Regula & Lothar

Regula Franz

Longtime Church Hill Resident
B. 1956

I’m a photographer. That’s how I came to Richmond. I have lived here since 1990. In the ‘90s, a lot of friends, who were mostly European, lived in Church Hill because it really reminds us of Europe. Everything is so close together. Everything is old.

If you wanted to get out of the Fan, which became unaffordable, then you would just move here. People came in, mostly artists, who bought houses for $10,000 dollars that are now $300,000. I first lived around Chimborazo, which was really sketchy. We were the only white people. Everybody would have big parties every weekend; well-known musicians would come. We had big fires in the back. That was the best four years of my life.

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Lothar Pausevang

Longtime Church Hill Resident
B. 1962

I’m an architect. What we see here is happening throughout the States, throughout Europe. Neighborhoods are shifting, and even the demographics of the neighborhoods are shifting. Gentrification has some bad side effects. People who don’t have the means are getting pushed out.

If you don’t have the programs—city, state, federal—to really protect people of low income, they will have to leave this neighborhood. Unfortunately, in the United States, there are not too many programs.

There is one group in Church Hill, they are doing okay work but they are very conservative in their approach to urbanization. They want to freeze what they have in time and that you cannot do.    A city is an urban organism that is always changing.