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City staff report updates on Richmond Resilience guaranteed-income cohort; committee forwards contract with UpTogether/FII National
Summary
Office of Community Wealth Building staff updated the committee on the Richmond Resilience Initiative cohort (880 applicants), explained that UpTogether will administer the next round and return administrative funds, and the committee voted to forward an ordinance authorizing a grant/contract to FII National for implementation.
Derek Wadley, program operations supervisor and program manager for the Richmond Resilience Initiative in the Office of Community Wealth Building, told the committee the current cohort recruitment launched May 26 and that 880 applicants had qualified for consideration.
The update is significant because the city is authorizing a contract to implement a guaranteed-income pilot that provides $500 per month for 24 months to selected participants, and the administration said the program’s administrative costs will be reduced for the upcoming iteration.
Wadley said UpTogether will administer the program for the city and that, because of the existing relationship, UpTogether agreed to return more than the administrative fee: "the administrative costs, which is $50,000 but they're going to give us $60,000 back," Wadley said, meaning the city expects no net overhead and an additional $10,000 to support participant services.
Wadley said the city will use a lottery to select participants because of the large and geographically broad applicant pool. He said staff are triaging applications and will report back with a district-by-district participation breakdown after the June application period closes. He said VCU's Research Institute on Social Equity (Dr. Douglas Glenn) will help monitor the lottery process to ensure fairness.
Council members sought clarification about timing: Wadley said applications will be accepted through June, selection will follow the lottery, and payments begin only after selected participants are identified.
The committee voted to forward ordinance 2025-139 to council with a recommendation to approve. The ordinance authorizes the CAO to execute an up-together grant contract between the city and FII National for implementation of the Richmond Resilience Initiative guaranteed-income program. The roll-call recorded Miss Jones and Chair Lynch as voting Aye; the motion carried.
Staff said the program will use the same payment model as prior iterations — $500 per month for 24 months — and emphasized that the city and UpTogether negotiated to avoid administrative overhead for this round.
