“We can’t hide behind the veneer of not knowing or not being sure, because we’re able to look at the data. People are segregated, to a large degree, on zoning-based lines.” Yonah Freemark, Urban Institute senior research associate.
Walking my dog through Forest Ridge in the early mornings I would frequently encounter the Rev. Thomas A. Wright Sr. striding across his lawn, in pajamas and slippers, to retrieve his morning Sun.
You couldn’t miss him. If only because his was just about the only Black face in the neighborhood.
In fact, that’s why Wright moved into Forest Ridge, in 1970. The longtime pastor of Mt. Carmel Church – and GNV NAACP leader – believed that somebody had to break GNV’s segregated neighborhood barrier. So it might as well be him.
“For the most part, all of those communities, like Forest Ridge and the others, they were completely segregated and nobody of color was allowed to move into those communities,” Wright told the Guardian in 2012.
I thought about the Rev. Wright, who passed away in 2014, when the GNV City Commission majority finally voted to reinstate segregation-era exclusionary zoning codes that, for decades, effectively kept Black faces out of white neighborhoods. And, to some extent, still does.
Of course, we have been assured that the commission’s bold leap forward into the past is only temporary. Just a “reset” really.
Having reinstated exclusionary zoning to calm everybody down, the commission can now go about the business of making housing choices more equitable for all GNV residents.
“We have options ahead of us and we have to be willing to listen to each other and work toward those options,” says the Mayor.
Forgive me, but I’m skeptical. And not just because Black faces are still exceedingly rare in my and many other GNV middle-and-upper-class neighborhoods.
The reality is that in recent years we have seen not one but two major City initiatives intended to stimulate affordable housing supply and housing choices in GNV fall apart in the face of unrelenting neighborhood NIMBYism.
The strident but false “Our neighborhoods are under attack” claim dominated debate during the last round of commission elections.
And never mind that the most stridently NIMBY candidates lost. Ward rode into the mayor’s office on the promise of an exclusionary zoning “reset.” And he kept his campaign promise, as did newly elected Commissoner Ed Book.
Apparently, Commissioners Cynthia Chestnut and Desmon Duncan-Walker have convinced themselves that the same zoning codes enacted in an earlier century to keep Blacks out of white neighborhoods will now, somehow, protect historically Black neighborhoods from gentrification.
I wonder what the Rev. Wright would have thought of that.
Having been twice burned by the NIMBY inferno it is difficult to believe that this commission majority will now turn around and begin to surgically, incrementally, enact piecemeal reforms that will eventually (magically?) make GNV a more inclusive community for renters and low income but still hopeful prospective homebuyers.
I hope I’m wrong. Still, it is a shame to see GNV move so quickly from the pioneering city that led the state in abolishing exclusionary zoning to the timid berg that couldn’t wait to take that great leap forward back into the future.
Apropos of nothing at all, here’s some late breaking news to ponder:
An analysis of zoning laws in Connecticut finds people in single-family areas are likelier to be white and have higher incomes than those in areas that allow more housing. The findings add to a growing recognition of how zoning is linked with segregation and exclusion.
Reports Governing, the Urban Institute study concludes that “strict zoning regulations … are associated with inadequate access to affordable housing and with the segregation of people by income, race and ethnicity,” the report could add support to a growing movement to loosen zoning regulations in communities across the United States.”
“Single-family zoning policies are part and parcel of a system of local exclusion that discourages integration and supports the ability of wealthy, white, well-educated homeowners to live in neighborhoods largely constituted of similar people,” says Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute and co-author of the report. “We suspect this holds true in many other states across the country.”
Yeah, I know, GNV ain’t Connecticut. It’s hotter here.
But we already knew what Connecticut knows. And it is as true today as it was back in 1970 when the Rev. Wright defied convention and moved into Forest Ridge.
FreeGNV 