New report looks for redress for residents displaced from St. Paul’s West Side Flats

CATHY WURZER: Good news-- the Mississippi River has pulled back from flood stage in Saint Paul after cresting at the end of last month at more than 20 feet. It reached 2 feet higher than that back in 1952 in what is considered the city's most destructive flood. The areas that were hardest-hit back then were low-lying areas predominantly occupied by immigrants-- in particular, the West Side Flats neighborhood just across the river from Downtown Saint Paul. In the years after the flood, the area was bulldozed as the city built a flood wall, then an industrial park, in that area.

Former residents and advocates are still making sense of what happened to the neighborhood when more than 2,000 people had to leave. A new report commissioned by the West Side Community Organization says homeowners who left received less than $50,000 in compensation in today's dollars, and renters received between $35 and $1,000. The report also asks the city to acknowledge what was lost and reinvest in housing on the West Side. Joining us right now to talk about this is Larry Lucio, who lived in the West Side Flats area as a kid, and Monica Bravo, executive director of the West Side Community Organization. Larry and Monica, thanks for taking the time.

LARRY LUCIO: Thank you.

MONICA BRAVO: Yes, thank you for--

CATHY WURZER: Monica, are you with us?

MONICA BRAVO: --having us on.

CATHY WURZER: Thanks.

Larry, I want to start with you. Now, for folks not at all familiar with West Side Flats, what did it look like? What was it like growing up there?

LARRY LUCIO: Well, first and foremost, according to the standards today and back then, we were poor. But as a community, that was something that we never acknowledged or recognized. We were very close-knit community. And our community was boundaried by the Holman Airport and Robert Street. We were, again, as I said, a very tight community, very diverse, multiculturally.

CATHY WURZER: And what'd your house look like?

LARRY LUCIO: Again, we all attended one elementary school, Lafayette Elementary School, and then went through what we call the West Side education-- Roosevelt Junior High, and then Humboldt High School.

CATHY WURZER: OK, so you're from Humboldt. You went to Humboldt High. Did you have a home on the bluff? Where was your house located?

LARRY LUCIO: No, the bluff was hands-off. The majority of the people that lived on the bluff were white. The majority of the people who lived down on the flats were people of color, primarily Mexican.

CATHY WURZER: Got it. OK, so were you down in the flats area?

LARRY LUCIO: We were down in the flats, right.

CATHY WURZER: Yep. In a duplex?

LARRY LUCIO: Yep. We were lucky. My mom and dad were one of the few homeowners on the Lower West Side. And I come from a family of 12, so obviously, we used both the upstairs and downstairs for our family.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah, OK, wow. So a tight-knit neighborhood on the flats.

Monica, I remember we talked to you back in February. You were trying to get stories from folks like Larry and others, former residents. How many people shared their stories, and what did you hear from them?

MONICA BRAVO: So far, we've done about 25, 26 stories, and we're continuing that process. There were 500 families that were displaced at the time. And we continue to talk with the relatives and the families themselves. And we've learned the themes are similar. The themes are that this was a displacement that was heart-wrenching. It was sudden. It was violent to see their homes razed to the ground. And there were people there that felt like they were very much in a tight-knit community, and that was completely disrupted. So your place of worship, the place where you had community, where you had your neighborhood-- completely destroyed.

CATHY WURZER: Larry, can you underscore that for us? As a kid, how did you find out that you guys had to move, and then where'd you go?

LARRY LUCIO: Well, first and foremost, let me say, when I say I was born and raised on the Lower West Side, actually, 10 of my 12 siblings-- we were born at home. So our community became a very honored place to live and to be. I remember coming home from school and my dad telling the family that we had to leave, and we didn't have much time. And of course, I was 10 years old. So, back then, and in general, my mother and father made decisions, and we just went along.

So we were kind of-- not kind of. We were really dismayed because that meant we were going to leave our friends, our school, the places that we hung out in. And so, within less than a month, we had to leave. And fortunately, my father was able to find a home for us. But, unlike our situation, many of my friends and families had great difficulty finding a place to live after having to be forced off the West Side.

CATHY WURZER: Wow, how traumatic to be told you got to get out of here in less than a month. Did most folks go to the surrounding West Side neighborhood?

LARRY LUCIO: Well, they tried to. Again, on the upper bluff was primarily white families. And as society often dictates, there weren't a lot of homes for the people from the Lower West Side to move up to. And then, historically, as we began, the families that moved up to the upper bluff-- the white families began to move out and into West Saint Paul, which is the immediate suburb of the West Side.

CATHY WURZER: Right. You know, Monica, the city did this, razed these homes, because, of course, there was the flooding in the area at the time. They built that flood wall. And they did it, they said, for those sorts of purposes, right? But how did it ultimately affect that area, and what do you want the city to do about it right now?

MONICA BRAVO: So, under the practice of eminent domain, this area was taken from the people who lived there, and the floodwall was built, but only after the families were displaced. So that decision to build a flood wall to protect the area could have been done while families maintained their housing. And instead, that decision was made to protect the profits of the industrial park that they then built after they removed the families and put the floodwall up.

And that industrial park really toxified the land, the area. And so we, as the West Side of Saint Paul, were the only Saint Paul community on this side of the river, but we shouldered, disproportionately, the rest of the city's toxic sites. And we still have housing today here in the area that has no buffer zone between high industrial use and housing. So we need and we believe that the insult to injury that's taken place here on the West Side is multiple, and that's evident in the report, in the report of findings.

And so you'll see that there's environmental justice, with the air toxins and where people are living. And then there's also that we are in the Mississippi River Valley and so, in many ways, stewards of the bluff area, the river line, and all of these areas that make it unique for us. And what we need is actually some repair to the harms that have been done. And so the setup was that, once that industrial park left, we were home to a superfund cleanup site, but there still remains so much that can't be developed or done.

And then you put multiple high-density public housing units within a mile radius of each other. So, in essence, then, you are creating an area that is a very low-income community, and that was intentional. So I believe, we believe, and the study points that the racist policies of the past really set up this neighborhood for disinvestment, and it's been decades. And what we're looking for is repair to those harms.

CATHY WURZER: Are you hoping, Larry, maybe for reparations? Because I know when your family left, as I mentioned in the introduction, you and the other folks didn't get much of anything for the house.

LARRY LUCIO: I think if our elders from the community are great grandparents and grandparents were still alive today, I don't know that they would be interested in reparations as much as what Monica has just spoken to, that things would begin to change and maybe their great grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren would benefit from opportunities to come back to the West Side and live.

CATHY WURZER: Almost like what they're trying to do in Rondo? Something similar? Have people come back to the area?

LARRY LUCIO: No. And again, the problem, again, is that, oftentimes, people, when they talk about reparations and particularly the Rondo area, they equate that situation and initiative with ours. And quite frankly, communities of color have different values, different cultures, and it doesn't necessarily reflect the same kind of wants and needs that Rondo is asking for, that we would ask for.

CATHY WURZER: Monica, to that-- go ahead, Monica, to that point of reparations.

MONICA BRAVO: So I was going to say that it's not necessarily a cookie-cutter approach. We know there were multiple communities across the state of Minnesota and across the country that experienced these types of practices in planning. And so what we're looking at is, what is unique to this neighborhood? What is unique to that neighborhood, and how can that be repaired? So we use the term "repair" and "redress" when we're looking at this specific initiative because I believe reparations is about something different.

And so I don't necessarily think that this would qualify for that, but it does qualify that there has to be a redress. There has to be a repair. And by that, we can look at economic remedies. We can look at anti-displacement remedies and environmental justice remedies. And minimum is an acknowledgment that this took place. And we'll start with an acknowledgment because acknowledging what has happened is even the first sign of respect. And so that's a starting place. But we are-- oh, go ahead.

CATHY WURZER: I understand there's an event tonight. Folks can hear more about this report, right?

MONICA BRAVO: Yes, I was just going to say that. In some ways, the similarities are that there are powers that be, entities that make decisions about poor communities, that have long-term effects. So when we look at the equity, when we look at the imbalances of employment, housing, education across the state-- and we know where we fall in the numbers, compared nationally-- it's not too hard to wonder why. So we're looking at repair on a number of levels.

And yes, tonight we have an event. We are so pleased to have come to this point in our campaign, where we are, a year and a half. Completed a 88-page report of findings, along with our partnership with Research in Action. They are the team that did the community participatory research. We're going to reveal that report. We're going to hear some lived experiences. We're going to celebrate that just a little bit, and we're going to hear from the mayor's office, and we'll be talking about what is the next steps for the next piece of this campaign. So what is the next steps for repair? What are the next steps for implementation?

CATHY WURZER: I appreciate it. Thank you for laying that out. And thank you, by the way, Larry, for your thoughts on all of this, and thanks for taking the time, both of you. Best of luck.

LARRY LUCIO: Thank you.

MONICA BRAVO: Thank you so much.

CATHY WURZER: Monica Bravo is the executive director of the West Side Community Organization, and Larry Lucio is a former resident of West Side Flats.