To help celebrate CBN's 10th birthday, a group of longstanding CBN members, partners, and Community Development Family Reunion attendees shared their stories and photos from the past decade (and beyond) for a special 10-Year Anniversary Memory Book. Madeleine Swanstrom (pictured second from the left) collected everyone's memories and assembled the book for us.
It’s Time to Move On From Community Consensus
Jeremy Levine
Jeremy Levine, Assistant Professor of Organizational Studies and Sociology at the University of Michigan
This column was originally published in Shelterforce.
When it comes to community development projects in poor urban neighborhoods, practitioners and scholars often ask a seemingly simple question: what does the community want? Since the 1960s and the War on Poverty, the community development field has embraced (to at least some extent) the idea of “community control.” Rooted in the Black Power Movement, community control originally referred to Black people reclaiming control over schools, businesses, and other institutions that affect Black neighborhoods. Today, community control is a normative idea that the community—broadly defined—should have a say and determine neighborhood priorities. While developers sometimes agree to formal contractual obligations like community benefits agreements (CBAs), no mechanism of achieving community control has been more common than the public meeting.
Critiques of participatory processes abound. Political scientists Katherine Einstein, David Glick, and Maxwell Palmer find that public meeting participants tend to be white homeowners—meaning public meetings will disproportionately serve white homeowners’ interests. Sociologist Michael McQuarrie argues that community-based organizations, motivated by organizational survival, use participation and consensus organizing to establish legitimacy and curry favor with funders. As a result, participation tends to support elite authority rather than challenge it. Focusing on affordable housing debates in the Bay Area, New York Times journalist Conor Dougherty shows how public meetings are in effect veto points that can block new development. New projects generally require community agreement in order to move forward, and so all it takes is a handful of opponents to signal a lack of consensus. By design, then, public meetings give the people who say “no” a much louder voice than the people who say “yes.”
For most observers, the solutions are technical. More meetings. Better attended meetings. Differently designed meetings. In short, the challenge is to fine-tune public meeting practices in ways that elevate the authentic voice of the community.
While conducting research for my book, tentatively titled Constructing Community and forthcoming with Princeton University Press, I came to question these and other assumptions. I spent four years conducting fieldwork in some of Boston’s highly segregated and disadvantaged neighborhoods. I wanted to understand who made important decisions about affordable housing, public transit, economic development, and open recreational space. I was particularly interested in the relationship between public participation and community control.
I argue that no participatory process can accurately reflect the voice of the community, no matter how well run. The reason is fundamental: there is no such thing as “the” community. As sociologists Mary Pattillo and Monica Bell persuasively show in separate studies, opinions and experiences with institutions vary, even in demographically segregated neighborhoods. To say that “the community” is in support of anything is a misnomer.
Community development practitioners, by contrast, generally assume there is in fact a community that has a voice; community control requires the community to control development, after all. When those in power circumvent participating community members, it is clear community control has not been achieved. But how do we evaluate community control when some community members might oppose a project that others pursue—did the community control the project in those cases? Or when community members pursue projects that would ultimately harm rather than help the urban poor—did community control lead to more equitable outcomes?
The Community Replaces an Abandoned Factory
In 2009, the City of Boston foreclosed on an abandoned warehouse in the ethnically diverse, low-income neighborhood of Upham’s Corner. The building sat vacant until 2013 when the City announced plans to replace it with a street lighting storage facility. A group of mostly Cape Verdean residents from the streets adjacent to the building heard about the proposed facility and were outraged. They unequivocally opposed the City’s plans, though they were not necessarily in agreement about an alternative use of the space. “The community process has been short-circuited in a major, major way,” one nonprofit leader explained.
After hearing concerns from the community—that is, the people who showed up to public meetings—city officials abandoned their plans for a storage facility and pledged a new community-driven process to guide the site’s redevelopment.
What, then, should replace the factory? In September, officials presented draft guidelines for a new mixed-used development. Yet some residents pushed back at what they saw as top-down decision-making. Organizers from a local nonprofit, nationally recognized for its community organizing expertise, offered to conduct a participatory process. The following month, they held a meeting with 33 participants, including about a dozen white, Asian, Cape Verdean, and Black residents. Organizers divided everyone into three groups to discuss development priorities as city officials listened in.
Each recommendation directly contradicted another. One resident requested a park; another objected and said the neighborhood already had plenty of parks. One wanted an industrial facility for local jobs and absolutely no housing; another wanted only housing and no commercial uses. Some wanted only affordable housing. Others pointed to the concentration of poverty in the neighborhood and recommended only market-rate condos. And still, others suggested a mix of uses, such as a ground-floor commercial development below two floors of apartments.
As the meeting ended, City officials looked dejected; the contradictory information did not reveal any clear priority. Reflecting the lack of consensus, the final guidelines, unveiled in March 2014, were practically indistinguishable from officials’ initial draft. That didn’t stop the City’s head of property disposition from telling a local reporter, “The community in Upham’s Corner has been a wonderful partner to help us envision what they’d like to see in this space . . . Their opinion and input will be critical to our analysis.”
In June 2016, the redevelopment authority approved a local community development corporation to build a mixed-use development at the site, including 80 apartments and 9 market-rate townhomes on top of light industrial and office commercial space.
Was this an example of community control in action? Put differently, did the community control the process and pursue the project it wanted? The answer was both yes and no: The handful of community members who wanted a mixed-used, mixed-income development got what they wanted, and the others who wanted only affordable housing (or only commercial development and no housing, or only housing and no commercial uses, or only a park, and so on) did not. Because the community did not agree—a completely understandable and common situation—there was no single voice from the community to control the development. After 3 years of community process, City officials approved exactly the kind of project they wanted from the beginning.
The Community Contests a Transit Station
In 2005, the state transportation authority agreed to build a new commuter rail station on Blue Hill Avenue, in the predominantly Black, low-income neighborhood of Mattapan. The new station would give residents a single-seat ride to jobs and other services in downtown Boston. Without the station, ride times were twice as long and required multiple bus and subway transfers.
Nonprofit organizers and transit advocates—including a mix of privileged nonprofit leaders, residents of nearby poor neighborhoods, and at least one Mattapan resident—pushed hard for the new station. But in 2009, vocal opposition emerged from a group of older Black middle-class homeowners whose homes abutted the proposed site. They believed the new station would damage their homes’ foundations, negatively impact their property values, and disrupt their quality of life. For years, they participated in public meetings and vocalized their disapproval.
Initially, the opposition appeared successful. Five years passed and plans for the station remained “in design.” Yet the nonprofit organizers continued their advocacy as well. Planning for the station continued behind the scenes, and in October 2014, Gov. Deval Patrick formally announced the new station’s construction schedule. At a public event, one of the Black middle-class residents expressed her frustration. “The opposition has fallen on deaf ears because the powers-that-be have decided that this is what is best for this community,” she said. The local press acknowledged her disapproval, but nevertheless concluded that “[c]ommunity members…praised the news.”
Even if some community members praised the new station, it would be a stretch to say that the process was community-controlled; a vocal, participating segment of the community did not want the station in their backyards. Transportation officials pushed through with their station plans despite opposition—but to the benefit of poor transit riders in Mattapan.
Coda: Rethinking Participation and Community Control
That seemingly simple question— “what does the community want?” —was not so simple in either case. In Upham’s Corner, the community wanted a park, didn’t want a park, wanted affordable housing, didn’t want affordable housing, and on and on—there was no single community position to juxtapose against the City or a potential developer. Similar scenarios are easy to imagine; in any neighborhood, opinions will vary. The Mattapan case is complicated for additional reasons. The community simultaneously “won” and “lost”: Middle-class residents were unable to block the new station, while low-income residents gained greater access to public transit. Supporting the community did not necessarily mean supporting poor urban residents.
No additional meeting, alternative community organizing strategy, or clever urban planning activity would have made a difference. Community control was elusive because there was no singular voice of the community.
If there is no bounded, unified community to control development, does that mean we should abandon resident participation and rely exclusively on top-down expertise? Absolutely not. Instead, we should rethink the problem participation can solve: not uncovering community consensus, but amplifying the political voice of marginalized residents. Poor urban residents face intersecting inequalities that prevent local knowledge from breaking through into political debates. Our focus should be on dismantling these inequalities rather than pursuing what is often a farce of “community” consensus.
What if instead of public meetings—constrained by both time and space, where the optimal outcome is consensus and therefore “no” has more power than “yes”—we invested more in low cost, ongoing exercises that produce a high volume of information, persist even after particular projects are completed, make priorities transparent, and neither seek nor assume a singular position from “the community”? Take the abandoned factory in Upham’s Corner. A few residents spent a couple of hours brainstorming ideas, but officials reverted to their original plans when consensus did not emerge—all while justifying the decision as influenced by “the community.” The contradictory recommendations represented a failure to reach consensus. Contrast this with the work of Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI), a nonprofit in Boston. DS4SI develops creative public art exercises to generate and catalogue public space priorities—activities that are far more engaging and accessible than any 2-hour meeting. Or consider pairwise wiki surveys. These surveys are like a game where people choose between two answers to a question—like, “What should replace the abandoned factory?”—and can keep choosing between paired answers (and add their own possible answers) for as long as they like. A back-end algorithm ranks answers and, importantly, gets more accurate the more people play. Here, the entire point is to reveal contradictory recommendations and force a public conversation about why some ideas are better or worse than others.
These alternative activities creatively solicit, collect, and even rank ideas without any assumption that community members should agree. By displaying the full range of ideas, they also put more pressure on public officials to transparently explain why they pursued a certain path without resorting to the kind of “community” talk I observed in Upham’s Corner and Mattapan. Neither public art exercises nor wiki surveys can fully solve the problems of participation and inequality. And more questions certainly remain, such as who would control these activities and whether decisions should be binding. But when we rethink the problem as one of political voice rather than community consensus, it opens up new, innovative techniques to determine public priorities. From there, people and organizations can mobilize around the proposals they believe are best for poor neighborhoods.
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Jeremy R. Levine is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Studies and Sociology (by courtesy) at the University of Michigan. He earned his A.M. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard. His work analyzes the politics of inequality, particularly in U.S. cities. His first book, Constructing Community, was published in 2021 with Princeton University Press and is available for purchase through Princeton University Press and on Amazon.
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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
We invite readers to contribute to the civic conversation about community development in St. Louis by writing an op-ed for the Community Builders Exchange. Op-eds should be short (400-700 words) and provocative. If you have an idea for an op-ed, contact Jenny Connelly-Bowen at jenny@communitybuildersstl.org.
Green Collar Jobs a Catalyst for Strong Communities
Rachel Witt
Rachel Witt, Executive Director of the South Grand Community Improvement District
This column was originally published on Engaging Local Government Leaders.
Many ways exist to address poverty, unemployment, and social equity. The green collar industry made up of recycling, landscaping, food production, and energy production with wind and solar can be a solution because those industries need both skilled and unskilled employees. Many opportunities are available for skilled workers: energy, green building, and mechanics. But there are also multiple green-collar jobs where no previous skills are needed, such as recycling, landscaping, and food production. These jobs are key to building a sound community. In fact, today’s manual labor workforce can improve overall environmental health through the partnership of green-collar jobs. Such partnerships, with small business startups, nonprofit assistance in job training, and local governments’ zoning regulations and tax incentives will in turn make communities stronger and more economically sound.
Many small business startups are happening nationwide in this industry from landscaping companies specializing in native plants, stormwater management, restoration of prairies, to the creation of food production and solar installation and maintenance.
These small business startups can pay well, offering health insurance, retirement, training, and incentives for higher education coursework. Providing well-paying jobs translates into economic growth. For instance, communities that saw no growth now can be a catalyst to bring additional jobs to the area such as healthcare, education, and can foster the rebirth of main streets. Lastly, skilled green-collar jobs can be a catalyst to build population density. Building population density is a game-changer for struggling under-employed communities.
Many nonprofits are seeing the need for these green jobs and are stepping up to assist with job training. Grants are available to train the local workforce on solar and wind installation. In the coming years, it will be exciting to see the evolution of these alternatives and what will be next for the industry.
Local governments are the key to encourage the growth of these emerging jobs through incentives, proper planning, and zoning. Also, it is key for local governments to set benchmarks and regulations to encourage sustainable practices. Creating an economic sustainability plan will encourage developers and entrepreneurs to invest in the community, adding more job opportunities and housing options. Local governments can help underserved communities by making green-collar jobs a priority, which in turn makes their community more desirable and prosperous for all.
Plus, green-collar jobs can help increase revenue to local governments while creating a brand and identity that provides pride and hope to communities. Green collar jobs can be a catalyst for job growth that brings needed taxes to struggling local governments. This public-private partnership of local governments, nonprofits, and small business startups is the key to success to elevate and encourage the development of green-collar jobs.
Many under-employed communities that once prospered with blue-collar jobs are now struggling with abandoned industrial properties and bleak and desolate main streets. These once-thriving communities can be brought back to life through green-collar jobs. Green collar jobs can bring happiness to the workforce that helps the environment and makes the quality of life better for others. It builds morale, and longevity in the work of the future. When an industry can bring hope and enjoyment, the effects trickle down into the community. Beautification projects take shape, residential and commercial buildings are repaired, and investment brings community prosperity, making communities stronger and more economically sound.
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Rachel Witt has been the Executive Director of the South Grand Community Improvement District for 15 years. She is a graduate from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Geography, minor in Sociology and certification in Nonprofit Management. She also has a Master’s degree from Widener University in Chester PA in Public Administration emphasizing in local government and economic development. Ms. Witt serves as Secretary for the 2nd District Police Business Association. Proud graduate of the police citizens academy. She serves as Member at Large and for the Missouri Chapter of the American Planning Association-St. Louis Section and committee member for their Public Advocacy Committee. Her past board positions have been President of the Third District Police Partnership Vice President DeSales Community Development and Treasurer for River Styx Magazine.
Received the 2018 Maestro Award from the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International, assisted with South Grand becoming the first Green Dining District in the City of Saint Louis in May 2018, American Planning Association Great Places in America of 2017, American Planning Association of Missouri Great Places of 2015, 2011 Outstanding Local Government Achievement Award for collaboration on the South Grand Great Streets Initiative.
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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
We invite readers to contribute to the civic conversation about community development in St. Louis by writing an op-ed for the Community Builders Exchange. Op-eds should be short (400-700 words) and provocative. If you have an idea for an op-ed, contact Jenny Connelly-Bowen at jenny@communitybuildersstl.org.
Lessons to Guide Future Equitable Development Planning
Chloe Greene, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Associate at Abt Associates
Sarah Wolff, Associate at Abt Associates
This column was originally published in Shelterforce.
Chloe Greene
As the U.S. continues to grapple with issues of racial equity and justice, equitable development planning has emerged as a tool to address systemic inequity and advance inclusive investment strategies. In 2018 and 2019, JPMorgan Chase provided funding to 23 communities through the PRO Neighborhoods Competition to support the development of plans to advance equitable development in a range of neighborhoods experiencing disinvestment and neglect, including predominantly Black communities, racially and ethnically diverse low-income areas, and chronically distressed neighborhoods.
Sarah Wolff
We had the opportunity to learn about the progress of these grantees by reviewing their final plans and interviewing a selection of the grantees. We’d like to share three key insights from their work.
No. 1—Root Equitable Development Planning in a Community’s History and Its Residents’ Experiences
In many cases, current neighborhood distress stems in part from unjust past policies and practices. By recognizing this history, and its continued disparate impact, communities can work to dismantle inequitable practices and construct new ones that explicitly and intentionally prioritize equity. This was the case in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where one grantee, Build Baton Rouge (BBR), worked with residents to develop an equitable development plan as part of larger planning effort to address transit and public investment. BBR rooted the Imagine Plank Road plan in the community’s history, experience, and vision for the future.
The plan begins by chronicling the history of the neighborhood, including the white flight and disinvestment the area experienced following the end of segregation in the later part of the 20th century. As Christopher Tyson, executive director of BBR, explains, “If we begin with history, we remove the stigma from the people. . . . If you ride through Black communities and all you see is a collection of people who make poor choices, then you’re going to embrace solutions that likely further penalize, stigmatize, shame, and demean those people. If, however, you understand the failures of urban planning, finance, public and social policy, you are able to begin with people being humanized, valued, and centered.”
BBR led an experiential and participatory community engagement process, which included collecting favorite memories of the neighborhood through a visioning survey, a neighborhood tour (called Walk the Plank) where participants shared their visions for specific sites, a street festival, and a food truck event featuring neighborhood- and Black-owned vendors, and a neighborhood cleanup and public art event. Planners attended the events and collected data to inform the plan. In addition, the planners solicited input through a hashtag (#ImaginePlankRoad), used social media to engage residents, and created a weekly newsletter. As Tyson explains, they strove to “drive a more authentic, experientially based engagement process that deliberately engaged Black and Indigenous people.”
BBR engaged community members in conversations about race and racism to help identify systemic barriers to growth and opportunities. Preserving the history and authenticity of the neighborhood was a primary concern of corridor residents who wanted to ensure that the rich cultural history would not be lost, but instead strengthened through investing in existing residents and institutions. The resulting plan explicitly addresses race and class history, acknowledges the marginalization of Black neighborhoods as a central feature of 20th century spatial development, and prioritizes the preservation of community culture and attracting and growing Black-owned businesses. The projects and investments recommended in the plan are designed to meet the needs identified by the community, which is 96 percent Black and where one-third of the residents live in poverty. The seven development projects listed in the plan include new housing and childcare services, a civic center, a food incubator that will advance community through culture, and a park for recreation. In addition to the development projects, the plan investing in loan repayment and forgiveness programs to support local area businesses and return vacant land and buildings to commerce, and establishing a community land trust to prevent displacement.
No. 2—Leverage the Equitable Development Planning Process to Build Community Leadership
To remedy the effects of inequitable policies and practices, residents of disinvested neighborhoods need information, tools, resources, and authority to lead development efforts in their communities. To that end, the best equitable planning processes do not simply ask residents to express their views. Instead, they empower residents by including them in defining the goals of development projects, build on skills and leadership residents develop during the planning process, and propose strategies for continuing to build community leadership when implementing the resulting plan.
Consider, for example, The Real Estate Council (TREC)’s experience in Dallas. TREC engaged residents through surveys, partner and community meetings, and focus groups to identify the types of physical investments that residents would like to see prioritized in their neighborhoods. In addition, TREC used mapping technology and hired community members to conduct a door-to-door survey. The team mapped each parcel and collected information from residents about their needs.
TREC observed that the residents who engaged in the planning process developed knowledge, skills, and experience that they can continue to draw on to advocate for their needs, including developing an understanding of zoning ordinances and how to get access to government officials. TREC also noted that residents organized in response to the planning process. One group of residents living in the neighborhood known as “the Bottom” formed the Bottom Neighborhood Association to ensure their interests were better represented during the planning process. The formation of the association sparked new dialogues between planners and residents as the new organization could directly represent the residents’ interests in the planning process. Prior to the formation of this group, it was organizations that were less accountable to the residents that interacted with planners. The neighborhood association can also continue to advance residents’ interests beyond the planning process.
The plan that emerged from TREC’s planning process, Community Driven Growth, identifies strategies for continuing to develop community leadership in each target neighborhood through education, community organizing, community benefit agreements, and resident representation in future decision making. A few of the specific strategies identified in the plan include coordinating resident advocacy by bringing multiple local groups together to form a “super neighborhood organization” that can represent more than one area, working with the city council to change the times of zoning meetings so working residents can attend, planning for resident oversight in community land trusts, and promoting voting in municipal elections.
No. 3— Integrate Environmental Justice Concerns Into the Planning Process
Residents of many disinvested neighborhoods contend not only with economic challenges, but also environmental ones, such as industrial pollution, lead poisoning, and contaminated water. There’s an efficiency in addressing both development and environmental inequities at once since there is significant interplay between a community’s economic and development prospects and the quality and safety of its natural and built environment.
South Florida Community Land Trust took on the dual challenges to the development of affordable housing posed by planned transit expansion and rising sea levels in developing the plan South Florida’s Coastal Housing Link. One of the primary environmental challenges facing residents of South Florida is the rising sea level. Though wealthy, mostly white residents of the coastal communities can escape the threat of floods by moving to higher ground, many Black, Latinx, and low-wealth residents do not have the means to do so. Additionally, as moving inland becomes more desirable, wealthy white residents are encroaching on existing Black, Latinx and low- and moderate-income communities.
At the same time as residents of South Florida are grappling with rising sea levels, plans are underway to build a new rail line that will run through 27 neighborhoods. In anticipation of the new line, the South Florida Community Land Trust led the development of a parcel-level analysis to identify opportunities to develop and preserve affordable housing proximate to the planned transit line. From there, the planners overlaid a flood map on the area to identify land likely to be safe from flooding. The land trust is now working to purchase land parcels that are both safe from flooding and located near future transit stations. The resulting plan responds to the community’s articulated priorities, which ranked access to transit as the top priority and protection from future flooding and effects of climate change second.
Learn more about the work of these organizations’ equitable planning efforts in this recorded Abt webinar. More information on equitable development planning can be found in the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ report Ingredients of Equitable Development Planning, Government Alliance on Race and Equity’s Equitable Development as a Tool to Advance Racial Equity and NALCAB’s Guide to Equitable Neighborhood Development.
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Chloe Greene is an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Associate at Abt Associates with over ten years of experience in qualitative research and analysis, with a particular focus on racial equity and marginalized populations. Her areas of focus include culturally responsive planning and sustainable economies for low and moderate-income communities. Her research also includes solutions to improve the economic and social standing of long-term residents in communities experiencing racial and ethnic banishment, developing entrepreneurial organizational structures for culturally relevant arts organizations, as well as community-led and culturally responsive planning in communities of color. Her career reflects a commitment to solving complex challenges facing Black, Brown, and Native communities and amplifying marginalized voices. She received a dual Masters from The Ohio State University in City and Regional Planning and African American and African Studies.
Sarah Wolff is an Associate at Abt Associates with fourteen years of experience conducting quantitative and qualitative research on community and economic development. Her areas of focus include affordable housing finance; CDFI operations, program evaluation and impact metrics; consumer financial protection; and lending in low- and moderate-income families and communities. She is the Project Director for the national evaluation of JPMorgan Chase’s PRO Neighborhoods and AdvancingCities competitions. Prior to joining Abt, Ms. Wolff worked at Self-Help, one of the nation’s largest community development financial institutions, and its policy and advocacy affiliate the Center for Responsible Lending. She received a Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
We invite readers to contribute to the civic conversation about community development in St. Louis by writing an op-ed for the Community Builders Exchange. Op-eds should be short (400-700 words) and provocative. If you have an idea for an op-ed, contact Jenny Connelly-Bowen at jenny@communitybuildersstl.org.
Sam Moore’s Legacy Should Be Change in North St. Louis
Michael R. Allen, Director of the Preservation Research Office & Senior Lecturer at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts
This column was originally published in The St. Louis American. Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, CBN had originally planned to share this in our April 2020 newsletter. Although the context is from over a year ago, the content remains relevant.
Michael R. Allen
I first met Alderman Sam Moore in 2007, when I was a freshman building preservationist tilting at windmills as much to learn how to tilt as to strike the windmills. Moore had just taken office and had pressed the city’s Land Reutilization Authority to demolish some 39 vacant historic buildings in The Ville neighborhood. The volume of this request was astounding, but not the reasons why. The Ville had far more than 39 vacant buildings, and saviors were either invisible or non-existent.
At the Preservation Board’s meeting considering the demolition, I joined other advocates for conserving built heritage in urging a rejection of the request on the grounds that many of these buildings were in good condition and that the Ville never had the chance to explore historic tax credits. The Ville was a local historic district, making demolitions tougher, but not a national one, which would bring state and federal financial incentives for those scarce saviors.
Moore was a shock. When he took to the rostrum to make the case for demolition, he did not repeat the lines I had heard many times – that the buildings were far from saving, that they were threats to public safety or that they were not important. Instead, Moore offered an elegy of sorts, starting by acknowledging how these buildings were built better than anything we would ever see rise in the city again. These buildings also stored more history than anyone in the room could ever learn. Moore valued the buildings as cultural and economic assets.
However, he stated that nothing had been done to save the buildings in all the years since the Ville first became a historic district in 1989 except talk. He didn’t want to tear them all down, but he was elected to do more than talk and, in the absence of a parade of saviors, thought that the most reasonable course was to demolish these buildings and work to keep the occupied ones around them from being abandoned.
The Preservation Board approved some demolitions, but denied others. Moore was not upset, but pragmatic. He approached then-Cultural Resources Office Director Kate Shea and me after the meeting and asked whether, since we thought the buildings were worth saving, we could figure out how to do that. Shea took the lead and found funding for a new survey of Ville buildings, which I ended up conducting with architectural historian Lynn Josse. In the end, we examined almost 400 buildings and were able to create small historic districts giving 96 buildings a chance for historic tax credits.
Moore was supportive of the survey and the national historic district designations at every turn. However, he warned us that what we wanted to do would be hard because we were only designating buildings. We had no power to reverse the denial of capital to his ward, a project that white St. Louis had been inflicting since before World War II. Moore was willing to give a dreamy view of preservation a shot with grace, but he was not blind.
In ensuing years, we joined forces to fight illegal brick theft, garnering a few joint media appearances and seemingly little to show except for battle stories. Moore was right. Making the case that St. Louis should care about the future of a single building in North St. Louis was difficult. Sadly, it was even more difficult to get the city to care about an entire neighborhood, let alone an entire half of a city. As time went on, Moore showed me that the buildings I had set out to preserve were just evidence of concentrated deprivation of people.
When Moore stood on the floor of the Board of Aldermen and showed large images of the conditions in his ward, he was reminding the city that it was running from a long-needed reckoning. If the images of broken walls, boarded windows and overgrown lots seemed dreadful, they just pointed to ten thousand decisions to move out when a black family moved next door, to deny a mortgage or sale to a black family, to turn a blind eye to mob violence, and to grant favors to projects across town profiting the same people who refused to invest in The Ville.
Moore reminded us that these actions are not just in the past but ongoing, and the landscape of North St. Louis is the public record. The buildings are just signs for how the leaders of this city are treating people. We can’t fix buildings and expect much to change. We must change the way we treat people. On the cusp of a mayoral election, Moore’s legacy urges us to remember that St. Louis won’t be a whole city until North St. Louis is a record of equity and justice.
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Michael R. Allen works as an academic researcher, historian, teacher, design critic, public artist, critical spatial tour guide, and heritage conservationist in private practice. The binding ties in his research are investigation of the ideological and political constitution of architectural and infrastructural space, study of the claiming of material heritage and the politics of its conservation, and inquiry into the forms of liberatory agency that realize the potential of the modern metropolis to distribute wealth, knowledge, and shelter.
Currently, he is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, as well as a Lecturer in American Culture Studies (AMCS), at Washington University in St. Louis. At the university, Allen serves on the Advisory Committee for the Mellon-funded The Divided City: An Urban Humanities Initiative. Allen’s university teaching has focused on interdisciplinary investigation of architectural history, cultural landscapes, the economics of real estate and the politics of urban planning.
In professional practice, since 2009 Allen has been Director of the Preservation Research Office, a heritage consultancy. He is a US federally qualified architectural historian who has worked on various historic preservation projects in nine US states. He contributed to the Charting the American Bottom cultural landscape guide, co-led the architectural yoga series Building As Body with Mallory Nezam, and co-convened and managed the Pruitt Igoe Now ideas competition with Nora Wendl. Allen also has been Urbanist-in-Residence at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and, more recently, Research Adviser to Laboratory for Suburbia.
Allen’s scholarly and critical articles have appeared in a wide range of scholarly and popular sources, such as Buildings and Landscapes, CityLab, Disegno, Forty-Five Journal, Hyperallergic, Next City, PLATFORM, Temporary Art Review, St. Louis American, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. He has contributed chapters to Bending the Future: 50 Ideas About the Next 50 Years of Historic Preservation, Midwest Architecture Journeys and Buildings of Missouri.
In 2018, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named him to its “40 Under 40” list honoring young preservationists whose work is expanding the concept and practice of historic preservation in the United States. Allen’s preservation career started with tenures at the National Building Arts Center and the Landmarks Association of St. Louis, where he was Assistant Director.
Currently he is a Ph.D. candidate in Cultural Heritage at the Ironbridge Institute for Cultural Heritage at the University of Birmingham, England. He holds a B.A. in Literature and History from The Union Institute.
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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
We invite readers to contribute to the civic conversation about community development in St. Louis by writing an op-ed for the Community Builders Exchange. Op-eds should be short (400-700 words) and provocative. If you have an idea for an op-ed, contact Jenny Connelly-Bowen at jenny@communitybuildersstl.org.
Hospitals Can Partner with Banks Under the Community Reinvestment Act to Create Healthy Communities
Karen Kali, Senior Program Manager, Special Initiatives with NCRC
Marjanna Smith, a senior studying public health at The George Washington University
This column was originally published on NCRC’s blog.
Karen Kali
Marjanna Smith
Loans and investments made as part of banks’ Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) activities are an important source of funding for hospitals and health systems to address social determinants of health, the physical and social conditions in the environment that influence health. By funneling resources into upstream determinants of health to address root causes of health disparities, such as poverty, economic mobility and supportive community resources, hospitals and health systems have the distinct opportunity to disrupt the cycle of inequity that stymies both health and economic outcomes.
Nonprofit hospitals must conduct Community Health Needs Assessments (CNHAs) once every three years to ascertain the status of the community health and create a plan to enhance population health in their geographic footprint, in accordance with the Affordable Care Act. By partnering with banks, hospitals can meet their CHNA requirements by collaborating on upstream efforts. Similarly, banks must meet their community benefits requirements as a result of the CRA mandate. When the two entities collaboratively engage and partner with each other as well as community stakeholders, the result is mutually beneficial to both community-focused anchors.
The Community Reinvestment Act And Healthy Communities
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 states that financial institutions have an obligation to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they are chartered. In accordance with CRA, financial institutions are evaluated by how well they meet these credit needs, particularly for individuals with low- and moderate-incomes (LMI) and in LMI neighborhoods. CRA incentivizes banks to increase the availability of credit and capital to underinvested communities. Various types of investment activities qualify for CRA consideration. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the four categories of CRA-eligible community development activities are as follows:
Affordable housing,
Community facilities and services targeted to people with LMI (including financial education and capability, charter schools, community centers and daycare facilities),
Activities that promote economic development by providing financing for small businesses or small farms (including workforce development and small business technical assistance),
Neighborhood revitalization and stabilization in LMI geographies, distressed or underserved non-metro middle-income areas or designated disaster areas.
Along with aligning within one of these categories, the activity generally must also be completed within the bank’s assessment area, the defined geographical range in which the bank conducts most of its business activities. Banks can pursue community development activities outside of assessment areas provided they have first met community needs in their assessment areas.
By partnering with hospitals and health systems, financial institutions can directly contribute to the development of healthy communities and enhanced health outcomes. Banks and nonprofit hospitals share common goals in their community activities — banks’ CRA activities focus on community development and reinvestment, and hospitals must develop strategies that create a community benefit based on their community health needs assessments (CHNAs).
Nonprofit hospitals are required to promote community health and provide charity care (e.g. complimentary medical care and services) in exchange for the significant tax exemptions these nonprofit entities enjoy. Every three years a nonprofit hospital must conduct a CHNA in order to retain its nonprofit status. The CHNA is a process led by the hospital to engage the community (and its stakeholders) in identifying, analyzing, prioritizing and planning for community health needs and resources.
Thus, the activities of banks and hospitals can overlap significantly when considering their shared goal of community development. As hospitals are working to improve health outcomes and health access to care in their communities, they face a growing demand to address the social and economic determinants of health within their community. To fund these initiatives, health systems must partner with financial institutions, as well as other stakeholders such as Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) target upstream community interventions, within the areas of affordable housing, enhanced neighborhood conditions and increased socioeconomic status.
Banks may obtain CRA credit for working with hospitals and health systems in multiple ways. Funding for healthcare services, healthcare centers, homeless shelters and drug recovery centers are all CRA qualified activities that directly impact community health. Specific investments that have been approved as CRA qualified activities in the past include loans and investments that improve hospitals that serve LMI individuals, investments that fund the construction of health centers, grants to organizations to purchase specialty equipment for federally qualified health centers during a local health emergency, and loans to build health clinics in underserved areas.
Along with directly contributing to community health, many other CRA activities affect social determinants of health. Activities that promote affordable housing development can improve the health of LMI individuals and families by increasing healthy living conditions and financial accessibility to determinants of health. Families with LMI are more likely to experience unhealthy and unsafe housing conditions in neighborhoods that lack health promotion resources. Severely cost-burdened renters are less likely to have a usual source of medical care, more likely to postpone clinical care and more likely to face food insecurity. Affordable homes can, therefore, allow greater access to food, healthcare and education — all of which are social determinants of health. CRA activities can also improve financial equity and wellbeing for local residents; similar to housing development, this can also increase the affordability of health-promoting resources and services. Lastly, investments or initiatives that improve the local economy and support small businesses improve community health, as research supports a link between economy and health.
Several hospitals and initiatives have emerged in recent years as new leaders and innovations in multi-sector, health and wealth-focused collaborations in community investment, utilizing CRA with leveraged sources of funding from public investments, private equity, grants, government funding and philanthropy. Traditionally siloed in the health field with little overlap to the community development world, hospitals are now becoming more integrated into the CRA environment. Recognizing that personal behavior and clinical care account for only part of the picture of community-level health outcomes, hospitals and health systems are partnering with banks and financial institutions to make significant local investments to upstream social determinants of health.
[See the original NCRC blog post for examples of what this collaboration can look like.]
Coronavirus Pandemic
While the United States continues to grapple with the Coronavirus pandemic, CRA is as critical as ever to the equitable revitalization and stabilization of communities. COVID-19 is hitting LMI households harshly, and it raises a new set of housing challenges for both the homeownership and rental markets, specifically LMI communities of color. LMI communities may be more susceptible to foreclosure, eviction, job loss, reduction in hours and reduced wages. Given health disparities, communities of color experience higher rates of death from COVID-19.
The disparate effect of COVID-19 on LMI and Black and Brown communities illustrates the relevance of CRA and its essential community purpose of preventing redlining and confronting systemic inequities in financial services and access to credit within LMI communities.
With more than 354,000 deaths and nearly 21 million COVID-19 cases (as of January 5, 2021), the United States is facing what may be the worst of the pandemic. In May 2020, the regulators of CRA, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, joined together to expand eligible CRA activities in response to COVID-19. Banks can receive credit for these expanded CRA until six months after the end of the pandemic national emergency declaration.
Qualified activities under the COVID-19 response include loans, investments and community development services that support the following:
Emergency medical care, including medical facility services and supplies, temporary medical facilities and enhanced medical/hospital capacity;
Purchase and distribution of personal protective equipment;
Provision of emergency food supplies; or
Assistance to state, tribal, territorial, or local governments for emergency management and to support communications of general health and safety information to the public.
Coronavirus activities may benefit the bank’s designated assessment area as well as areas beyond, such as statewide or regional areas as credit may be given outside of established assessment areas.
Given the urgency of the COVID-19 crisis, this expanded guidance from the CRA regulators offers both immediate and long-term opportunities for hospitals and health systems to collaborate with banks and financial institutions and community based organizations to impact health outcomes.
Looking Ahead
While banks and financial institutions have an urgent opportunity to collaborate during the COVID-19 pandemic, the health crisis has effortlessly exacerbated the inequality that existed in communities across the country well before the virus began. And when the virus is over, communities will need to pick up the pieces and address the widespread setback in housing, income, job opportunity and health outcomes that the pandemic has caused. The obligations of both hospitals and health systems and banks and financial institutions from the ACA and CRA respectively creates a mutually beneficial opportunity for the two community anchors to pursue long-term partnerships. Banks have demonstrated an interest in investing in projects with health impacts. Hospitals see the value in banks utilizing CRA credit to target investment in LMI communities, the same communities hospitals seek to improve population health. While the COVID-19 pandemic spurred targeted action from the CRA regulators, it is long-term engagement and collaboration between banks and financial institutions and hospitals that will ultimately create healthy communities, increase community wealth and advanced health outcomes.
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Karen Kali leads the Special Initiatives work for NCRC and focuses on aging in community, Age-Friendly Banking, healthy communities and emerging areas of interest. Prior to joining NCRC, Karen assisted in comprehensive neighborhood planning community engagement in Iowa; provided technical assistance to cities, counties and states creating affordable housing trust funds; provided housing with services consulting with Capital Impact Partners; wrote extensively for HUD’s Office of Policy Development & Research with Sage Computing; and served as a commissioner for the Montgomery County Commission on Common Ownership Communities, resolving consumer disputes filed within the Office of Consumer Protection in Montgomery County, Maryland. Karen is a certified urban planner by the American Institute of Certified Planners and holds a masters in Community and Regional Planning and a bachelor degree in Sociology. Additionally, Karen serves as the Wellness chairperson for her neighborhood school’s Parent Teachers Association, advocating for safe routes to school, clean and accessible water for all students and fresh foods and salad bars in elementary schools.
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Marjanna Smith is a senior studying public health at The George Washington University. As a student in the dual-degree BS/MPH program, she will continue to pursue a Master of Public Health upon completing her undergraduate degree. During her time at GW, she has worked as a research coordinator for multiple childhood nutrition studies and a peer health educator on a substance education task force. As an intern with the National Community Reinvesment Coalition, she wrote about public health trends and issues in healthy equity.
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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
We invite readers to contribute to the civic conversation about community development in St. Louis by writing an op-ed for the Community Builders Exchange. Op-eds should be short (400-700 words) and provocative. If you have an idea for an op-ed, contact Jenny Connelly-Bowen at jenny@communitybuildersstl.org.
Disinvestment and Crime Have Common Cure — Community
Dana Malkus, J.D., Professor and Associate Dean for Experiential Education with Saint Louis University School of Law and Director of the Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic
This column was originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
On March 2, St. Louis residents will decide which two mayoral primary candidates will make the final ballot for the April 6 election. All of the candidates say that reducing our city’s violent crime will be a priority of their administration. The question voters are asking, of course, is how exactly they plan to do that.
Crime concerns are often met with the same familiar proposals focusing on the police, prosecutors and court systems — usually beginning and ending there.
Many have pointed to the breakdown in trust between communities and the police. But the lack of trust is not limited to the police. Our city’s legacy of racism, segregation and disinvestment has sown resentment and distrust of local government systems by the residents such systems should serve.
What if these dual problems of crime and distrust have a common cure? Research suggests they do.
Patrick Sharkey’s “Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence” demonstrates that the dramatic decline in crime rates across the U.S. beginning in the 1990s occurred in large part thanks to community organizations (i.e., neighborhood associations, community development corporations, and other local nonprofits addressing crime prevention, neighborhood development, substance abuse, workforce development and youth). These organizations are the eyes and ears of neighborhoods and provide the communal space for residents to share concerns, build relationships and collectively direct police and policymakers to their most immediate needs.
Unsurprisingly, neighborhoods with robust community engagement are safer. Unfortunately, St. Louis has invested relatively little in community organizations compared to police, prosecutors and courts.
One way to rebuild trust and strengthen the community organizations that are essential to combating crime is to invest in community-led planning. Neighborhood planning helps residents, city agencies and elected officials make decisions that leverage community assets while simultaneously addressing community problems. For example, shoring up a neighborhood in danger of decline by leveraging its assets (e.g., investments in local retail, home repair programs, attractive green spaces) can prevent the kind of housing vacancy and abandonment that, research shows, is directly related to crime.
Strong community organizations are key not only for planning efforts but also for plan implementation. Plan implementation is as important as the plan’s creation and helps the neighborhood leverage other public and private resources over the long term — a process that necessarily continues well beyond any elected official’s tenure. Trust is built when the decisions the city makes about development, demolition, permitting and infrastructure follow the approved plan.
Here is the good news: As mayor, the winning candidate will inherit an ecosystem that already has many of the pieces needed to make strong community organizations and inclusive planning a reality in our city. For example:
The city’s Planning and Urban Design Agency is increasing its capacity to facilitate more neighborhood planning, and other city departments have knowledge, relationships and resources that the next mayor can coordinate with and align to make a real impact.
Invest STL, an emerging local funder, is investing in neighborhood leaders and neighborhood-led organizations that the mayor can work with to drive equitable development.
The Community Builders Network, the St. Louis Association of Community Organizations and the Neighborhood Leadership Academy are providing technical assistance and training to community organizations and resident leaders. They support a rich network of community organizations across the city that the mayor can empower to drive change.
Neighborhood leaders — several of whom have been highlighted in this newspaper — are accomplishing a great deal with limited resources. These leaders are the glue holding an increasingly tattered social fabric together, maintaining hope in the face of historic white flight, disinvestment, increased violence, and more recent middle-class Black flight. The next mayor can increase effectiveness by ensuring that departments partner with these leaders in a neighborhood-centered approach that focuses on neighborhood needs and priorities.
Community organizations are not only an effective way to address crime; they are also an essential link between local government and its residents. Rebuilding trust in our neighborhoods begins with strategic investments that empower residents to develop a shared vision for their neighborhoods and our entire city.
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Dana Malkus is a clinical professor at Saint Louis University School of Law where she supervises students in the Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic and serves as Associate Dean for Experiential Education. In the Clinic, Dana and her students represent community groups, nonprofits, and small business entrepreneurs on a range of transactional matters including structuring and formation, operational issues, contract drafting and review, regulatory compliance issues, and real estate matters.
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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
We invite readers to contribute to the civic conversation about community development in St. Louis by writing an op-ed for the Community Builders Exchange. Op-eds should be short (400-700 words) and provocative. If you have an idea for an op-ed, contact Jenny Connelly-Bowen at jenny@communitybuildersstl.org.
Parson Must Protect Health by Implementing a Shut-Off Moratorium
Michelle Witthaus, Manager of Policy and Advocacy with Generate Health
This column was originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
It is up to Gov. Mike Parson to protect the health and safety of Missourians. Thousands of Missouri families are suffering financial hardships because of the pandemic and are struggling to meet their basic needs for food, rent and utilities. To protect Missouri families and slow the spread of the virus, it is imperative that Parson implement a statewide utility disconnection moratorium that lasts through the current state of emergency.
In November, the governor issued an order extending Missouri’s state of emergency for the pandemic until March 31. The order followed the advice of state health officials and noted that action by the state is “needed to combat the public health threat caused by COVID-19 and to aid in Missouri’s recovery to this emergency.”
However, the effectiveness of the order is hamstrung without a utility shutoff moratorium. Without a moratorium, Missourians who are financially impacted by the pandemic may face utility disconnection during the most brutal winter months. With utilities shut off, families lack access to basic needs such as water, which is imperative to slowing the spread of the coronavirus. Without electricity or heat, many families will have no option but to temporarily seek shelter with relatives or friends, thus potentially exposing themselves to the virus. In some cases, utility disconnection can lead to eviction and homelessness.
At its meeting on Dec. 16, the Missouri Public Service Commission declined to implement a moratorium, stating it lacked authority under state law. Now only an order from the governor can provide relief to thousands of Missourians facing a worsening health crisis that has already claimed the lives of more than 6,000 Missourians. Only the governor can resolve this dire situation in time to alleviate the harm Missourians are facing.
State regulators have refused to act, and a voluntary disconnection moratorium by utility companies is insufficient. Only one Missouri utility, Evergy, has voluntarily implemented a moratorium on disconnections long enough (through March 1) to provide some relief to Missourians. Ameren implemented a moratorium that expired on Jan. 5, and Spire’s moratorium expired on Jan. 1, just after the holiday season. These expirations occurred while coronavirus cases were on the rise, hospitals were at or near capacity, and temperatures were dropping.
The governor can save lives by taking action now. A study recently published by Duke University documented how “electricity and water utility moratoria have played an important role in containing the COVID-19 pandemic,” and that they could help reduce the growth rate of the pandemic by as much as 5.7%. This is an extremely significant margin as the virus has infected more than 450,000 people in Missouri and more than 18 million across the country.
Missouri’s unemployment rate has not fully rebounded to pre-pandemic rates, thus creating an obvious need for additional interventions this winter season. Since declaration of the pandemic emergency, the United Way has fielded 31,000 calls from the St. Louis region requesting housing assistance — a 50% increase over last year and 26,000 requests for utility assistance.
A moratorium on utility shut-offs is essential to helping Missouri families get through this crucial moment when cold temperatures make heating and electricity necessary to shelter in place, a recommendation the governor and state agencies have stressed is key to slowing the spread of the virus. While assistance programs such as Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and federal funding are helping to ease the burden, they are insufficient. A halt to utility disconnections is a quick, proactive measure that will immediately provide relief for impacted Missourians.
On Nov. 3, over 1.7 million Missourians voted to keep Gov. Parson in office. Those voters did so believing that he would act in the best interest of all Missourians and lead us out of this troubling time. Now is the time for Parson to show us the leadership that Missourians expect and to use the power he holds in office to keep families safe this winter and slow the spread of the coronavirus.
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Michelle Witthaus is the Manager of Policy and Advocacy at Generate Health where she focuses on implementing policy and advocacy strategies that advance Generate Health’s mission of advancing racial equity in pregnancy outcomes, family well-being and community health. In Michelle’s previous role as the Program Manager for Health Equity Works, she helped lead the project’s strategic partnerships and community-centered initiatives with an emphasis on creating systemic change. Michelle has a diverse background in education, community organizing, and philanthropy. In 2013, Michelle launched an initiative called Participatory Budgeting–St. Louis, which aimed to bring about a more democratic way of spending public money in the 6th ward. At the time of inception, St. Louis was the fourth city in the United States to implement this inclusive process. Michelle is a proud City resident and has called St. Louis home for the last 25 years.
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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
We invite readers to contribute to the civic conversation about community development in St. Louis by writing an op-ed for the Community Builders Exchange. Op-eds should be short (400-700 words) and provocative. If you have an idea for an op-ed, contact Jenny Connelly-Bowen at jenny@communitybuildersstl.org.
De Facto Or De Jure Housing Inequities: The Outcomes Are The Same
Glenn Burleigh, Community Engagement Specialist, Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council
This column was originally published on NCRC’s blog.
As the COVID-19 crisis unfolded in St. Louis, the maps of the infections looked very familiar to those of us who work to promote integrated and inclusive communities. Unsurprisingly, it was having a greater toll on the city’s majority-Black neighborhoods, where maps already showed elevated rates of asthma and lead poisoning. These are obviously health issues that could make the virus more lethal. The infection maps also followed other maps, but not ones that would seem to be connected at first glance — ones showing low to non-existent residential mortgage activity. For advocates that work to expand equitable capital access and an end to modern day redlining, it wasn’t surprising, as we have long been acutely aware of the connections between health and housing.
We also knew that the conditions that made these racial disparities in COVID-19 infection and death rates possible were part of a pattern that goes back to the Home Ownership Loan Corporation (HOLC) redlining maps and decades of federal, state and local policies meant to enforce segregation. These maps cemented patterns of racial segregation and disparities in capital access that are still with us, almost a hundred years later. While the COVID-19 pandemic has brought this connection between race, housing and health outcomes into greater focus, this crisis at the nexus of housing and health has been festering for many decades and has already been impacting our region’s communities of color for many generations. As the Segregation in St. Louis: Dismantling The Divide report chronicled, the active promotion of residential segregation is deeply ingrained in our city’s history.
Home Purchase Loans in St. Louis (2018-2019)
Home purchase loan originations overlaid on CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and Life Expectancy at the Census tract level. (Source: Home Mortgage Disclosure Act 2018-2019, CDC Life Expectancy 2010-2015, and CDC SVI 2018, via NCRC)
The lack of home mortgage financing provides an underpinning for environmental racism and health disparities that aren’t limited just to those who live closer to polluting industries. It is also tied to growing up with poor indoor air quality, as the housing stock in our region’s majority-Black neighborhoods are unsurprisingly located in areas without real lending activity. This means that families can’t access home equity to keep up with the kind of regular maintenance necessary to provide safe and healthy air inside their households. Access to capital for maintenance is a necessary part of long-term, successful homeownership, yet this basic part of the housing financing is largely unavailable to significant portions of the metropolitan area. This means that even with identical credit scores and income, homeowners in majority-Black neighborhoods are denied access to an essential part of the financial system that our nation has developed to retain value in real estate assets. This dooms whole neighborhoods to decay and all of the negative impacts on quality of life that come with living in neighborhoods filled with vacant, crumbling buildings. It also means that many renters live in substandard conditions, as their units are owned by landlords who buy properties at the discount made available to them via this cash-only market. These landlords tend to make the absolute minimum investment necessary to pass occupancy inspections, leaving mold and other indoor air quality issues untreated. To add insult to injury, if many of the tenants were able to access home purchase and rehab financing, they would end up paying less on their monthly housing bills, while simultaneously building equity. These inequities in capital access, based on the complexion of neighborhood residents, have essentially predetermined that this isn’t an option for those who wish to live in the city’s majority-Black neighborhoods. Already the daily reality in these St. Louis neighborhoods prior to COVID-19’s emergence, now these same families face even greater danger as these pre-existing socially-determined conditions have left them further vulnerable.
All of this puts the need for any “new normal” to include changes to housing policies (and how our economy is structured) in stark relief. If we’re to have a #JustEconomy, then we will need to take this opportunity to reimagine how these systems work. If we don’t fundamentally change how housing and capital access are distributed, then we face an America that comes out of this crisis more segregated and with levels of inequality that exceed already historic pre-COVID highs. If we are to create a healthier society, both physically and financially, then we will need to take a hard look at the lessons of this period and take intentional steps to create a “new normal” that doesn’t recreate the racial inequities of the “old normal.”
If we are to approach recovery with an eye towards building a more racially equitable nation, then it is necessary to center these lessons. The price that thousands of families are now paying is simply too dear to have been paid without lessons learned. If we know that:
The current housing system creates conditions that make people more vulnerable to respiratory health problems.
These issues increase the chances of someone dying from easily communicable diseases.
These burdens fall disproportionately on our city’s Black neighborhoods.
Then it is clear that we have a public health obligation to center these impacted communities in our response to the pandemic. If we are to avoid repeating the mistakes that have led up to this racist outcome, then we must come to the reality that race is key to this conversation. If we do that, then there is no other option than creating policies that remedy these long-standing issues that are leading to such a heavy toll in the Black community. As we look #BeyondRecovery and at how to create a #JustEconomy, we will have to stop doing things the way that we have been going about them. We need to formulate new ways of approaching housing and capital access that allows for true fairness and will lead to better health outcomes for Black families in our region and communities of color across the nation. This will mean understanding what we are doing wrong, if we really hope to build something closer to the Beloved Community. In housing and finance, we can already see so many of the things we are doing wrong. On one hand, the pandemic shows that the inequities in housing are so extreme that one doesn’t need to look very hard. On the other hand, these glaring problems provide us clear signposts pointing us in the direction of the necessary work ahead.
Housing advocates in St. Louis (and elsewhere) need to seize the opportunity that the public attention around COVID-19 has brought to the intersection of health and housing. As more and more people come to believe that #HousingIsHealthcare, it will be up to us to help turn that awareness into action and that action into results. Let’s get to work.
Maps of the original HOLC grading, divisions of census tracts into quartiles by the historic redlining score, life expectancy at birth and social vulnerability by quartiles. (Source: Mapping Inequality Project, Univ. of Richmond; author’s calculation of historic redlining score; CDC life expectancy 2010-2015, and CDC SVI 2018, via NCRC)
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Glenn Burleigh has been EHOC’s Community Engagement Specialist since 2015. Glenn was born in Pine Bluff, AR, and he came to live in St. Louis in 1997, while attending Saint Louis University. Since 2004, Glenn has been an active part of the Missouri progressive movement. Glenn spent many years working for progressive organizations, such as The Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition, SEIU, CWA, and ACORN. Glenn’s focus at EHOC is raising awareness of Fair Housing laws and the services EHOC offers to their clients. Glenn also staffs the St. Louis Equal Housing and Reinvestment Coalition (SLEHCRA), St. Louis’ Community Reinvestment Act coalition, of which EHOC was a founding member organization.
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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
We invite readers to contribute to the civic conversation about community development in St. Louis by writing an op-ed for the Community Builders Exchange. Op-eds should be short (400-700 words) and provocative. If you have an idea for an op-ed, contact Jenny Connelly-Bowen at jenny@communitybuildersstl.org.
From Sentiment to Structure: Institutionalize Resident Voice in Development
Amanda Colón-Smith, Executive Director, Dutchtown South Community Corporation
For community development practitioners, 2020 was a year of unveiling, re-witnessing, and digesting disparities in health, policing, and other facets of community life that we work to undo daily. The visibility of acute pain in contrast to chronic issues should be embraced as a reflection and inflection point for our field. It is a call to action to move from sympathetic sentiment to bold and intentional redesign of systems and structures that uphold inequity.
In the realm of real estate development, there is abundant opportunity for redesign work that could result in the dismantling of the racial wealth gap. A new decade of strategic efforts is upon us. While frameworks such as Opportunity Mapping are being enhanced with the power of data, an old adage stands firm in how we implement tactics: “Nothing About Us, Without Us, Is For Us”.
In South St. Louis City, Dutchtown South Community Corporation is on a mission to advance neighborhood vitality through community empowerment, housing stabilization, and real estate development. In a recent comprehensive neighborhood planning effort, the Gravois Jefferson Historic Neighborhoods Plan was adopted by the City of St. Louis Planning Commission in May 2018. DSCC has recently formed a 13-seat Development Review Committee for the plan area, with nine seats for residents/stakeholders and four for local CIDs and neighborhood associations. Almost every resident who applied participated in a previous leadership training session or were active and known in this community. Each applicant had an interview with staff from the DSCC team and a guest reviewer from the local community development field. Guest reviewers included: Cristina Garmendia, Jenny Connelly-Bowen, Gary Newcomer, Catherine Hammacher, Jonathan Roper, Claire Ripple, Dwayne James, Jessica Payne, and Jay Watson.
Processes and tools for the committee were modeled on structure from other development committees in the St. Louis region. We also looked outside of St. Louis to develop a new tool to use in the development review process; the Neighborhood Plan Scorecard was modeled from a coalition in Twin Cities, MN. The scorecard outlines the most relevant and priority recommendations from the Gravois Jefferson Plan and will be used to measure alignment of projects to the overall community vision. With the plan document itself over 300 pages, this tool will make it easier for developers to understand plan priorities in a snapshot that’s just under 20 pages. We hope this tool can be the basis for development of concentrated geographies done differently—an approach of relationship-based development, where shared interests are explored and cultivated.
The development context of communities like those of the Gravois Jefferson Plan includes histories of extraction and exploitation. For example, our plan area has a 29% vacancy rate for residential units, a standout statistic, alongside being a community that is over 74% people of color with 39% of households living in poverty. For comprehensive neighborhood planning to be effective, it requires careful implementation, especially in terms of guiding the pace and quality of private real estate development. This work has an inherent racial equity overlap: disinvestment was not accomplished through race-neutral policy, and reinvestment cannot happen in a color-blind manner either. Resident review of proposed projects will allow for a focused analysis of who will preferentially benefit or be negatively impacted.
The equitable future we want, the one in 2039, not so far off from the untimely death of Michael Brown, will require intentional steps. As we build toward closing the racial wealth gap, the processes of private reinvestment into neglected communities must be refashioned. Processes that center the voices and decisions of residents most impacted must be central to creating this future. The next several years will bring pivotal moments, from a mayoral race to ward reduction in the City of St. Louis and redistricting based on Census outcomes. While these larger systems shift, we must ensure that housing and development systems also take up the responsibility to change how business is done.
A question worth asking ourselves: If you could change the ground rules of development, what would you change? It is time to transform the real estate development systems that do not serve us and build new ones that do. Communities not only deserve a seat at the table, they deserve to build those tables and set the agenda.
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Amanda Colón-Smith is the Executive Director of Dutchtown South Community Corporation in South St. Louis City. She works with residents, partners and stakeholders in the Dutchtown, Gravois Park, Marine Villa and Mt. Pleasant neighborhoods. The organization focuses on Housing Development and Stabilization as well as Community Empowerment. Through activities such as comprehensive planning, improving parks, and tenant rights education, the organization seeks to advance neighborhood vitality through resident-led activities. She is a graduate of the Regional Arts Commission’s Community Arts Training program and holds a certificate from NeighborWorks as a Certified Housing Asset Manager. She holds a BA from Cornell University in Africana Studies, a MS in Special Education from City College, CUNY and is currently completing an MS in Geography at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.
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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
We invite readers to contribute to the civic conversation about community development in St. Louis by writing an op-ed for the Community Builders Exchange. Op-eds should be short (400-700 words) and provocative. If you have an idea for an op-ed, contact Jenny Connelly-Bowen at jenny@communitybuildersstl.org.
