Housing Justice and Public Space
A conversation with Lynn Ross
“Access to safe, affordable, stable, and healthy housing is foundational to both individual and community well-being. It is also inextricably tied to the ability of every person to democratically participate in the economy and civil society.” — New Deal on Housing Justice: A Housing Playbook for the New Administration
Today we hear from Lynn Ross, the Founder and Principal at Spirit for Change Consulting and one of the driving forces behind the New Deal for Housing Justice, an effort to “reassert the federal role in housing in ways that fundamentally reframe and reimagine that role to be centered on racial equity and opportunity.” Both a vision document and a tactical guide for policymakers and community leaders (what Ross calls a “bold and actionable playbook”), the New Deal for Housing Justice recognizes housing as a human right and centers individuals and communities most impacted by federal housing policy. It also lays out clear policy steps for federal, state and local governments working in concert with community-based organizations and residents.
In this interview, Lynn talks about how the New Deal for Housing Justice was influenced by her work on Reimagining the Civic Commons over the last four years, as the funder representative for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In particular, we asked Lynn to help us understand the nexus between public space and housing, and to tell us how public space advocates and practitioners can influence the critical work of housing justice even as they reimagine public space.
Question [Q]: What is the role of public space in delivering housing justice?
Lynn Ross [LR]: First, those of us working in public space — in fact all of us — need to recognize that we live in a culture of white supremacy that continues to shape everything from our policymaking to our physical surroundings. Once you understand this, you can see that racism directly impacts where you can live, if you are indeed lucky enough to have a home. Racism also influences whether or not you have access to public space and it definitely influences the quality of those public spaces. For us to create truly just communities, we need everybody to has a place thrive and a good place to start is by ensuring that everybody has access to safe, healthy, affordable and equitable housing. We need everyone to have access to the public realm where they can experience a range of connections to nature, to neighbors and even to strangers. We need everyone to have their basic needs met so that we can continue to develop a rich and cohesive social fabric that strengthens our communities, our society and our democracy.
Second, let’s understand that what we are talking about here are the preconditions that allow people to fully participate in democracy: a place to live, a place to go outside and experience other people and nature, the ability to be healthy, access to art and culture. People need all of these things to participate meaningfully in a democracy. We don’t yet think of policy in this broad and intersectional way, but we should. We don’t get housing justice or an equitable public realm until we understand that not only are these issues and policies interconnected but at their foundation, they all tie back to racial justice.
Q: Racist policies like redlining have excluded Black and brown people from wealth creation by severely restricting their ability to own a home or increase the value of their homes. How has that impacted the ability of Black and brown people to access quality public spaces?
LR: People talk about redlining as something in the distant past that other people dealt with, but I think we should talk about redlining as a racist policy that influences the present.
Today, the ongoing consequences of redlining still restrict people’s access to certain neighborhoods. Redlining became illegal more than 50 years ago, but racist, anti-Black legacy of those policies is deeply embedded physically and financially into our neighborhoods and cities. There are entire neighborhoods that are inaccessible for Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC). So redlining influences everything from the location of your neighborhood, how your home is valued (or undervalued), where you work, whether you have access to well-maintained public spaces. These things are all interconnected and impacted by the ongoing legacy of policies like redlining.
Q: In the Housing Playbook you talk about how green civic infrastructure — access to urban green spaces and open space — is a way to build resiliency to climate change. In low-income neighborhoods or neighborhoods that have been systemically disadvantaged, how do we build this climate resiliency?
LR: We need to be thinking about developing community resiliency broadly — about our ability to withstand to all kinds of shocks. This thinking and planning is critical to our future, because as we’ve seen with the COVID-19 pandemic and the related economic shocks, the crisis we face can take more forms than just the direct consequences of the climate crisis. As policymakers, we need to be thinking about the ways we can bolster individuals, families and communities to withstand or even avoid these shocks that we know are going to come from the climate crisis, and if we can, other challenges of the future.
One of the ways we build more resiliency for individuals and communities is to ensure that first, everyone is safely and equitably housed. Then, we need to think about how people thrive outside their home, about the range of the civic commons to which people have access — the parks, sidewalks, alleyways, cultural centers that should be located nearby. We know the many documented benefits to health and mental wellbeing when people have ready access to nature and can experience being in green space. In New Deal for Housing Justice, we make the case that this ability to thrive in public space is directly tied to resilient communities, which is directly tied to housing justice.
As we reimagine federal housing policy, we should definitely think about the ways that we can better support equitable public space and green infrastructure in neighborhoods. I think this is especially true for those neighborhoods where the harm of policy-driven disinvestment and neglect is most palpable. We should think about the programs and the funds that can support housing and public space, as it’s all part of meeting our goals for a just and healthy society.
Q: How has your work with Reimagining the Civic Commons influenced your work on the New Deal for Housing Justice?
LR: There are at least three key ways I’ve been influenced. First is the idea of rooting this work in lived experience and amplifying lived experience as expertise. In Reimagining the Civic Commons cities, this means ensuring that residents living in neighborhoods where place-based projects are being developed are a core part of the decision-making process from the very beginning. They are valued co-designers and co-stewards at every step of the process. With the New Deal for Housing Justice, we partnered with grassroots leaders to identify the priorities and ideas that would actually impact their everyday lives. We wanted not only a bold reimagining of housing policy, but a just reimagining so we asked the people most impacted by the inequities of the current system about their priorities and their needs.
Second, is that Reimagining the Civic Commons really underscored for me the importance of having guiding principles that are driving towards specific, measurable outcomes. Reimagining the Civic Commons has four specific outcomes that drive our work in the cities and at the national level, and that can be measured. One of the very first things I worked on with the playbook co-chairs was developing our set of guiding principles for the New Deal for Housing Justice. We wanted those guiding principles to not only guide the ideas in the playbook, but also to serve as a set of principles to be adopted by a new administration. They became our North Star throughout the playbook’s development, and we kept asking ourselves: “Does this policy speak to our principles?” “Are these principles bold enough?” and “Can this policy be measured?”
Finally, my work with Reimagining the Civic Commons demonstrated to me new approaches for breaking down organizational silos and creating cross-sectoral partnerships and diverse team leadership. If you look at the Civic Commons teams in the 10 cities, they are truly diverse in who is driving decision-making and how they are creating something together. We have adopted this idea of diverse leadership and voices both in the process of creating the playbook and in our recommendations. You can see this reflected in the co-chairs and advisory committee as well as the team of writers. Through interviews and an open call for ideas, we also engaged with hundreds of grassroots leaders and advocates in communities across the country.
And, in the actual recommendations, you will see a call for really deep, authentic partnerships with various organizations, sectors and communities and a way to rethink how we engage residents including moving to co-governance models. Residents are often left out of the federal policymaking process or are only engaged with a “check the box” approach. We really wanted to get away from that both in our own process for creating the playbook as well as in the recommendations we ultimately put forward in New Deal for Housing Justice.
Q: How can public space practitioners support housing justice?
LR: First, figure out how to build the cross-sectoral partnerships we’ve been talking about. Public space practitioners need to start having conversations with the housing folks, the health folks, the education folks, the transportation folks. Then they need to make the time to build relationships built on shared values and a shared pursuit of equitable, just places. We all need to show up for each other. We need to take time to build authentic relationships that can be sustained. Because we know that the potential for equitable outcomes once we build relationships and work together is huge, but we also know that those outcomes take time and ongoing commitment. It’s so important that it’s worth us figuring this out.
A great example of cross-sectoral work is Akron’s Office of Integrated Development, which is a department created in 2019 that brought together several key functions including planning, recreation and parks, and economic development. The city government acknowledged that they wanted to be an equitable place to live, but the form of their own siloed departments and operations were an impediment. So, leveraging their experience with Akron Civic Commons, the City created this integrated department that works together deliver more equitable outcomes to the community.
Detroit is another example of working together in new ways that can scale. Detroit’s Civic Commons efforts in the Fitzgerald neighborhood was done in partnership with residents, with local business, with philanthropy, with city government and with community-based organizations. The City’s Strategic Neighborhood Fund incorporated many of the valuable lessons in the Civic Commons work Fitzgerald community. For example, the Strategic Neighborhood Fund is supporting multiple neighborhoods by creating great public space, focusing on safe and affordable housing, redeveloping commercial corridors and improving transportation options. In doing so, it brings together city government, community partners and the private sector all in pursuit of a more equitable city.
If I can leave public space practitioners with a final thought it’s this:
What’s fundamental is that the issues of housing, public space, health, transportation, and education are interconnected and necessary for people to fully participate in democracy. We can’t just solve for one issue and then be finished.
We have to solve all of them, and unfortunately, we’re not yet very good at multi-solving in policymaking. With the New Deal for Housing Justice, with Reimagining the Civic Commons, with all our work to address the inequity and racism in policy, I hope we’re at a moment of realization not only about the interconnectedness of these issues, but also the need to better reflect that interconnectedness in the way we make policy and invest in healthy communities and healthy people. It’s time for this idea to make its way into policymaking at all levels and with urgency.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.
