Minneapolis 2040 Plan because it helped address Minneapolisās history of
systemic racism. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth.
The Minneapolis 2040 plan creates a literal āBrown Beltā in Minneapolis. If
you live between Lowery North and 38th Avenue South, neighborhoods with the
highest concentrations of people of color, your neighborhood will be
subject to more disruption and more destruction than if you live north of
Lowery and south of 38th, neighborhoods with low concentrations of people
of color. The City conveniently colored this brown in the Plan. (Page 102,
Draft Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan). It is racist to treat areas
with concentrations of people of color differently than areas with high
concentrations of white people.
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The Plan also ignores North Minneapolis, the place where we have the most
people of color and the most issues as a City. There is no real plan to
zone for more jobs in North Minneapolis, much less bring jobs there. No
real plan to preserve the affordable housing stock or much less increase
it. No real plan to improve West Broadway. North Minneapolis is missing
from most of the policies in the Plan. It is racism that has kept our most
needy part of down on the back burner, while instead focusing on Uptown and
around the Lakes, predominantly white areas.
North Minneapolis and Phillips Neighborhoods are primarily single-family
home communities. The Plan up-zones single family homes so they can easily
be demolished and replaced with triplexes and fourplexes. Speculators are
already buying up these homes. Tom Lyden from Fox 9 News did a great piece
on Havenbrook Homes, a limited liability corporation, who already owns 350
houses in North Minneapolis. None of this helps build home ownersh ip in
our communities of color and it will exacerbate gentrification. Policies
that explicitly reduce the availability of affordable homes and replace
them with corporate-owned rental property are racist.
The Plan does not provide housing for our communities of color. 40% of
Minneapolisās residents are parents and children under age 18. Fully half
of Hispanic mothers have three or more kids, compared with 40% of black
mothers and 33% of white mothers. (Pew Social Trends) Asian, Hispanic and
Black families are almost twice as likely to be multi-generational than
White families. (U.S. Census) Yet over 90% of the new housing is two
bedrooms or less, and over 70% is one bedroom or less. Racism is choosing
to not build housing for certain kinds of families.
The 2040 Plan prioritizes walking and biking and transit over driving. It
calls for narrowing streets, removing parking and slowing traffic. Yet
there is no better way of keeping someone in poverty than limiting their
access to jobs and affordable daycare. And this is racist.
I hear that we need to build new market-rate apartments in predominantly
white neighborhoods to reduce systemic racism. I have not heard one
person of color say that they want this. Not one. Only white people. It
is paternalistic and racist for white people to presume they know where
people of color should or want to live. I suspect that most people of
color want to improve their own neighborhoods, places where their hearts
lay, than abandon their communities and move into other neighborhoods. That
is what I heard when I went to meetings at North.
The most important way that the 2040 Plan is racist is that it silenced the
voices of people of color. The City could have taken a bottoms-up approach
as it has done for all previous comprehensive plans. It could have used
its robust neighborhood groups and supplemented that with other outreach to
create a Plan that met the unique needs of every community. Instead, the
Plan was written by a handful of planners from a Planning Department that
is 75% white. And it shows. It uses a one-size fits all approach to
policies, as if the needs of North Minneapolis are the same as the needs of
Uptown. A paternalistic white āI know best for youā approach to planning.
It reduces regulation on developers and limits peopleās voice to object
over what is happening in their own neighborhoods. As someone said to me
recently, āStomping on someone's hood with no voice IS racism.ā
There is another alternative. The City Council could vote to reject this
racist plan and start the process over. A new process could be put in
place that empowers citizens to imagine what they want their neighborhoods
to be in 20 years. Funding could be provided to increase outreach, so we
get a robust engagement from all citizens in our city. The new plan could
be a mosaic of the needs of each community knit together rather than the
āone size fits allā approach of this plan. St Paul has already requested
an extension from the Metropolitan Council and Minneapolis could too.
What would be different? I donāt know. I am a white woman and I know that
I cannot speak for our communities of color. But I know that they should
be allowed to speak. And they have not been allowed to. And that is
racist.
We deserve better. More importantly, our most needy communities deserve
better.
Carol Becker
Longfellow