Ecosystems & Entrepreneurship

day one project

Putting Redlines in the Green: Economic Revitalization Through Innovative Neighborhood Markets

05.16.22 | 11 min read | 文字Christopher J. Gillespie

Summary

这systemic effects of past redlining in more than 200 U.S. citiescontinue to persist。红线was a 20^th- 明确否认黑人美国人获得联邦抵押贷款的机会—and future wealth。Adverse impacts of redlining not only reduce quality of life for communities of color and low-income communities, but also have spillover effects that cost taxpayers upwards of3.08亿美元per year.

拜登 - 哈里斯（Biden-Harris）政府可以通过一个名为“将红线置于绿色的地方”的新计划来打击红线的影响。通过该计划，联邦政府将重新利用其一小部分thousands of excess and underutilized propertiesas rent-free or rent-subsidized sites for Innovative Neighborhood Markets (INMs): multipurpose, community-operated spaces that serve as grocery-delivery hubs, houseculturally significant businesses, and support local entrepreneurs in historically redlined areas. While recent federal initiatives (such as the机会区and承诺区programs) have sought to stimulate development in economically distressed communities through top-down grants and tax incentives, “Putting Redlines in the Green” will give historically redlined communities access to a key asset—real estate—needed to spur revitalization from the bottom up.

Challenge and Opportunity

这term “redlining” derives from racially discriminatory practices carried out by government homeownership programs in the 1930s. Thepernicious systemic effects of historical redlining今天继续感受到。历史上红线的地区，例如拥有较少的城市福利封面（因此遭受较高的夏季温度和更大的污染），experiencepoorer health outcomes and decreased earning potential, and are exploited bypredatory lending practicesthat make it nearly impossible to rebuild wealth. Historic redlining can also be linked directly to theprevalence and distributionof “food deserts” and “food apartheid” in U.S. cities.

In 2021, the Department of Justice (DOJ)—in collaboration with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)—launched the Combating红线Initiative to ensure equal credit opportunity for communities of color. While laudable, this effort seeks to forestallfutureinstances of redlining rather than to combat inequities associated with redlining in the past. Recent federal initiatives—such as the Trump-era机会区program, the Obama-era承诺区program,¹the Bush II-era更新社区program, and the Clinton-eraEmpowerment Zoneprogram—have aimed to spur revitalization in economically distressed communities, including historically redlinedcommunities, through grants and/or tax incentives. The success of this approach has proven mixed at best. Opportunity Zones, for instance, have been criticized forsubsidizing gentrificationandfunneling benefits to wealthy private investors。Community leaders in designated Promise Zones havestruggledto productively integrate federal grants into comprehensive, synergistic initiatives. Finally, the pattern of different administrationslayering彼此之外的类似计划也引起了利益相关者之间的混乱和缺乏持续的买入。现在是采用新方法的时候了。下面的行动计划描述了对历史上红线地区联邦投资的新愿景：一个依赖于重新利用联邦资产来授权社区驱动企业的愿景。

Plan of Action

这Biden-Harris administration should jointly launch “Putting Redlines in the Green”, a new, interagency, and place-based program to combat inequities of historical redlining. Historically redlined communities suffer fromlack of investment and inequity in financial acquisition。通过“将红线置于绿色”，将历史上红线社区的过量和未充分利用的联邦财产重新用于创新邻里市场（INM）的无租金或租金补贴的地点。INM被设想为多功能，社区操作的空间，旨在通过结合农民市场，社区银行和业务改善区（BIDS）的要素来刺激自下而上的振兴。例如，INM可以为农场到市场杂货服务提供枢纽（请参阅下面的活动5），Houseculturally significant businessesthreatened by the impacts of gentrification and the COVID-19 pandemic, and give local entrepreneurs the retail and co-working space needed to launch and grow new ventures.

A stepwise plan of action for the program is outlined below.

Activity 1. Assemble an interagency task force to define program targets and criteria.

这Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Office of Community Planning and Development is well-placed to identify redlined communities where INMs could deliver especially large impacts. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Office of Community Revitalization (OCR) is already experienced insupporting locally led, community-driven efforts to protect the environment, expand economic opportunity, and revitalize neighborhoods. These two offices should jointly assemble and chair a task force comprising representatives from relevant federal agencies (e.g., the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Justice (USDA, DOC, and DOJ); the General Services Administration (GSA)) and external stakeholder groups (e.g., civic groups, environmental-justice organizations, fair-housing experts). The task force would lay the foundation for “Putting Redlines in the Green” by:

• Identifying and mapping priority areas. The task force should begin by overlaying maps ofhistorically redlined communitieswith maps offederally recognized food deserts。Areas lying at the intersection of these two datasets could be further prioritized for investment using tools such asEJSCREENandCEJST，这为政府机构和公众提供了全国一致的审查和映射弱势群体和苦恼社区的方法。
• Defining criteria for potential INM sites. A variety of factors could promote or stymie the success and long-term sustainability of INMs. These factors run the gamut from physical characteristics (e.g., structural integrity of the building(s) intended for repurposing as an INM site) to locational characteristics (e.g., proximity to parking and public transportation) to resource availability (e.g., access to high-speed Internet) to zoning designation. The task force should identify the factors most likely to affect INM viability, and use its findings to develop a set of criteria for potential INM sites. As part of this effort, the task force should consult development finance, law, public policy, planning, and business to identify which types of INM-based enterprises would best foster revitalization and combat inequities imposed by redlining in different communities—and what resources INMs will need to be equipped with to support these enterprises.
• Establishing relationships with funders and community groups. Partnerships with external entities will be essential to the success of “Putting Redlines in the Green”. The task force should begin building relationships with funders willing to cover a share of the costs of converting former government buildings into INM sites, as well as with community groups²that will be able to (i) confirm that the community can make use of an INM, (ii) ensure that individual INMs are tailored to the needs of local residents, and (iii) raise awareness about forthcoming INMs among potential business participants and customers.
• Defining other key programmatic elements. The task force should explore programmatic elements that (i) entrench community governance into “Putting Redlines in the Green”, and (ii) help set INMs up to ultimately become self-sustaining entities. For instance:
  • INMs could utilize a local taxation and community profit-sharing plan. Under such a plan, all INM-associated transactions would be subject to a small community tax. Tax revenues would be earmarked to support community workforce training, greening and beautification projects, infrastructure repairs, and similar. Additionally, a barter system or non-cash component could be used to catalyze community involvement and stimulate community enterprise.
  • EPA could explore opportunities for leveragingSmart Growth Programs（IE。，Local Foods, Local Places) so as to produce customized INMs that reflect the “brand” of their home communities.
  • HUD和EPA可以与小型企业管理局（SBA）合作，²the Department of Education (Ed), DOC’s Economic Development Administration (EDA), and external partners such asCommunity Economics, Inc. (CEI)on technical-assistance programs that help interested local entrepreneurs develop and implement plans for INM-based businesses. The plans could include strategies for ultimately transitioning to permanent, non-INM-based locations within the community. This would (i) free up space for other local entrepreneurs, (ii) allow for expansion of community enterprise, and (iii) transform historically redlined areas into concentrated economic centers. Federally sponsored technical assistance could also be made available to INM participants on an ongoing, as-needed basis leading up to and following business launch. EPA already runs a collection of Smart Growth Technical Assistance Programs to support sustainable development in communities nationwide. The agency can build on this experience and infrastructure for “Putting Redlines in the Green”. HUD could consider creating a specializedCommunity Development Block Grant (CDBG)对于基于INM的业务，需要财务支持以及技术援助才能启动。
  • 立即通知可能包括社区治理ructure whereby local residents and representatives of regional partner organizations would collaboratively review business proposals from potential INM participants and democratically select businesses to be granted INM space. The governance body would also help manage the INM, perform oversight, and evaluate outcomes and impacts.

活动2.进行审查，以确定可以重新使用为INM站点的E＆U联邦物业。这portfolio of federally owned real property in the United States includesthousands of E&U properties。While the number of E&U properties catalogued in theFederal Real Property Profile (FRPP)fluctuates from year to year (due to changes in government operations, acquisition and disposal of various properties, and inconsistencies in data reporting, among other factors), the pandemic induced a notable spike: from approximately 15,000 in FY 2020 (Figure 1). With virtual and hybrid work now firmly embedded across the federal government even as the acute phase of the pandemic has ended, it is likely that a significant fraction of these properties will not return to full utilization. With maintenance of E&U federal propertiescosting taxpayers tens of millions of dollars annually, there is hence a timely opportunity to augment ongoing processes for federal property reallocation.

项目组应与GSA审查the federal government’s inventory of excess and underutilized properties to identify sites that could be repurposed as INMs. The goal of this review would be to generate a list of 10–15 sites for near-term repurposing and investment to pilot the INM concept, as well as a longer list of additional candidate sites that could be considered for INMs in the future. A first step for the review would be to crosswalk the E&U properties logged in the FRPP database with the map of priority areas developed in Activity 1. E&U properties located in priority areas should be downselected by building type. For instance, E&U hospital and lab buildings, as likely poor candidate INM sites, could be excluded while E&U housing, office, and warehouse space could be retained. Next, the remaining candidate sites should be screened against the criteria developed in Activity 1. This process stage would also be an appropriate time to identify and eliminate highly problematic candidate sites: for instance, sites that are inbadly deteriorated conditionor that have already provenuniquely difficult重新利用。最后，工作队应优先考虑最终候选网站的投资清单。优先级应该考虑诸如地理位置（努力实现全国INM的公平分配）和从资助者和社区团体的买入等因素1。

活动3.在最初的10-15个站点中驾驶INM模型。

HUD and EPA should lead on repurposing the 10–15 sites identified in Activity 2 into a network of INMs distributed across historically redlined communities nationwide. This process will involve (i) acquiring ownership of the sites; (ii) acquiring necessary permits, (iii) performing requisite site inspections and remediation; (iv) performing requisite construction and demolition needed to transform the sites into usable INM spaces; (v) establishing site-specific governance structures; and (vi) soliciting, selecting, and following through on locally led business proposals for the INMs. HUD and EPA should strive to have the initial suite of INMs operational within three years of program launch, and the federal government should allocate $1 million per site to achieve this goal. Funding could come from the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (specifically, through the Act’s$1.5 billion RAISE grant program), the Justice40 initiative, and/or from already-existing allocations at HUD, EPA, and partner federal agencies for activities related to economic development, community revitalization, and business/entrepreneurship. Funding could be leveraged with matching funds and/or in-kind support from philanthropies, nonprofits, local governments, and community organizations.

Activity 4. Ensure that E&U federal properties that become available in the future are systematically evaluated for suitability as INM sites.

Federal lawgovernsthe disposal process for properties no longer needed by federal agencies to carry out their program responsibilities. The first step in this process is for GSA to offer “excess property to other federal agencies that may have a program need for it.” A task force should work with GSA to ensure that the “Putting Redlines in the Green” program is incorporated into the federal agency stage of the process. The task force should also develop internal processes for efficiently evaluating E&U properties that become available as candidate sites for INMs. Steps of these internal processes would likely be broadly similar to the steps of the larger review conducted in Activity 2.

活动5.推出以INM为中心的杂货交付模型。

To combat the specific issue of“food apartheid”in historically redlined communities, USDA’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (OASCR) should spearhead creation of an INM-centered “farm to neighborhood” model (F2NM) of grocery delivery. In the F2NM, federal agencies would partner with local government and non-governmental organizations to support community gardens and nearby (within a defined radius) farms. Support, which could come in the form of subsidized crop insurance or equipment grants, would be provided to community gardeners and farmers in exchange for pledges to sell produced crops and other foods (e.g., eggs and meat) at INMs. USDA and EPA could also consider subsidizing distributors to sell key foodstuffs that cannot be produced locally (e.g., due to agricultural or logistical limitations) at affordable prices at INMs. Finally, USDA and EPA could consider working with local partners (e.g., the底特律黑人社区粮食安全网络; the环境农业系统中心[CEFS]的粮食制度委员会) to launch meal-kit services that provide community subscribers with INM-sourced ingredients and accompanying recipes. Such services will expand access to locally produced food while promoting healthier lifestyles.

Conclusion

这11 million+ Americans that currently live in historically redlined areas deserve attention from policymakers. Historic redlining galvanizes the prevalence of food deserts,leadexposure, discriminatory practices, and other adversities, and encourages predatory markets.

实施“将红线放入绿色”将通过利润驱动的，自我维持的社区企业（INM）赋予历史上红线的地区。“将红线放入绿色”也将加强打击红线倡议在确保历史neighborhoo提意见ds receive “fair and equal access” to the lending opportunities that are—and always have been—available to non-redlined, and majority-White, neighborhoods. Ultimately, transforming excess and underutilized federal properties into INMs will strengthen urban sustainability, reduce taxpayer burdens, and promote restorative, economic, and environmental justice. “Putting Redlines in the Green” will therefore not only provide restitution for historically redlined communities, but will enfranchise the people and revitalize the place.