South Bend‘s Lead Developers
What We Built in 2017
Bones do not know lead is a poison. When lead dust is inhaled, or lead paint chips are ingested, the blood carries lead to the bones, and the bones treat lead like a building block. If the bones are building, they use the building blocks available.
Most adults’ bones, being already built, do not need these building blocks. Their bones turn most lead away. For the young it is different. For a baby or a child, growing bones take in the lead, and the baby’s bones or the child’s bones become built with leaded building blocks.
In downtown South Bend, near the eastern riverfront, are two building skeletons. One is nascent, twisted antennae of rusty rebar growing out of a white concrete foundation; it will total ten floors. Each floor cost taxpayers near a million.
The second building has grown already to its full height of seven floors, metal in concrete interlocked at right angles near the rushing river. Each floor cost taxpayers near a million.
These buildings are not hospitals, schools, public safety buildings. They are riverfront condos that start at $700,000 — at six times the local median home price. They are upscale dining locales, a grocery, and luxury-class apartments and offices.
In early December, 2016, Mayor Pete Buttigieg received a call. With Flint, Michigan, in mind, Reuters journalists made a list of cities with high rates of lead poisoned children. The reporter informed Mayor Buttigieg that South Bend had an area with a lead poisoning rate six times Flint’s.
“It is an eye-opener,” said Mayor Buttigieg.
This area, Census Tract 6, has some of the most diverse neighborhoods in South Bend. South Bend is over 40% African-American and Hispanic. Census Tract 6 is 64% African-American and Hispanic. Reuters found that one out of every three small children in Census Tract 6 had elevated levels of lead.
That same month, the South Bend Tribune followed up on the Reuters story. It reported that other census tracts near Census Tract 6 had one child out of every four or five with elevated levels of lead in their blood.
In early 2017, one high rise near the riverfront nearly miscarried. The building proposal was three times the neighborhood limit for height. It also violated city zoning ordinances. The area zoning board rejected it. The city council rejected it. Jo Broden, a Democratic city councilwoman for the neighborhood, wrote an op-ed against it. She questioned why so much public money was granted to a private development in a neighborhood where private development was already progressing well.
In January 2017, Mayor Buttigieg personally saved the building. He brokered the deal to send nearly 10 million dollars to it. The deal also abated almost all tax payments for ten years. “We have something that is actually going to work”, Mayor Buttigieg announced.
A week earlier, his administration also approved 2.5 million dollars in public funds for 12 luxury condominiums — the seven-floor riverfront building. That number later grew to 5 million. Frank Perri, the condo developer, noted his hope that the project would attract “empty-nesters”.
In March 2017, Aaron Perri, the city’s parks director, announced that Seitz Park, a small city park located next to the luxury condo building, would receive substantially more funding. It ultimately received 5 million dollars, an expenditure not present in the 2014 South Bend Parks Master Plan. Trails adjoining Seitz Park would also receive 1.8 million.
Lead paint was once the gold standard. Leaded paint was more durable, brighter in color, and expensive. The wealthy painted their homes with it. In higher end houses, metal paint beat out paints based on milk and mineral.
Lead’s horrific damage to human brains and bodies and communities became increasingly apparent: memory damage, kidney dysfunction, reproductive problems, low-birth weight, and a correlation with aggressive, even violent, behavior. European countries began to ban lead paint in the early 20th century. Lobbying by American paint companies kept it on the market in the US until 1978. By that time, the wealthy had left many inner cities. The painted colorful homes of the wealthy became the homes of poor diverse children with disintegrating paint. Children’s mouths do not know lead paint is a poison. Lead paint tastes sweet.
In March 2017, months after Reuters had broken the story on South Bend’s high rate of childhood lead poisoning, Mayor Buttigieg gave his State of the City address. Before the speech, his strategy on the lead crisis was undeclared. Would South Bend, like many cities across the country, construct its own office focused on lead and public health? How much money would it dedicate to the lead crisis?
He said this:
While the City has no specific officer, staff, or funding for health, we will continue to actively support other health authorities in ensuring we live in a safe environment, especially for children.
Mayor Buttigieg’s strategy was to support the county. He would not change the status quo, by creating or re-tasking an office of the city for public health.
In the Reuters article published months before, St. Joseph County Health Officer Dr. Luis Gallup had said of his agency, “we are the lowest of the low in terms of public health funding.” Mayor Buttigieg had noted that problem too, stating “The county health department does everything they can just to keep up with child immunizations and restaurant inspections.”
The largest amount Mayor Buttigieg dedicated to the lead crisis in his 2017 State of the City speech was $100,000.
In July 2017 it was reported that the City of South Bend’s application for HUD federal funding to address the lead crisis was denied. Warren Friedman, a senior HUD advisor, was interviewed by the South Bend Tribune. When asked why South Bend’s proposal was rejected, Friedman stated that “other applicants gave applications that indicated they had a stronger approach to address the problem”.
I asked a neighborhood redevelopment staffer why the city’s grant proposal was rejected. He replied, “incompetence”.
Also in July 2017, it was reported that South Bend’s lead crisis was still worse. Eight census tracts on the city’s west side had one out of every five of its tested children under age 6 with elevated levels of lead. This data was established at the end of 2015.
The South Bend Tribune’s reporter on the lead crisis, Ted Booker, characterized the response of the city and county to the lead poisoning epidemic this way:
South Bend and county officials acknowledge that they need an action plan, though they don’t have any concrete ideas.
In a March 2018 editorial, roughly 15 months after the Reuters report broke, the Editorial Board of the South Bend Tribune castigated local leaders for inaction and low funding in addressing the lead epidemic:
“Community leaders must make the problem of lead poisoning a priority and find a long-term, dedicated source of funding to pay to fix it.”
In summer 2018, Michael Harding, a county health board member, described the funding for public health as “at the bare bones”.
At that time, it became apparent that basic data about local government’s progress in addressing lead poisoning in 2017 was not available.
When completed, the seven-floor luxury condo building will have its metal and concrete bones enclosed in a glass curtain with a jewel-like quality, durably reflecting the vibrant, bright colors of the South Bend River Lights, a performance art installation of changing hues, broadcast upon the white cascades of the river at dusk and throughout the night.
A mother’s bones do not know lead is a poison. A poor girl with lead bones becomes a woman with lead bones. If she becomes pregnant, she undergoes skeletal changes. Forming a baby in the womb, the mother’s bones, like a grocery, offer stored provisions through the blood and the placenta to the baby. The baby in the womb has bones built and organs nourished with the mother’s bone minerals and nutrients and lead.
And when a mother gives birth to her child, her bones continue to nourish the baby, offering their mass, rushing all that is needed through the blood to the baby. The mother’s breasts lactate with milk carrying minerals and lead from the blood. When the baby is placed on her mother’s breast for the first time, her bones, her blood, her milk respond: each leaches lead.
This is how South Bend leads its development. Luxury, disintegrating in homes, building metal skeletons ten and seven stories high, leaching into the sucking, open mouth of a baby at the breast, a soft newborn with lead bones.
