why are you taking this approach to housing? 

You know, the biggest thing I hear across any district at any income level across the city during this campaign has been, “I'm struggling to make my ends meet because my taxes keep going up.”

And so when I focus on my seven-point housing plan of policy recommendations to truly elevate what we're going to do as a city about housing. While we can look at building new affordability across the city, a lot of that's going to be multifamily apartments. That's going to take two to three years from today to hit the ground running.

So while we focus on that and find places we want to build those, the people that live adjacent to those neighborhoods right now are having a hard time. That's why a big part of my campaign is a tax reform proposal to really shift how we tax real estate.

More importantly, how do we create an opportunity to activate those more than 1,000 vacant, blighted, empty parcels and create vibrant, new, thriving neighborhoods — while not displacing neighbors to do it?

And that's what I think is the biggest opportunity: Keeping people in the housing they already have.

Let's extend that out to the sort of most vulnerable folks, the high eviction rates in Richmond, right? Nationally, one of the top ranked cities in terms of evictions. How do you reduce that without having to just let people not pay rent or not leave their house?

You know, I think this is an issue that's been really close to my heart, and when I saw the RVA Eviction Lab study that showed the underbelly of what's really going on with evictions across the city, you know, I engaged with them.

And I engaged with the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, went to the eviction court, and sat in the courtroom during eviction docket day, and was really just struck by just how many people were in there waiting to be told whether they have to leave their house or not — and realizing that the process at that point had been eight, nine weeks in that way of getting to the court date

And what we then found was we need a right to counsel. And we need to provide a right to counsel for those facing eviction.

And it's not meant to be like, “Let's lawyer up all the people facing eviction to attack the landlords.” It's meant to be, “What are the things we need to put in place — policies, funding programs, support — to keep you in your house?” To not pay the landlord what's owed in rent, and make sure that the house you're in is up to a good enough standard that it should be still livable.

How do we pay for all this stuff? Like, is there actually money in here? To do this kind of tax reform to do this kind of eviction services and resources, where do we get the money for that?

When I look at our budget and I think about investment in programs and initiatives like this, there is federal money, there is state money. There are grants from foundations and organizations I do not think we're getting or actively pursuing.

And so when I look at our city budget, I think we have to look at how we grow our budget. And so when I think about a real estate tax reform, the biggest thing I think we have is an opportunity. There is a parcel behind where my gym is located that was, 10 years ago, worth a $100,000. We rezoned it, and it's now worth $4 million.

So if you think about how we can do zoning as a tool to generate revenue, it supports the housing crisis needs we have. It supports workforce opportunities. It creates the need for developing a new neighborhood.

If I can create an empty parcel that was worth $100,000 and, by zoning it for the building that's now on it, create $4 million of value… I think we are going to be able to be fine with our revenues.

What are the things we need to put in place — policies, funding programs, support — to keep you in your house?

Speaking of this kind of experiential approach you sometimes take and get out there: You've made walkability, transportation, transit one of your signature issues — including participating in No Car November, right? You take a month off from having a car and see how that gets around. 

What did you learn from that experience? 

You know, I'm fortunate enough to live in the Museum District and I can walk and bike to a lot of places — a Pulse bus stop and Scott's Addition is literally about three-quarters of a mile from my house. And on most city council days I will walk to the bus and take it down to City Hall because it's quick and easy.

When I take the bus down — like a 1C — and go through the whole street down to Southside, it's a very different experience.

I had a friend, Silly Genius — he was one of our wall muralists here — take me on a bus ride to Southside, and he pointed out the bus stops that don't have a sidewalk. He pointed out where there's no infrastructure, there's no shelter. And so we got out at a couple of those stops and waited for the bus to experience, “This is what people do every day.” And that's the story that I need to have, and I think every mayor I would challenge to say, you know, who rides the bus? Because you need to understand what is really going on across our city.

I've been doing that for the last eight years, so much so that when I did No Car November I actually sold my car. And my wife and I only share one car together, because I think that experience now elevates the reason why it's a modern city I want to build and I want to make sure I do that from an experiential, lived experience .

So what do you think people get wrong about you as a candidate?

You know, I think what I hear the most is, I'm the 1st District candidate; I'm from means and resources; and I've always had this ambition of politics, et cetera. But what really comes into the fold is when I talk about my childhood.

Growing up, you know, with a hardworking stepdad that worked maintenance; with my mom, who did waitress work or part-time jobs here and there when she could find work; grew up on a farm surrounded by, you know, a bunch of rural land, and grew up in a very humble beginnings and was self-taught for three years when I was homeschooled from sixth to ninth grade.

And through those experiences, I feel like those shaped me to want to go to college. And my parents didn't push me to. And so when people realize like today, what you see before you is they put-together a guy in a suit who owns a business, teaches at UVA and all these things, like that's been a really hard-worked, earned experience. And that's what I think is different than what people expect when they see me, when they learn about how I got here.

And that's the thing that I think when you look at my policy priorities, the work I've done on city council, my willingness to get out of a car, ride my bike, walk the neighborhoods, get on the bus — is because that's what I did in college. I didn't have a car in college. I worked my way through college. My experience was meant to be when I need to go get groceries, I took the bus and I went to and from the bus. And that was what I did. So that was something that's normal for me.

And a lot of people don't expect that for me when they hear that story, things now make sense. They go, “That's why you care about affordable housing. That's why you care about transit. This is why you care about, you know, bike lanes and pedestrian safety.”

So what happens now is that curiosity around who I am is now I think elevating my status of being a really good mayor candidate, because I can relate to a lot of people, especially working families.

What's something — kind of flip side of that question — what's something kind of not so political about you that nobody knows about you, or you haven't really had a chance to talk about while on the campaign trail. 

My senior year at Virginia Tech, a friend of mine asked me to try out for the cheerleading squad. And so I had no gymnastic experience, I had no real anything regards to cheerleading experience, so I showed up completely green-eyed to tryouts.

And over the next four days, I learned how to stunt with a cheerleader, learned how to catch and throw and do the things that were needed, and I made the team. There were four spots and there were about 20 of us in the room.

I take it you didn't drop anybody. 

I didn't drop anybody.

OK.

Actually, that's what my coach said was the biggest thing that they liked — was that I anticipated a fall and was able to prepare myself for it. But most people just go, “Oh crap.”

Yeah. 

There they are on the floor. But one of the things I feel that story tells about me is I'm willing to go into something that's unknown, maybe uncomfortable, or learn the experience and figure it out and try and fail and figure out again.

And I did the same thing when I ran for city council. I did the same thing when I was an employee in City Hall. I had no experience going into this thing, how to make this work. But what did I do? Figure it out. So I've been trusted to make leadership roles. And I think that's because of what I did as a cheerleader.

That experience has shaped people. They see me as the person who's going to figure it out. He's going to come through that end at the end of the day with good ideas and passion, and more importantly, the ability of understanding what it's going to take to get it done.

Andreas Addison is running for mayor of Richmond. Thanks so much, Andreas. 

Thank you.

VPM News is the staff byline for articles and podcasts written and produced by multiple reporters and editors.