RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) -If you’ve noticed more graffiti in Richmond this year, you’re not alone.
The city’s graffiti removal program is working to keep up with the demand, but in reality, it just cannot get to all of it fast enough. Now, there is a new opportunity for community members to be a part of the solution.
“The more that we can empower people to tackle it as soon as they see it, I think the more effective we’ll be being able to mediate it,” Second District Richmond City Councilor Katherine Jordan said.
Jordan says graffiti has been a constant complaint from constituents, as it is a problem they keep seeing. In the past, the Department of Public Works’ Street Cleaning Operations reported getting called for even more removals in 2023 than in previous years. Now, there are more tools to help.
The Richmond Community Tool Bank has more than 300 different types of tools and rents them out to community-based organizations and volunteers for 3% of their retail value.
Councilor Jordan used some of her discretionary funds to help the tool bank get graffiti abatement kits, which include pressure washers, hoses and more. Groups can now rent the kits to help with unwanted graffiti.
“We’ve guaranteed that we’ll always have one available to any organization that needs them,” Executive Director of the Community Tool Bank Toby Vernon said. “These tools are available to community groups and nonprofits. So that means civic groups, neighborhood organizations, and that’s who I expect to primarily use the graffiti abatement tools is: folks who are feeling challenged by graffiti in their neighborhood. And they want to get ahead of it or prevent it in some cases by wiping off little tags here and there.”
Vernon says you can get involved by contacting your local neighborhood association, church, or volunteer group to find others to rent the tools.
You must be a member of the tool bank, but then you can get a kit pressure washer the next day. The kits are rented out on a weekly basis, which comes down to $10.48 a week. Vernon says in that time, a group could tackle multiple blocks.
DPW still has its line for people to report graffiti vandalism at RVA311.com, and the city will still clean it up for free, but there have been backlogs. The tool bank allows people to get ahead of that trend.
“It’s one of those things like the quicker you start to get these little tags off, the more likely you are to prevent the larger graffiti from popping up,” Jordan said. “Street art graffiti is in the eye of the beholder, I would say. So, what we’re trying to do is for the people who want to remove a tag off of their facility, their building, their home, we want to empower them to do so so that the city can tackle some of the larger ones that are hard to get to,” Jordan said.
The tool bank is providing a training session on Saturday, Nov. 18, at 10 a.m. to teach people how to use the graffiti abatement kits effectively. The tool bank is located at 1407 Cummings Dr.
Jordan says she is still working to get sanction areas or walls in the city where artists can freely express their graffiti in a way that does not damage others’ homes or property.
She is working to identify spots in the second district where street art and graffiti are welcomed and get money in the budget this year to create the sanction spaces.
Copyright 2023 WWBT. All rights reserved.