Linn County Sustainability kicked off their series of Earth Month conversations at the Lester Buresh Family Community Wellness Center Saturday, April 1.
Tamara Marcus, director of the sustainability committee, said that the topics for Earth Month will focus on ways to be more sustainable, and how to get people to consider the impacts on the vulnerable populations in the county, including people of color, elderly as well as small towns who may be impacted by climate changes. The goal is to get all thinking of how to make equitability a point of the thinking when discussing sustainability.
The first session in the series focused on the impact of redlining in Linn County, as it is one of the historical injustices that addressed a need for all citizens – access to safe and quality housing.
Anthony Betters Jr with the African American Museum of Linn County and resident of the NewBoCo district, was scheduled to present on the history of redlining. He contracted COVID, so Marcus presented in his place.
Redlining was the practice of denying residences to people based on their ethnic makeup. Banks and realtors would deny loans to blacks and people of color, and create districts where people of color were able to live. Those districts were usually unable to see many improvements to the homes they lived in, and many of those districts were impacted by practices like the construction of highways and railroads over the generations.
While the practice was ruled unconstitutional with the Fair Housing Act in 1968, the damage to many of these communities had already been done and the lasting impacts of redlining can still be seen today.
Marcus said the first step to dealing with the issue is to acknowledge the problem by members of the government and policy makers. The second is investing in community housing in marginalized communities.
Redlining had a devastating impact to people of color, Betters’ presentation noted, and it was important to take action to educate others and make more efforts to build resources that make communities more equitable.
Larger cities in Iowa, including Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Sioux City, Des Moines, Iowa City and Dubuque, had racial covenants at some points that forbid the renting or selling property in neighborhoods to people of color. When that was denied by the Supreme Court of the United States, the practice still happened in other ways.
Realtors focused on ways to keep people of color and other social economic levels in certain neighborhoods, and tried to create panic in white homeowners about the potential of people of color buying properties in their neighborhoods.
The National Highway Act of 1956’s main goal was to connect larger cities together by a network of roads, but a second portion of said act was displacing neighborhoods that housed people of color. There was no rehousing for these people when a highway was placed in their neighborhoods.
Marcus recounted the story of Dr. Percy Harris, one of the black doctors who worked in St. Luke’s Hospital. After he completed his internship at St. Luke’s, he and his wife were looking to build a larger home for their family, but he encountered housing discrimination at the time. Doctor ( ) Armstrong, a colleague of Harris heard about the plight, and purchased plots of land for an addition to the church, with the caveat that one of the plots had to be sold to the Harris family for them to build a house in the predominantly white neighborhood. The vote and fallout split the congregation of Saint Paul’s Methodist Church into two different parishes, with 461 members choosing to allow the purchase of the land and 291 against. Those against eventually formed their own church that is still active to this day.
Anne Harris Carter recounted that when the Harris children moved to the neighborhood, they found welcoming neighbors and neighbors they learned to avoid who didn’t appreciate them having moved into the community, but there was not much more than an instance of one brick thrown through a window of the house.
Insurance was another aspect of redlining that was seen, with many homeowners insurance policies refusing to offer policies to neighborhoods in people of color communities. No amount of repairs to a home could ever bring it up to standards to allow homeowners insurance on the policy.
In 2008, several large banks were investigated for offering different rates for mortgages to people of color and white people.
Marcus also noted one of the impacts of redlining has been on school districts and their funding. Funding for schools is provided by property taxes, so schools with larger white populations usually had higher property taxes and more money to invest in schools.
Carter, Marcus and Leigh Ann Erickson led a short panel discussion to bring the conversation to a close.
One of the discussion points brought up was how the new development in communities like NewBoCo still fails to provide some essential services to residents to this day. The community, which is also home to the medical corridor, with Mercy Hospital not far away, does not have a grocery store or financial institution easily accessible to residents in the community, and pricing for homes, especially new construction, isn’t affordable to every one.
Marcus said that also highlighted how addressing the issues of redlining is a significant challenge – for every one item that they might solve, there are other issues still in some of these communities.
Another of those issues is something like access to education or infrastructure investments in items like wi-fi.
Erickson said that those items were brought to attention during the pandemic when many schools were forced to go online only, and the lack of internet access in some communities became an issue. Currently, there is also a plan to close school buildings that cater to one community and force students to have to travel further and to other communities for schools in cities like Cedar Rapids.
Carter said that one of the things she focuses on in her work with Linn County Public Health is working for more health equity – insuring everyone is able to achieve their best health. Redlining, however, has impacted several social determinants of health for communities, as it impacts where people live, their economic stability, their access to food and their access to education. Those social determinants can drive more than 50 percent of health decisions, and have impacts on life expectancy, as well as contracting certain diseases including diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Lizzie Weems and Tamara Marcus present on "Redlining" at LBC Saturday, April 1.