There’s a new Wellington, but old biases persist
Just Wasson, the President of the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association, has a great guest post on the Gazette Website. He writes about the positive changes the neighborhood has gone through in recent years and encourages Cedar Rapidians to take a second look at the neighborhood.
“It’s not a matter of if, but rather when the Wellington neighborhood will see the full effect of the improvements that are taking place. However, one of the other big challenges the neighborhood faces is its reputation. The jeers and funny looks I receive are all part of an ingrained perception that people have about the neighborhood, a perception which has developed over decades. There are people working very hard to change not only the physical structures of the neighborhood, but also its reputation.”
Wasson highlights the work of Affordable Housing Network Inc. who have rehabbed 100 homes in the neighborhood and are restoring The Rose apartments. They’re even building new homes in the neighborhood. We’ve been inside homes they’ve rehabbed. AHNI does great work. The Commonwealth building restoration is another big project that will be a boon for the neighborhood. Wasson is right to highlight those high-impact projects. He didn’t mention some other great things about the neighborhood that are worth highlighting. Coe College has restored two small apartment buildings for use as student housing. There’s a large and active neighborhood association. Wellington is filled with community gardens and little free libraries. It has two historic districts.The city plans to convert the one way streets in the neighborhood back into two way streets, which studies show increases property values and makes streets safer for pedestrians, cyclists and automobile traffic. Houses are being bought and restored. There’s a mix of public and private actors working in concert to make Wellington Heights better and what they’re doing is working.
Why then does the perception Wasson mentions persist? You can buy a house in the neighborhood for $15,000 to $220,000, and all points in between. It’s home to 5,000 people. It’s the same size as a small town. There’s not one Wellington, there are many.
Wasson is right to point out that crime-per-capita numbers are comparable to other core neighborhoods. Crime has fallen dramatically since the early 2000s. When serious crimes happen in other parts of the city we don’t assume that everything for a half mile around is unsafe. Using “Wellington Heights” as shorthand for describing where a crime took place is lazy journalism, the neighborhood is too big and diverse for that descriptor to be useful. The same goes for describing Wellington Heights as poor. There are other parts of the city where poverty is just as acute as in some parts of Wellington. Much of the fear of Wellington Heights seems to have less to do with statistics than with who lives there. Somehow the idea has taken hold that low-income African Americans move from Chicago to Cedar Rapids to abuse our social services and commit crime. I’ve lived here for ten years, including living in Wellington Heights, and have never seen any evidence to support this idea. The people of Lafayette, Indiana thought the same thing about their city. Their newspaper crunched the numbers and found it just wasn’t true. The “Great Chicago Migration Myth” is just that, a myth. The perception of Wellington Heights isn’t based on data, it’s based on something much more damaging and much harder to fix. It’s simple, ugly racism.
Luckily that perception is starting to buckle in the face of reality. I encourage you to take Wasson’s advice. Take a walk through the neighborhood. Go to a potluck in Redmond Park. Catch a poetry reading at the Paul Engle Center. Exchange a book in one of the little free libraries. See for yourself what Wellington is really like these days. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.
