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Anti-Gentrification...Pro-Redlining?
Why has keeping people stuck in redlined neighborhoods become sacrosanct?
This image has been making the rounds on social media. This is what we’re up against in terms of bias against growth. Read the descriptions of each category. I especially wonder about the “Low” designation. This is where poor people of color presumably live in neighborhoods they were redlined into. My guess is that this was put together by a white person. Who knows? We do know that the Seattle City Council has designated neighborhoods that have many people of color, immigrants, and people who speak languages other than English as “low opportunity neighborhoods.” City Councilmember Lisa Herbold championed this designation.The presumption is that redlining has somehow become sanctified and that while racist in it’s intention, we ought to honor it now, keeping the people who live there in place. I think that’s pretty racist. Hmmm.
This image has been making the rounds on social media. This is what we’re up against in terms of bias against growth. Read the descriptions of each category. I especially wonder about the “Low” designation. This is where poor people of color presumably live in neighborhoods they were redlined into. My guess is that this was put together by a white person. Who knows? We do know that the Seattle City Council has designated neighborhoods that have many people of color, immigrants, and people who speak languages other than English as “low opportunity neighborhoods.” City Councilmember Lisa Herbold championed this designation.
The presumption is that redlining has somehow become sanctified and that while racist in it’s intention, we ought to honor it now, keeping the people who live there in place. I think that’s pretty racist. Hmmm.
Roger Valdez
Roger Valdez is Director of Smart Growth Seattle, a pro-growth, pro-housing group that advocates for more housing of all types, in all parts of the city for people of all levels of income. He has had a twenty-five year career in politics, education, public health, urban planning, and hopes to stop Seattle's dangerous experiments in taxing and over-regulating housing production that will turn it into the next San Francisco.
