Cedar Rapids has an equity problem

Cedar Rapids has an equity problem.

I am not referring to racial slurs spray-painted on local residences, criminal justice inequities or educational disparities — although these certainly exist in our community and are worthy of both attention and investment, I am referring to something far more insidious.

I mean environmental justice, defined by the Environmental Protection Agency as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.”

In 2018, Cedar Rapids was certified as a 4-star city by STAR Communities, an organization that assesses communities nationwide for sustainability in seven focus areas. Our overall scores weren’t bad, but our fair city fared the worst in the focus area of climate and energy. What was really surprising was buried in the equity and empowerment score — our lowest score related to equity was in the area of environmental justice.

The report made several suggestions for improvement, including an environmental justice assessment and action plan — and in February 2020, the Cedar Rapids City Council passed a resolution to create a climate action plan. Thus, the Climate Advisory Committee was born.

Cedar Rapids Sustainability Coordinator Eric Holthaus gave me some background on the work being done. Focus groups within the commission are meeting with members of industry and small business as well as targeted neighborhood populations to create goals and work toward community-focused solutions.

“These have not been antagonistic conversations,” Holthaus said. “They have some goals on paper and we look forward to partnering to achieve these goals as a community.”

A coordinated official effort notwithstanding, the process of creating a committee, forming a plan, devising subcommittees, reporting back, re-evaluating viable components and so on can be time consuming when an issue is personally relevant and urgent.

I complained about it to Eric Gutschmidt, owner of Gutschmidt Properties and landlord to many. “This town is so rental-heavy,” I told him over a second cup of tea at Cafe Saint Pio. “Isn’t there a way to incentivize landlords to make property improvements that will bring down the cost of utilities for tenants, improve the property value for the owners and help to meet some of these sustainability goals at the same time?”

Eric grimaced. “To shift landlord culture in Cedar Rapids is going to take a long time. Knowledge is power — it’s going to be much easier to encourage that kind of thinking among new landlords than to convince someone established to unlearn negative behaviors.”

This was disheartening; so many people, particularly Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) in our community are tenants without the ability to implement meaningful changes in the home environment aside from unplugging the toaster on the way out the door.

I got in touch with Jason Snell of the local Sunrise Movement hub hoping he would tell me I was right, but he led me back to the findings of the Climate Advisory Committee — “Seventy percent of the problematic emissions are coming from industry, not from private citizens. You can expend lots of energy working at the individual level and not achieve the level of impact you would with meaningful changes at large corporate sources of greenhouse gases.”

So due to reluctance of established landlords to make changes to the service model for the good of humanity, and the oversized role of industry in environmental degradation, our best bet is to negotiate with corporations we supply with TIF dollars and a reasonably priced labor force for emissions reduction that might extend the sustainability of our community into another generation. (Or at least, for most of the life span of the younger generation that is already here.)

To their credit, some of our large corporations are represented on the city commission, so there is potential for improvement. But with a catastrophic crisis like climate change bearing down on us, and the impacts being felt sooner and more harshly by marginalized populations, will the wheels of progress turn quickly enough?

Having experienced membership on various task forces and commissions, the role as a member of a marginalized population can be isolating. Issues that may resonate with me as a Black woman may not hold the same urgency with my counterparts around any given boardroom table — and typically, I’m the only one in the room.

The Cedar Rapids Community Climate Action Commission is not dissimilar from the norm; although equity is highlighted as a goal, the group itself is nearly homogenous. How the work of community engagement is performed will be critical to outcomes that directly impact those who never seem to have more than one seat at the table.

As a component of their definition of environmental justice, the EPA goes on to assert that for equity to be achieved, everyone must not only have equal protection from environmental hazards, we must also have equal access to the decision-making process about health and well-being in our community. Therein lies a consistent challenge of the work to create a community that works for the benefit of all residents: inclusion of marginalized populations in the rooms where plans are laid and decisions are made.

Sofia Demartino is a Gazette editorial fellow. Comments: sofia.demartino@thegazette.com