“Leaving our community zoned industrial has just wreaked havoc on our quality of life, on our ability to build wealth, [and] the neighborhood’s health,” Cisneros said.
These are just some of the reasons why Cisneros and Singleton United/Unidos recently joined a coalition of groups and individuals in filing a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) complaint against the city of Dallas.
“Us filing this HUD complaint is us putting the city on notice that we’re not tolerating racism,” she said. “We’re calling it out because that’s what it is. It’s environmental racism. This HUD complaint shows that we are serious about wanting justice and we’re going to pursue every avenue available to seek justice for all of those decades of harm that has come from racist zoning practices.”
Organizations and individuals with a group called the Coalition for Neighborhood Self-Determination filed a HUD complaint against the city last year, claiming it has failed to address their majority Black and Hispanic communities’ proximity to heavy industry.
Singleton United/Unidos joins the signers of the original complaint: Marsha Jackson, who lived next door to Shingle Mountain and still lives next to heavy industrial zoning in the Floral Farms neighborhood; the neighborhood association Floral Farms Neighbors United/Vecinos Unidos; the Joppa Environmental Health Project; and the Coalition for Neighborhood Self-Determination. The separate complaint that was filed on behalf of Singleton United/Unidos has since been combined with the complaint that was filed last year.“Us filing this HUD complaint is us putting the city on notice that we’re not tolerating racism." – Janie Cisneros, Singleton United/Unidos
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The city did not respond to a request for comment.
The complaint alleges that Dallas’ industrial zoning adjacent to single-family neighborhoods of color violates the Fair Housing Act because the city enacted land-use rules and zoning ordinances that restrict or deny housing opportunities or otherwise make dwellings unavailable to people based on their race, color or national origin. The adjacency to industrial zoning harms residents because it makes them unable to sell or buy homes or obtain loans for their homes, according to the complaint.
For example, people have been displaced because of the industrial zoning in Cisneros’ neighborhood, she said. “When our homes break down or they’re in need of serious repair, we run into issues trying to get the permits to fix them up and then we can’t build back,” Cisneros said. “If a home gets so bad that it needs to be demolished, we can’t build back. So, many people have been uprooted and displaced because of these issues. There’s just so much harm because of the way that our area is zoned.”
Last year, coalition members proposed something called an “environmental justice overlay district” that could systematically remove industrial zoning and land uses that perpetuate these alleged fair housing violations. The groups also recommended the city make its zoning process more responsive to environmental justice or racial equity issues. But they say Dallas has failed to incorporate these suggestions to address the fair housing violations they see every day.
Michael Daniel and Laura Beshara, the lawyers for the groups, explain in the complaint that white, non-Latino neighborhoods are not subjected to the same industrial zoning placed on their homes.
After calls to rezone the West Dallas neighborhood, the City Plan Commission initiated a hearing earlier this year to do just that. But since then, there has been no movement on the hearing or any indication from the city about when the process will move forward.
Similarly, GAF, operator of a shingle factory in West Dallas, has filed for a zoning change that would continue industrial uses on its property until 2029, when GAF plans to shut down plant operations. Despite some calls from the community to do so, GAF hasn’t been willing to shorten that timeline. There’s also been no movement on their proposed zoning change.
The groups say a HUD investigator has already been assigned to the case and has conducted multiple interviews with residents, experts and allies involved with these issues. They now await the results of the investigation.
“This is our way of seeking that justice that this neighborhood really deserves,” Cisneros said. “This neighborhood has been neglected and just tortured, honestly, for so many decades that it really needs to stop.”
Evelyn Mayo, chair of the environmental group Downwinders at Risk and a fellow at Paul Quinn College, told the Observer she hopes the result of the complaint will mirror the results of a HUD complaint that was filed in Chicago.
In that case, HUD accused the city of Chicago of intentionally steering polluters to low-income communities of color already overburdened with pollution. The federal department threatened to withhold tens of millions of dollars a year in funding if the city didn’t change its practices, according to the Chicago Sun Times. The city settled the complaint with HUD in May this year and is now required to abide by a “voluntary compliance agreement” with the department. City departments were required to come up with an “environmental justice action plan” by Sept. 1 to outline how they will take steps to protect neighborhoods from burdens associated with intensive industrial and transportation uses, according to the Sun Times.
"We're using every tool at our disposal," Mayo said. "There's a lot of tools being deployed toward this end because the city has failed to do their job. So, until they do, we'll continue to use every legal or political avenue we have to address these problems."
Explaining what she hopes to get out of the complaint, Cisneros said, “We’re in dire need of what white neighborhoods in Dallas already have.
“We want residential rights. Rezone our homes to residential. That’ll give us the ability to repair our homes and avoid the need to knock them down when they get in bad shape.” She said a zoning change would also help residents block industrial polluters from moving into the neighborhood. “We want our community back,” she said. “The growth that was taken from us, we want it again.”
