METROPOLITAN JUBILEE
A MAC PRIMER ON URBAN SPRAWL, CONCENTRATED
POVERTY, AND ACTING FOR JUSTICE IN CHICAGOLAND
Presented By
The MAC METRO EQUITY TASK FORCE
NOVEMBER 2000
Acting On Our Faith
After his temptation
in the desert, Jesus returned to Nazareth and proclaimed his ministry as
fulfillment of the Jubilee (Luke 4:18-19). The “Acceptable Year of the Lord”,
or Jubilee was understood as a system of justice established by God for God's
people (Lev. 25). When the people of Israel entered the promised land, every
tribe and every family was to be given a portion of land. God established the
Jubilee system to provide every person an opportunity to be stakeholders in a
Holy community. Sometimes, through neglect, bad choices or misfortune, families
would fall upon hard times, and need to give up their land and work for others,
even as indentured servants to pay off debts. The Year of Jubilee was to be
observed every 50th year to set captives free, to liberate people from bondage,
dischagre debts and return everyone to the land of their birthright. It was a
divine policy to ensure that poverty and inequality did not become perpetual
through generations. It was a way of ensuring that permanent disparities
and underclasses did not develop. It was a divine policy to protect the dignity
of all God's people.
This
policy, unfortunately was never really practiced, because it required a Jubileeum, a people devoted to practicing
it. But it is a Biblical principle for sustaining a just and righteous
community. Again, to establish Jubilee requires a Jubileeum, the people to live
it out and call it in to the public realm. Will
we organize the Jubilee in our region and in our nation or will we let it
remain unfulfilled ?
How does
our present day society live up to the Biblical principle of justice and equity
found in the Jubilee laws?
Let’s look
at what's going on in the Chicago-land area. From 1970 to 1990 , the population of the Chicago Metropolitan area increased by 4%, while land use
increased by 40%. In the past 10
years, 15% of the farmland in the Chicago metropolitan region has been
developed. Each year in the United States, 1.5 million acres of farm land is taken
out of agricultural use for development. Why are we taking so much land away
from open space and agricultural production for so few people? It is because of policy and spending
decisions that discard some communities while building up new and econmically
exclusive ones.
It is
projected that as a result of these development patterns, 48,000 new cars will
be on tollways each day within the next two decades. One study found that
children have lost 12 hours of parental time per week over the past three
decades due to commuting. Are
these patterns consistent with family values?
This
pattern is called suburban sprawl and its happening in metropolitan areas
across the country. Who is moving out of the the central city and inner ring
suburbs to take up all this land and cause all these roads to be built? Primarily
it is wealthy people establishing exclusive communities with large homes on
large lots. Poor and working people are not welcome and need not inquire. Zoning
and land use laws prohibit affordable homes and rental units from being built.
Also, many
of our region’s businesses are moving.
More than 80% of the new jobs created in our Chicago region over the past
two decades have been created in the third and fourth ring suburbs where less
than 18% of the people live.
What that
means is that increasingly, the poor,
working and middle class people must spend lots of money and time commuting to
jobs in communities from which they are excluded from living. These job
commuting patterns have been called “the Soweto express” a version of
apartheid where people are allowed to work in certain areas but must leave at
the end of the work day!
This
pattern is not only happening in Chicago, but in nearly every metropolitan
region of the country. It is a pattern of development based on public policy
choices that intentionally segregate people by class and, de-facto largely by
race, and locks people out of
opportunity to live the American Dream. But these are policies that we can
change.
Origins Of Sprawl:
Initially,
this pattern of sprawl began after World War II. Two government policies began
driving the sprawl machine. After World War II., there were large migrations of
African Americans from the south to Chicago and other industrialized northern
cities. Like most migrating people, they were coming for jobs and
opportunities. After fighting and winning a war against a racist regime in Nazi
Germany, African Americans were looking for the same opportunities as other
veterans. In fact, federal court cases were beginning to strike down some of
the segregationist laws that could have helped provide better opportunity for
African Americans.
But as
African Americans were migrating to Chicago and other northern cities, the
government was beginning to set policies in motion to help whites flee the
cities, disinvest the cities and create suburban sprawl .
First,
during the postwar boom, the federal government made mortgages more accessible
to middle and working class families through FHA and VA loans and the secondary
mortgage market. But loans were made available only for free standing single
family homes, and because the cities were already built up, those homes were
primarily in new suburban areas. In addition, areas with Black and Hispanic
populations were redlined (intentionally denied access to loans). If you
lived in an area that was integrated or near minority populations you would be
denied these home loans. In fact, the federal government’s own FHA manuals of
the 40's advised new suburbs on exclusionary zoning and racially restrictive
covenants to keep minorities out. Even after redlining was legally outlawed, as
recently as 1974, the federal
government's own FHA Underwriting and Appraisal Manual published a ranking of
the desirability of neighborhoods by the ethnic/racial makeup, with white
Anglos and Scandinavians at the top of the list and Blacks and Mexicans at the
bottom. Banks still would not lend in minority communities. These federal
programs and policies fueled sprawl and racial segregation.
Secondly,
from 1956 through 1996 the federal government spent $650 billion on roads and
highways, with at least half that amount for roads within metropolitan areas.
This build up of highways and roads
made suburban sprawl possible. So while Blacks were migrating from the south
to northern cities, the government was pursuing intentional policies and
spending billions of dollars helping whites to escape cities and move into
suburbs that excluded minorities and the poor. It was a policy of segregation.
Some called this the northern version of Jim Crow.
But
eventually the sprawl machine began abandoning working and middle class whites
as well, as second
and third and even fourth ring suburbs developed. As businesses followed white residents and moved out to newer suburbs,
so did jobs and tax base, creating a strain on residential taxpayers in central
cities and inner ring suburbs to fund their schools and other public services.
Central cities and older suburbs could not compete with newer suburbs in
attracting tax base. That means that these communities increasingly struggle to
fund their public schools, police, fire, streets and other public services.
Communities must cut services or rasie taxes or both. Each time they do either
(cut services or rasie taxes) they drive out people who can afford to move out.
The more people and businesses move out,
the more taxes are raised and services are cut. It becomes a viscious
cycle that ends in disinvested communities, and at the extreme end of the
cycle, concentrated poverty ghettos bereft of resources, opportunity and
success networks.
A Case For Jubilee:
A community
with wealthy people and a strong commercial base concentrates resources. If the
poor are excluded, there are less social costs. These costs are borne by other
communities which include the poor, but do so with less resources. Therefore,
consistently, throughout the region, the poorest communities have the highest
tax rates! Here is an example of
how the tax structure works:
Municipality Average Assessed Home Value Taxes per $100,000
Kennilworth $434,036 $2,668
Chicago 83,884 $2,716
Maywood
48,769 $4,672
This
pattern intensifies as rich communities attract businesses and wealthy people
because they enjoy lower taxes, better services and less social problems. The
rest of the region struggles to meet growing social needs with less resources.
They are forced to raise taxes, lower services or both. This causes people and
businesses who can afford to move out to leave, straining the tax base even
more.
Funding
education based on a community’s property wealth creates tremendous disparities
between communities and the children of our region. There are per pupil
school funding disparities in the Chicago region as great as six to one. Many
of the lowest funded schools are the ones with the most poor people and the
most special needs Does a land of
opportunity allow such disparities in educating their children?
There is an
affordable housing crisis in metropolitan Chicago. There is only one unit of
affordable housing available for every 5 families earning 30% or less of the
area’s median income. 162,000 renter households pay more than 50% of their
income for housing. Is it fair for
communities to exclude affordable housing opportunities in the midst of such
need? Homes in poor areas are
devalued, often making repairs and improvements a losing proposition. Over
time, affordable units deteriorate or are lost. To solve this crisis, affluent
communities must do their fair share.
One of the
worst affects of sprawl that is having a devastating impact on the Chicago area
and the entire nation is the growth of economic and racial segregation and
concentrated poverty. Without the overtly legal structures of bantustans and
pass cards, our nation is practicing a form of apartheid that even South Africa
has now legally abolished.
The price
that all of society pays for the crime, prisons, welfare, and lack of
productivity becomes burdensome. Worse yet is the moral price we pay for such gross
inequities that lock entire communities and generations out of the opportunity
our nation promises. Jubilee must be established to bring people into their
birthright as God’s people: full stakeholders in the goods, services,
opportunities and decisions of our metropolitan community.
Who pays for sprawl and American Apratheid?
We all do. The more roads we build, the more of our tax dollars we have to spend not only to build these roads but to maintain them. Roads,infrastructure and new schools are all subsidized in part by people outside of the new developing areas. We also all pay for the problems and social needs that arise from severely disinvested communities with high levels of concentrated poverty. Remember the 81% of the jobs being created in 18% of the northwestern suburbs? $5 billion of your tax dollars were spent on new highways and roads in the northwestern suburban region between 1984 and 1994 to support those business locations.
Who benefits from sprawl and American Apratheid?
Mostly it
is road builders and developers that benefit from the sprawl system. Businesses
that get tax breaks to re-locate may also benefit. These interests make heavy
contributions to our elected officials who support sprawl policies. So, many
politicians benefit from sprawl in this way.
At most
20%, a favored fifth benefits from sprawl and for many of them, those benefits may be
short-lived as sprawl continues to move businesses and wealthy people to the
outer reaches of the region. In sprawl,
today’s winners are often tommorrow’s losers. Even the sprawl “winners” face
traffic gridlock, a strained environment, and the moral decay of becoming
racially and economically isolated ghettos of the rich.
Many
businesses struggle to fill their jobs because of the commuting and child care
issues of workers who must commute long distances to work. Also, when the public education system breaks down
because of inadequate funding and concentrated poverty, it hurts businesses and
the competitiveness of the entire metropolitan region. As a result, some of these businesses have become allies
in fighting sprawl.
Is Sprawl and American Apratheid Inevitable?
Sprawl is
not a state of nature or some ironclad economic law. It is the result of
conscious government policy and tax expenditures that establishes the rules of
the game. As
citizens of a democracy and as people of faith we have both the right and the
obligation to change those rules for the common good!
How can we
address sprawl and the inequity it creates? How do we establish metropolitan
Jubilee? How do we ourselves become the Jubileeum, the bringers of the Jubilee?
How do we create a new Civil Rights movement to bring justice to our
metropolitan community? By organizing people to agitate for policies that
change the rules of the game!
What are the Policies for Metropolitan Jubilee
MAC, with
the help of national strategic partners, David Rusk, Myron Orfield and john
powell has developed a four pronged attack on sprawl and concentrated poverty.
The
creation a regional property tax sharing system redistributes new tax base
growth to communities more evenly throughout the region. This policy helps
fight the double whammy of high taxes
and poor services. There is less incentive for municipalities to raid
businesses from one another. And with more equity in tax rates, school spending
and other services, there becomes less incentive for citizens to escape one
town or city for another. Regional tax base sharing can both decrease disparities
in tax rates and public services and act as a disincentive to sprawl. In the
Twin Cities, tax base sharing has decreased such disparities four-fold.
Opportunity
Based Housing breaks down exlusionary barriers to affordable housing and allows
for the de-concentration of poverty. For example, in Montgomery County,
Maryland, every housing development of 50 units or more is required to make 20%
of the units affordable and offer up to 1/3 of the affordable units to the
County Housing Authority for low income housing. If this policy had been
enacted 15 years ago, there would be no shortage of affordable housing today!
This policy creates more value for owners, preserves housing stock and would
allow poor and working people to live in job rich areas. It would also
counteract the pattern of rapid and massive racial and economic community
change and replace it with stable, economically and racially diverse
communties.
Growth
management designates that state funded development and transportation go into
re-developing existing communities rather than building up new sprawl
communities. It would target more money to public transportation and build less
new roads. This policy ensures that our public tax dollars re-develope our
communities rather than disinvesting them by building up exclusive new sprawl
communities at the far reaches of the region.
Fair School
Funding would spread the costs of educating our chidlren more equally and
create adequate and equitable education for all children. In concert with these
other policies, adequate and equitable school funding also helps to stabilize
communities.
Together
these policies attack sprawl, deconcentrate poverty, close dispartities in
taxes, schools and services, and creates more equal opportunity for the citizens
of our region. By creating a better educated population and healthier
communities,they also improve the competitiveness of our region as a whole. MAC
is proposing that the Illinois State Legislature enact legislation on all of
these initiatives.
Who are the people of the Jubilee?
We are! If you are not part of the solution, you must consider yourself part of the problem!
What will it take? What must I do?
If we are going to address these issues, if we are called to mount a new civil rights movement and create Metropolitan Jubilee to save our communities, here is what we must do:
Educate the People:
Many people
think communities decline because of the moral character of the people, or
because that is part of how the market operates. Many people think they can
escape the consequences of the system that creates sprawl, concentrated poverty
and community decline.
Therefore,
we must educate people about these patterns and the policy solutions that will
change the rules of the game and create Jubilee.
Specifically
we must:
·
Host
presentations in our own congregations to create understanding and enlist the
support of our people. MAC leaders are prepared to come to your congregation
today.
·
Engage in
visible and controversial public actions to force the media, the politicians
and the public to engage their thinking and action on these issues. You will be
hearing about these acitons through your lcoal organizer and Task Force
leaders.
Build a Political Machine:
In the 1996
national election, citizens in the upper income bracket (top fifth) cast 6
times as many votes as the citizens in the lowest income bracket (bottom
fifth). Politicians respond to votes and public pressure to be held accountable
to their constituencies.
Therefore
we must:
·
Meet with our
public officals and maintain ongoing relationships with them to educate them
and agitate them about these issues.
MAC member
congregations are present in nearly 50 state house and senate districts. These
50 legislators must go to Springfield having heard from their own constituents
in their home districts.
·
Conduct
regular voter registration, education and turn-out in our own district each
election cycle. Conduct candidate forums in our districts at which candidates
must repsond to our metropolitan and local issues and concerns. Without
endorsing specific candidates, we can become a feared and respected political
force if we impact thousands of voters in scores of districts.
Build and expand MAC:
·
Recruit
pastors that you know from accross the region to be part of MAC and this
campaign.
·
Build a
strong core team in your congregation that can mobilize your congregation in
this effort. Send your leaders to week-long training to equip them to be more
effective leaders in your congregation, community and this campaign.