“They’re afraid to come out of their apartments. ... They’re afraid to come to the snack machines,” she said of her neighbors. “They’re in favor of the parking permits just because they feel like it would make them a little safer.”

Ultimately, residents and other housing advocates demanded that agency seek bottom-up solutions to complex problems.

“There is no other community in this city where violence would be allowed to displace people and move them from their homes,” Art Burton, founder and executive director of Kinfolks Community, said of reports that people were moving out of Creighton Court to escape crime.

The city saw nine slayings in eight days last month and is on pace to surpass last year’s homicide total, which at 61 was Richmond’s highest in a decade.

The housing authority’s executive director proposed moving to a decal system, to help police monitor public housing communities, in a news conference held after four people were killed in Gilpin Court within hours last month.

That approach did not sit well with Marcel Slag, a lawyer at the Legal Aid Justice Center who represents housing authority clients in eviction cases.