Focal Point

Ben Klutsey, executive director of the George Mason University Mercatus Center, has some suggestions.

Affordable housing developers in Virginia are building homes using a CLT approach in localities and now through the Virginia Statewide Community Land Trust

Between 1915 and 1970, approximately 6 million African Americans left their homes in the Southern United States and went in search of opportunity. Most went to cities and towns in the North, changing the complexion and culture of the places they left behind and shaping the new places they would call home. Historian Lauranett Lee sheds light on this and related migration patterns of Southern Black people.

With the need for affordable housing growing and public dollars to build or improve not meeting demand, private partners and longtime stakeholders find their way to the planning table. What results is better housing, new friendships and possibly, a blueprint for other cities

Population is a key factor in determining the health of a region. Of the nine metro areas in Virginia the Richmond metro is among the state’s fastest growing over the last three years.

Several businesses have cropped up to cater to the tastes of the migrants who’ve settled there.

People are moving to the South. Many of Virginia’s cities are benefiting from this mass migration, but not all areas of the state are seeing growth.

It was religious persecution in Europe that brought Mennonites and Brethren, who held similar beliefs, to the United States in the 1700s. Descendants of the earliest immigrants share their families’ stories of hardship, hard work, peace and pacifism. The uncommon diversity in the area today may owe to the practices of kindness and welcome, as many new immigrants have sought refuge here.

Roughly 1 in every 10 Virginia residents is Latino.

Within Alexandria's Hammond Middle School, the International Academy is at work, serving students from dozens of different countries and from all types of educational backgrounds. School leaders say the kind of learning loss experienced by most public school students during the pandemic is mitigated by the very methods the International Academy employs every school day of the year.