Short Wave - Minneapolis' Bold Plan To Tackle Racial Inequity And Climate Change

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

Racial discrimination shaped the map of Minneapolis. Then city zoning locked many of those patterns into place. Maddie talks with NPR climate reporter Lauren Sommer about Minneapolis' bold plan to tackle housing disparities — and climate change. The new rules went into effect earlier this year. Community groups are calling on the city to follow through.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Maddie Safai here with NPR climate reporter Lauren Summer. Hi, Lauren. Hey, Maddie. So today on the show, we're diving into a moment when the city of Minneapolis is grappling with racial discrimination and deep inequity. But we're not talking about today times. Right. This was actually a year and a half ago before the killing of George Floyd, before protesters around the country.

filled the streets. The city was talking about this in a venue that definitely did not make national news. Good evening, everyone, or afternoon. I'm Lisa Bender. I'm the president of the city council meeting. The one item of a business we have on today's agenda is the conduct of a public hearing related to the draft 2040 comprehensive plan. They were taking public comment on a plan to redo the zoning ordinances. Right. City zoning may be not something people immediately think of as a societal reckoning. but they should. Yeah, exactly. I mean, city officials were acknowledging something

that really hadn't been spelled out before in this way. As the city grows, everyone must benefit from that growth. Historically, not everyone has. The way cities look is not an accident or the sum of a lot of random decisions. There were decisions that were made about land that were steeped in racism. They were steeped in environmental injustice.

And because land use decisions last, for decades, you know, even centuries. There are laws on the books that maintain that status quo, you know, essentially writing it into the landscape itself. Minneapolis is trying to change that. Got it. So what are they trying to do to address it, Lauren? Well, city planners put out a proposal that pretty dramatically changed city zoning. They wanted to eliminate single-family zoning, which specifies one house per lot.

We will take speakers in the order they're registered. and it really divided the community. The citywide upzoning is much too big and the one size fits all. Approach is going to destroy the uniqueness of the neighborhoods that make our city so desirable. Upzoning the entire city is truly shocking. No wonder long-time residents are upset.

We're facing housing and environmental crisis in Minneapolis and it's no longer appropriate to fuss over a neighborhood's character when new residents aren't able to stick around long enough to build their own character. We cannot... But, Maddie, the city council passed it. And here's the thing. City zoning isn't just an issue of structural racism, but climate change, too. How we build our cities has a profound effect on how we combat the impacts of climate change.

So today on the show, how structural racism and environmental inequity is built into the very map. of Minneapolis and what the city and potentially every American city could do to begin to fix that. You're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR. So Lauren, let's start with a little history lesson. What happened in Minneapolis's history that shaped the city into being what it is today, which is still pretty segregated? Yeah, it goes back more of in 100 years to 1910 when Minneapolis was really starting to grow. New neighborhoods were being developed, and land developers started putting language into property deeds that restricted who could own that property.

They're what's known as racial covenants, which basically specified that property could only be sold to white people. So it was actual legal language that kept people of color from buying houses and moving into those neighborhoods. Right, exactly. And this is an example, quote, no person or persons other than of the Caucasian race. shall be permitted to occupy said premises or any part thereof. Wow. I mean, developers actually featured them in advertisements for new developments. And these were in cities across the country, but I think their history has been somewhat forgotten. So how widespread were these racial covenants in Minneapolis?

They were attached to tens of thousands of houses, which is something that historians like Kirst and Dellegard have started documenting. She co-founded the Mapping Prejudice Project at the University of, of Minnesota libraries. And through that process, Kirsten actually found that when her grandparents, who were recent immigrants, bought their first home in Minneapolis, their property had a racial covenant that came with it. You know, even if there were new Americans, they were seen as white. So, you know, that neighborhood, which is a beautiful neighborhood, it was off limits to people, other Minneapolis who had similar levels of education, similar income levels to my grandparents. It was off limits entirely based on race.

How long were people buying houses or were stopped from buying houses with these covenants? They were banned in Minnesota in 1953. Wow. That's later than I thought, Lauren. Yeah. But I mean, Kirsten says their impact is still visible on the landscape today. What we found when we started mapping is that that covenants created demographic patterns that have remained just completely unmoved. So the areas with covenants in them are the richest and the whitest parts of the city today. And before covenants, black residents lived in neighborhoods around the city, but within a few decades, they were displaced into just a few neighborhoods. And it was incredibly hard for black residents to buy houses there because banks redlined them.

Right, right. For instance, when a bank wouldn't offer a mortgage or a loan to a family if they lived in a predominantly black neighborhood. Right. And so, you know, that generational wealth that's developed by owning a home just it just wasn't possible like it was for white residents. And then, you know, environmentally, you had major freeways built right through predominantly black neighborhoods, you know, right when the interstate highway system went in in the 50s and 60s. So you kind of have all these layers of things building on each other. And because cities change slowly, it makes sense that these things are entrenched for so long. Yeah, exactly.

And for Kirsten, an important part of the. this work has been making sure that white residents understand those effects. We have to know our history if we're going to find any way out of this. It can't be something that people relegate and say, well, that's in the past. That has nothing to do with me. Because there's one other thing that has locked in these land development patterns for more than 100 years. And that's the city's zoning. Right around the time that covenants were banned, the city zoned those same neighborhoods for single-family homes,

which means that's all that can be built there. So things like the buildings and people stayed mostly the same. So that's why like a year and a half ago they had that meeting to start talking about changing their zoning rules. Yeah. So in January, these rules actually went into effect. And like we mentioned earlier, what the city did was eliminate single family zoning, which makes them the first major city in the country to do that. Now those properties can have up to three units on them. And the idea is to just make more housing in general because there isn't enough in Minneapolis.

And around public transit and areas with jobs and stores, they want to see even denser housing. And this leads us to the issue of climate change. Right, which is also very connected to what a city's map looks like. Like if there's a lot of sprawl, you get more driving. Yeah, exactly. You know, people who live in the suburbs or on the outskirts of cities, they tend to drive more and emit more carbon. a lot of neighborhoods just weren't really designed to be walkable or bikeable. So a lot of cities are kind of locked into these layouts right now that lead to higher carbon

emissions and zoning is one of the big issues that stands in the way of changing that. And here's the other issue when it comes to climate change in zoning. Studies show that climate impacts hit low-income communities and communities of color the hardest. And you can actually link that back to these racial covenants. I spoke to Shannon Smith Jones. She's executive director of Hope Community, which is a Minneapolis housing and community group. Along the green spaces, if you looked historically, you would see the restrictive covenants along those green spaces. And so historically, we haven't had the ability to live in very beautiful, nice green spaces that are healthy. So it's not just where you live. It's what those neighborhoods look like, which matters for a lot of reasons, but definitely matters as the climate gets hotter.

Yeah, yeah, the more concrete a neighborhood has, the hotter it gets in the summer, you know, especially in a warming climate. And because of that, one study showed that neighborhoods that are home to Minneapolis's black communities can be 10 degrees hotter than other neighborhoods. So there are serious impacts that these communities need addressed. Okay, so Minneapolis passed these new zoning rules in January in a somewhat historic move. Has anything actually changed? Well, it was a really contentious debate in Minneapolis. but it kind of opened the door for other places to take on that debate. I mean, right after that, Oregon passed an up-zoning law, as it's known, which allows duplexes and four-plexes.

California has tried three times to pass similar laws. But, you know, single-family zoning is just really contentious. It seems to kind of tap into this very sacred idea of having a house with a lawn and a two-car garage. I mean, Minneapolis certainly didn't ban that. You can still build a single-family home, but now there are more options. So what does it look like now with these new options? Well, not a lot has actually changed yet because zoning is just really a blueprint. It takes decisions, you know, lot by lot, to make it a reality.

And I spoke to a number of community groups who thought that people were kind of missing that point. Like Owen Duckworth, he's the director of policy and organizing at the Alliance, which is a racial justice and housing coalition in the Twin Cities. There's a lot of sort of we saw being really kind of self-congratulatory. press, both locally and nationally. And I think that was also quite frustrating as advocates and organizers and folks on the ground in community because there's... He says building new housing isn't necessarily the same as building affordable housing or, you know, ensuring that inequities are actually addressed.

So he wants to see bigger commitments from the city to fund affordable housing in a long-term way. Right, because if a lot of new housing is built, then there's this possibility. of gentrification, of people pushing out communities of color. Yeah, and something like this, if you're really going to undo decades of inequity, it takes a sustained effort year after year with every building decision that a city makes. And Owen says that means those communities have to be at the table. If someone is wronged you, you want to set the terms of how you become cool again,

how you become friends again, right? If you wrong a friend or if you wrong a person, right, you're not going to say, well, okay, I'm going to come up with now how we get on good terms again, right? It has to be the person who's harmed, right? The people who have been harmed historically setting those terms, right? And I think that's, to me, that's part of the exercise that the city has to do and own those pieces, both historically and in an ongoing ways. And that means getting uncomfortable.

That means changing folks' access to power and decision-making as well. And that's why he says even after all these protests end, there's still going to be a lot of work to do. All right, Lauren, I appreciate you. Thanks for the story. Thanks, Maddie. This episode was produced by Rebecca Ramirez. The facts were checked by Emily Kwong. It was edited by Viet Le.

I'm Maddie Safia. Thanks for listening to Shortwave for NPR. Actress Tracy Ellis Ross is used to people talking about her age a lot. And she's okay with whatever people say. I'm 47 years old and I'm the most comfortable in my skin I've ever been. When we go back to being 22? No, thank you. The Blackish Star on Confronting an Ageist World.

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