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Mayor presents OCWB annual report citing decline in city poverty, outlines workforce and housing priorities
Summary
Mayor Avila and Office of Community Wealth Building officials told the Richmond City Council the city's poverty count and child poverty have fallen since 2015 and described program results, upcoming mayoral action plan and steps to strengthen cross-department coordination.
Mayor Avila presented the Office of Community Wealth Building's annual impact report to the Richmond City Council, saying the city's estimated number of residents living in poverty fell from about 51,800 in 2015 to about 41,000 in 2023 and the overall poverty rate declined from roughly 25.5% to 18.8%.
The report outlined why the trends matter for city budgeting, workforce development and housing policy and summarized OCWB's role in job placements, youth employment and guaranteed-income pilots that city officials said contributed to movement on the metric. "While these were incredibly ambitious goals, we're actually on track to achieve many of them," Avila said as he described OCWB's work since its 2014 founding. The presentation laid out next steps including a mayoral action plan to be released tomorrow and new data and coordination work in the office.
Avila framed the results against a broad city strategy that includes workforce training, youth employment and…
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