Woodards’ goal is as laudable as it is ambitious. Tacoma, like most U.S. cities, continues to suffer from inequities that disproportionately impact people of color. Widespread attention has been paid here lately to problems with policing, but this isn’t the only way that cities perpetrate racism, as Woodards knows. She told Crosscut last month, “We can’t become anti-racist by just fixing policing. If we really are going to fix systemic racism, we have to look at every system that produces barriers.”
In our region, perhaps no barrier is greater than the lack of affordable housing. High-quality, desirable and conveniently located homes elude many people of color, especially Black, brown and Indigenous people.
Legacy housing policies — redlining and racial covenants, the promotion of suburbanization and sprawl, and zoning — all interact to complicate Tacoma’s housing crisis. The exclusionary legacies of these historical and ongoing systems and practices must be addressed if Tacoma is to become a truly anti-racist city.
The city’s “Home in Tacoma Project” could be one step in the right direction. Effectively a program of zoning reform, the project offers recommendations for how Tacoma could increase housing supply that meets the needs of low- and fixed-income residents.
In its boldest iteration, the project offered a growth strategy that puts communities and community-building at the center. It called for the addition of “missing middle housing,” which premises multiunit and clustered housing in walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods that are anchored by retail, parks and other amenities. Unfortunately, the high ambitions of the project have since been watered down — and that’s a problem, if the city wants to meaningfully move the needle on the severe housing shortage.
To make Tacoma an anti-racist city, it won’t be enough to change existing policies and hope that these unmake the existing hostility of the built environment. To be truly anti-racist, Tacoma must be physically remade.
In practice, this requires aggressive and immediate support of those currently not enjoying the benefits of urban life.
There’s much Tacoma can start or continue doing today to ensure that people live in walkable neighborhoods that support multiple mobilities, have access to grocery stores and green spaces, and offer protection from cars.
To get started, we must expand access to public transit while continuing to reclaim and reopen roads by restricting vehicle access. Public transit, an essential resource for many poor and working class people, is the premier solution for addressing a host of other urban issues, including congestion and pollution. If we do these two things, roads can remerge as meaningful public spaces that accommodate pedestrians, children at play, diners and transients, and which facilitate efficient transit. As a result, we can expect improved safety and quality of life and increased commercial activity.
Taking this initial step will enhance what is possible through existing reform efforts, but we must revisit “Home in Tacoma” to ensure that its implementation is truly comprehensive. Anything less and we risk the project turning into yet another scheme that benefits developers and existing property owners, while exacerbating segregation, sprawl and car dependency.
Continue reading at Crosscut.