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Experts and activists discussed the history of housing discrimination and its effects within the city of Syracuse on Thursday in a public forum about the Interstate 81 removal project.

The forum, called Charting Renewal, was hosted by City Scripts, an organization that operates through Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the School of Architecture. City Scripts holds discussions and provides research on the intersection of architectural design and public policy in the U.S.

During the forum, panelists addressed concerns about the removal of the I-81 viaduct, a deteriorating section of the highway that New York state plans to remove and replace with a “community grid” of surface-level streets. They discussed how racism in the U.S. has led to the displacement of communities of color in cities across the country, as well as how people in these communities must be able to decide what happens to their homes and the land they live on.

“(These neighborhoods) have been destroyed by urban renewal. They’ve been destroyed by the infrastructure build, and they are rebuilding back their community,” said Lanessa Chaplin, the I-81 project counsel for the central New York chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “We want more resources; we want more investments here. We don’t want our neighborhood torn down and then redeveloped into something new.”

John Washington, the co-director of the popular education training for Homes Guarantee — a grassroots campaign that focuses on equitable housing — said the implications of housing discrimination can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution, when white families in northern states moved into large public housing complexes so they could work in factories.

But after the U.S. joined World War I, masses of Black people moved north during the Great Migration to take over factory jobs while white men were at war, Washington said. As they continued to move north, the housing system became a way to exclude Black people and prevent them from accessing resources and wealth, he said.

“Our housing system was designed to exclude Black people and to give them as little wealth and as little power in the economic relationship to housing at every given level. And that hasn’t stopped,” Washington said.

In Syracuse, racist housing policies such as redlining also created visible discrepancies in access to quality housing that further separated communities of color. And in the 1960s, 1,300 Syracuse residents were forced out of their homes so the state could construct I-81.

At the time, residents were aware that the construction of the highway would destroy their communities, and they protested the state’s project, Chaplin said.

“They were very well aware they were losing their community, and they fought tooth and nail to keep it and maintain it,” Chaplin said.

Nearly 55 years later, city residents whose families were displaced with the construction of the highway and who now live in several public housing communities near I-81 fear that history could repeat itself during and after the removal of the viaduct.

When large construction projects such as I-81 take place, residents are often forced to move out of their homes for a period of time, and mixed-use, mixed-income housing renewal projects come in to “redevelop” those neighborhoods, said Lawrence Vale, associate dean and professor of urban design and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

While these projects can sometimes be successful, they can also be extremely destructive for people who have lived there for years, Vale said.

When people return to the public housing developments, they sometimes don’t fit the new “standards” required to live there, Vale said. Requirements can include new fees that some residents can’t afford, such as utility costs, or a lack of a criminal record, he said.

“In many cases, public housing redevelopment efforts begin with a statement about the right of residents in good standing to return,” Vale said. “But the fine print of what counts as good standing may be proven very daunting to meet.”

Blueprint 15, a Syracuse nonprofit aiming to revitalize the neighborhood destroyed by the construction of I-81, plans to kick-start several anti-displacement strategies in the neighborhood, including hiring neighborhood representatives and establishing a housing trust fund.

Vale hopes Blueprint 15 will approach redevelopment in a more equitable way than some other redevelopment projects.

“It’s been possible for some mixed-income community developers to ask a very different question,” Vale said. “They’re saying, ‘Well, what is the maximum number of equitably screened, very low-income households that can be accommodated in a mixed-income and mixed-use development that still allows a safe and stable community?’”

But mixed-race housing and the idea of integrating Black residents into white neighborhoods can also be extremely problematic, Chaplin said. When Black people are moved into white areas because those areas are “too white,” it enforces the idea that white, affluent people must move into a community for it to be valuable, she said.

“It gives the perception that we are innate objects that can be moved for the benefit of other people and we, at some point, will receive some ad hoc benefit from living next to a person who has more money than us,” Chaplin said.

Many Syracuse residents also fear the land left over from I-81 could lead to gentrification and a displacement process that is slower than before but equally as destructive. When the viaduct is removed, it will leave behind about 18 acres of developable land, eight of which lie adjacent to the current viaduct.

This land could leave room for institutions such as SU to develop large buildings that won’t serve the surrounding community, which sits feet from the university’s campus, Chaplin said.

“The reality is the modern city is about beer clubs, breweries, avocado toast, attracting students who are great for the real estate market,” Washington said. “It’s about bringing in people that the white gentry can manipulate into communities and redefining all of the spatial relationships around those people.”

To prevent the residents from experiencing the same destruction as in the past, all of the panelists said the effort surrounding I-81 must be driven entirely by the community whose land will be affected by the project.

“We must think carefully about design and avoid imposing architects and planners’ prescriptions of what residents should want in their homes, but rather we should ask them themselves,” said Lizabeth Cohen, professor of American studies at Harvard University.

Chaplin, along with the NYCLU, has proposed that the city place the 8 acres of land that are directly below I-81 in a land trust so residents in the area can decide what happens to it. Residents want to develop a type of equity in the area, she said.

“They want to be able to go to a tailor, a Black-owned barbershop, a Black butcher — very localized resources — a bookstore, a cultural center, a community center, very simple things you would find in your everyday, well-resourced neighborhood,” Chaplin said.

People who have lived in public housing all their lives shouldn’t simply be consulted about what they want to see in their neighborhoods, Washington said. Rather, they should be directing the process and deciding what will be best for them and their communities, he said.

“People know what they want where they live,” Washington said. “They know what they need where they live.”

Published on April 2, 2021 at 1:58 am

Contact Maggie: mehicks@syr.edu | @maggie_hickss