“Richmond’s existing public housing projects were built by demolishing ‘blighted’ black communities, often with insufficient community input or compensation, and moving them into these segregated units,” the guide said. “Discriminatory policies and practices in the following decades, such as redlining, disinvestment, and unfair labor practices, forged many of our current realities. ... The legacies of those practices persist.”

Herring said the state’s code should likewise be re-assessed; and if state lawmakers won’t change, then City Council could pass ordinances within the city limits that are less burdensome on residents and police, courts and jail.

“I shudder to think of the number of felons in the city, who are felons because of stuff that wasn’t dangerous but was arguably more harmful to themselves,” Herring said. “If the state code isn’t going to change, but the city is going to reach a consensus about how the city is going to enforce it, we could probably get away with it.”

The guide said that even though crime has trended downward since the 1990s, when the city was known as a murder capital of the U.S., “crime remains frustratingly prevalent.” But reasons for the decreases are largely elusive, Herring said.