COUNTERPOINT: Brownfield Redevelopment Not About the Disadvantaged
By Lance Stokes

“Disadvantaged” communities have not and do not use brownfield tools and resources as a spark to redevelop blighted areas in order to create opportunities for the benefit of their disadvantaged residents. Although communities with large segments of disadvantaged residents may use brownfield redevelopment as a tool to leverage resources and assistance to spur revitalization, brownfield redevelopment is not about disadvantaged individuals.
 
Disadvantaged individuals instead serve as a tool in a community’s acquisition of brownfield redevelopment funds. However, once the community acquires their requested brownfield redevelopment funds, the disadvantaged residents now become a burden that must be dealt with.

Defining Disadvantaged
A “disadvantaged” community is so labeled as long as a certain percentage of their citizenry are disadvantaged individuals.

The term “disadvantaged” historically seems to be defined in terms of ethnicity. The term originally referred to black Americans; racism solidified that. After the Vietnam war, Asians got included in the term. With the significant increase of Latinos, the term was redefined as “people of color.”  Somewhere along the line, the designation of “poor whites” became included and the term was again redefined to “people of color and poor whites.”  It seems the definition “poor people of color and poor whites” or simply “poor people” would logically suffice.

It is lack of education, limited financial resources, and sometimes even sound mental capacity, that defines an individual as disadvantaged and marked by poverty and injustice.  Lack of education and resources, along with political intervention, resulted in disadvantaged people being located in or near the contaminated areas in the first place. These same factors are responsible for the majority of disadvantaged people being pushed out of an area once redevelopment is accomplished.
 
Redevelopment Not a Rescue
The term brownfield redevelopment means “the reuse, refurbishment or expansion of real property which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of hazardous substances.”  There is nothing in that definition that addresses disadvantaged people.

Across the U.S., developers grab up abandoned urban mills, factories, landfills, gas stations and quarries and, using government money, replace those eyesores with condominiums, town houses and single family homes. These areas are in prime locations close to jobs, entertainment and mass transportation. Because of these amenities, consumers are willing to pay top dollar to live on land once unfit for habitation. Disadvantaged residents, who once occupied the brownfield or surrounding area prior to redevelopment, are seldom the individuals who occupy it after the redevelopment. 

Although there is no question that contaminated properties sustain the patterns of poverty that plague disadvantaged people, brownfield redevelopment is not a rescue program for disadvantaged individuals as purported. Brownfield redevelopment is about what makes financial sense.

Community participation and stakeholder involvement are supposed to play an essential role in successful brownfield redevelopment. Typically, community participation is viewed as adversarial, obstructive and a process that slows or stalls the project.

Community outreach, if implemented as it was intended, could provide counseling, education, job training, job opportunities, etc. Unfortunately, the way it is usually implemented diminishes its usefulness to little more than a red herring to divert attention from the reality that there is little, if any, concern for the disadvantaged individuals who give definition to a community seeking brownfield funds.

While it is true that disadvantaged communities face unique and difficult barriers as they seek to clean up and reuse their brownfields, the disadvantaged individuals who helped that community get labeled as “disadvantaged” are pushed out, bussed out or otherwise routed on to contribute to some other community seeking qualification for the label of “disadvantaged” to obtain brownfield monies. BFN

Lance Stokes, PhD, is president and CEO of ECI Environmental Compliance in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

POINT: Race, Poverty and Redevelopment
By Ken Brown

OTHER COUNTERPOINTS

All Brownfields Are Not Created Equal
By Lenny Siegel

Disadvantaged Often Marginalized
By Mary Mulligan