Robert McCartney (01:13):

That's Dr. Kavita Patel, a primary care physician who works at the Mary's Center Health Clinic in Adelphi, Maryland in Prince George's County. And I'm Robert McCartney, a former Washington Post columnist and editor, and host of Think Regionally a new podcast from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments or COG about the issues facing the greater DC region. In this inaugural podcast, I'll talk with leaders about how to achieve racial and economic equity by using public policy to narrow the gaps between haves and have nots in our area. We'll be talking about how planners have identified several hundred specific geographic areas that are most in need and what governments in the region can do to help them.

Robert McCartney (02:03):

Disparities by zip code are hardly new for our region. When I was a teenager living in Bethesda, back in 1970, I had a summer job driving a van all over the district. I got a firsthand look at the severe difference between the comforts of my home in suburban Montgomery County and the hardships evident in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Now, the pandemic has highlighted those gaps. As Dr. Patel saw early in the pandemic.

Dr. Kavita Patel (02:31):

We were still seeing an incredibly high number of positive cases, even when the entire DMV area had, had a decline in numbers. And that's largely because of who our patients are. The majority of, particularly my patients, are essential workers. They are the people who clean homes and offices. They are landscapers they're construction workers, grocery store workers, clerks in hotels.

Robert McCartney (02:58):

For workers like these in low-paying jobs, the economic slowdown that accompanied the pandemic was ruinous, especially for their children.

Dr. Kavita Patel (03:07):

I would argue that the suppression of income potential is that the level of a depression by economic indicators. My pediatric colleagues will tell you that what they have seen is now literally a generation that has been devastated, because if you're a poor and you're black or brown or white, but if you are in kind of the lower core tile of economic opportunity, and you are a child in one of those households, there is basically zero hope that you'll get out of poverty. I mean, it's just impossible. And it became even harder this past 18 months

Robert McCartney (03:43):

To learn more about the challenges in less affluent parts of our region. I asked the head of one of our region's top philanthropic organizations about the impact of COVID and the economic slowdown. This is Rosie Allen-Herring, CEO of the United Way of The National Capital Area. What effect did you see the Corona virus pandemic and the accompanying recession in general have on lower income, predominantly minority communities in the DC region?

Rosie Allen-Herring (04:14):

I think we will all recognize that there were many inequities, and certainly there were disparities that existed long before the COVID pandemic came. But I would say that it is simply exacerbated many of the issues that were there, whether they be education, disparities, health disparities, and certainly economic disparities. I think the immediate thing that came to mind for us as a region was the food insecurity that existed among many of our families in the region, and many of our children in certain communities across the region, the only nutritious meal they will receiving was the one that they were getting in school. And now that they weren't physically, there, there was no "replacement" of those meals at home.

Robert McCartney (05:03):

The pandemic also highlighted gaps in educational resources between those families whose parents could do their jobs at laptops in their den, and those whose jobs required them to go to their workplaces, even when their children had to stay at home.

Rosie Allen-Herring (05:19):

Many of us who were fortunate, had the ability to be able to go home and work from home and work remotely. We had companies that allowed us and ensured we had the technology and the tools to be able to do so, but for many in our community, those luxuries, if you will, did not exist. For many of our children who needed to distance learn, there became a big need for the technology. But after that, it's not just the technology, it's the connectivity. So I think that there were a lot of moving pieces, but certainly from a health perspective, economics and education, you will find that many of our minority communities bore the brunt of the impact of COVID-19.

Robert McCartney (06:02):

Talk a little bit about how those disparities manifest themselves in terms of geography. In other words, the less affluent people, the people living paycheck to paycheck, they're not spread evenly throughout the region. They're concentrated in certain parts of the region. Can you talk about that?

Rosie Allen-Herring (06:21):

I would say every part of our region has, of course, some among us who may not be able to afford all of the niceties that we sometimes really count on and promote here in the Washington metropolitan area. And it's really been about just understanding where those pockets of need reside. And so of course, long-term, individuals will always recognize when we say east of the river and The District of Columbia, what that means when you know, again, almost 37 percent of the families with children live below the poverty income level. We've talked about the east-west divide, in terms of what happens in Prince George's County. We've talked about, again, what's happening in Loudoun County. Most people don't realize that there's a huge rural population, a low wage population that needed a lot of food pantries.

Robert McCartney (07:17):

It's important to note that when we talk about poverty in Prince George's County, we're mainly talking about some communities inside the Beltway. Other parts of Prince George's outside the Beltway include some of the most affluent, predominantly black communities in the nation. Next door in Montgomery County, many low-income neighborhoods are concentrated along the Georgia Avenue corridor. In Fairfax, they're along Route One. These communities belie the region's overall reputation as being one of the nations' superstar Metro regions, one with a highly educated workforce and a high average income level.

Rosie Allen-Herring (07:57):

What I really want our listeners to think about is, yes, we do have that affluence. When people hear about the Washington metropolitan area, they tend to think we have no problems because we are one of the highest educated workforces in the country. We have high wealth. It's a chamber of commerce's dream in terms of being able to attract people who want to make this area their home. But on the other side of that, yes, we are one of the fittest cities, but we have some of the highest chronic disease rates in the country. I always like to talk about the gap. That gap is huge,  for many who don't have the literacy rate, can't qualify for many of those high wealth jobs, may or may not have the education that allows them to take advantage of it. And so for them, that gap is like night and day. And so we want to be able to bring thought leadership to those challenges, to bridge that gap and to talk about how do we make this not only a successful region but also one that is truly equitable for all of its citizens.

Robert McCartney (08:59):

So that's a perfect transition to introduce the central question of ‘How do we move the region toward equity?’. COG has formerly committed that it's work and I quote, "Will be anti-racist and will advance equity". That was ratified in a vote last year by the COG Board of Directors, which includes local elected officials from across the DC region. And the board is set to vote in October to go further. They have a plan for how they could incorporate equity into public policies and invest in communities by improving access to transportation and housing. But it's important in this discussion to recognize that there's a difference between pushing for equity and pushing for equality. Allen-Herring explains.

Rosie Allen-Herring (09:44):

Most people think of equity, and they really interchange it with the word equality and equality simply says, everybody gets the same thing, not recognizing that everyone doesn't start from the same place. Equity simply says, "We want you to be fair. We want you to think about someone who already has a head-start may not need as much. So they may not need the same amount of someone who has a larger gap to try to fill."

Robert McCartney (10:10):

The big question, of course, is what can the region do to fill those gaps and advance equity. To start to answer that, I talked to Chuck Bean, COG's Executive Director. In case you've forgotten, COG is also the sponsor of this podcast. Chuck and I went into some geographic nitty gritty about how COG has identified certain census tracks as having extra needs and thus committed to elevate them for extra attention and help. These census tracks, each smaller than a zip code, are called Equity Emphasis Areas. Here are excerpts of our conversation.

Robert McCartney (10:49):

Why don't you describe briefly what Equity Emphasis Areas are?

Chuck Bean (10:55):

There are over 1200 census tracks in our region and these census tracks give us a better look at smaller geographic areas within our cities and counties. Out of the regions 1200 census tracks we've identified concentrations of communities with lower incomes, communities of color, or both. So it’s these 350 census tracks out of the 1200, we're calling Equity Emphasis Areas or EEAs for short.

Robert McCartney (11:19):

So, if you look at a map of the region, where are these EEAs, where are they concentrated?

Chuck Bean (11:24):

Every major jurisdiction in the region has some Equity Emphasis Areas. That said, these EEAs are concentrated on the Eastern portion of the region.

Robert McCartney (11:35):

The COG board is set to vote on broadening the use of Equity Emphasis Areas and identifying them as locations, communities that should get priority for investments of all kinds over the next decade.

Chuck Bean (11:52):

Yes, that's exactly right. What the COG board will be doing in October is giving a mandate to COG, to staff, to focus on Equity Emphasis Areas, and weave in equity throughout all of our analysis, across all of our disciplines. So transportation has already done that in terms of roadway safety, looking at, is there a disparity in terms of roadway safety outcomes compared to Equity Emphasis Areas. Is there the same kind of tree canopy in the census tracks that we're talking about compared to the region as a whole? We've seen life expectancy disparities between these census tracks and others.

Chuck Bean (12:27):

And so pulling apart, what are the causal factors of the disparities in these life expectancies. It'll be up to the localities, up to the jurisdictions to adopt plans that elevate Equity Emphasis Areas throughout all of their work at the local level. Cities and counties and regional organizations like us are combining transportation and land use, land use and housing, land use and climate plans and entering this combination is equity. That's the combination that we're focusing on and, from my perspective, will be the guiding framework for regional planning for the next decade.

Robert McCartney (13:12):

So how can local governments use this tool to overcome the gaps and lift up the communities in the 350 or so EEAs that lagged behind the rest of the area. For that, I turned to Montgomery County Council Member, Nancy Navarro. When she held the rotating position of council president in 2019, the council passed a racial equity and social justice act, which included a number of steps to narrow the gaps that we've been discussing.

Robert McCartney (13:41):

Councilmember, Thanks so much for making time for this. We're talking about really the geography of socioeconomic and racial disparities. How do those disparities look in Montgomery County?

Nancy Navarro (13:52):

As the population has grown, the last census results have also shown that the county population continues to grow, not just a numbers, but also in diversity, which is why it's going to be so critical for county leadership and the region as well, to address these disparities through a structural and systemic way. We have to understand that in terms of economic development, in terms of workforce development, in terms of things like housing and especially health, which again, the pandemic has come to show us how critical that is. If we do not address those disparities, the virus is not going to stop and ask you, "What is your income and what ethnicity or what race you are." If we didn't address those zip codes strategically and put more emphasis on that, we were not going to be able to then address the county wide pandemic.

Nancy Navarro (14:50):

If we want to be competitive, if we want to have a strong economy, if we want to have a high quality of life indicators, then we have to work very strategically to address these disparities, to acknowledge that there have been decades and decades and decades of baked in decisions, legislative decisions, budgetary decisions that have led us to this moment. And now we have to really get to work and dismantle them. If we really truly want the region to move forward.

Robert McCartney (15:20):

I asked Navarro to offer specific examples of how local governments could target resources for less privileged neighborhoods. She started by describing how Montgomery had fought COVID by creating two special programs, one aimed at Latinos and the other at African-Americans. For Latinos, the county built a public education campaign around a character called Abuelena or Grandmother.

Nancy Navarro (15:46):

Everybody, obviously in the Latino community and any other community, respects what grandma says. So we launched this character that has won national awards. And so it was kind of flooding these geographic areas with all of these best practices that were culturally and linguistically appropriate. That's what equity is about. I am very proud to say that the vaccination rates for Latinos in the county actually has surpassed the white population. What happens is that because we were able to do this Montgomery county nationally right now is leading in terms of low case numbers and vaccination rates, etc. And that gives us hope.

Robert McCartney (16:27):

Offering other examples. Navarro said, there's a proposal in Montgomery now to offer an extra tax incentive in Equity Emphasis Areas for residential or property owners who retrofit buildings to make them more environmentally friendly, such as by upgrading windows or building green roofs. And she said, the county made a point of promoting economic development in the less affluent Eastern part of the county by building its first Bus Rapid Transit line along the Route 29 Corridor, it's called Flash BRT and runs along Colesville Road in Columbia Pike between Burtonsville and Silver Spring.

Nancy Navarro (17:06):

The idea there was that, historically, that's an area that does not have a lot of jobs, it does not have a lot of revitalization or redevelopment. And we would really like to bring some of that. It's not an area that, for example, it has a Metro station. And so the hope is that then this much more ambitious project called Viva White Oak, that can begin then to move forward because we have already built in the capacity with transit. So that hopefully that will lead to then jobs and more amenities, etc, that will make that part of the county realize its potential.

Robert McCartney (17:47):

So those are all examples of the kinds of steps that local government can take to make it a priority, to give extra help to those 350 census tracks that are economically disadvantaged, and to a large extent comprised of minority populations. It does require some financial sacrifice on the part of more affluent communities, but Navarro and others emphasize that everybody in the region ultimately benefits.

Nancy Navarro (18:14):

It's all connected. It's not just equity, cause it's the right thing to do, but it's also about prosperity and it's about expanding and strengthening our economy. So it's all about a mindset, because if we're going to only focus on thinking that this is like a limited pie and somehow if I focus here, it means they're taking away from there, that we perpetuate the cycle that has been happening for centuries, if you will.

Robert McCartney (18:45):

Now it's time for me to share some of my own thoughts on this subject. People have increasingly become aware that our existing economic development model has not made any progress in narrowing disparities, even as it has lifted the area to be one of the nation's superstar, Metro regions. It's been similar to what happens when a neighborhood gentrifies. A lot of wealth is created, but the existing less affluent population gets shoved aside. A regional commitment to concentrate resources on the neighborhoods that are lagging behind, like Equity Emphasis Areas, is a good place to start. It should mean that local governments give extra priority in multiple ways. It could mean they get additional bus routes, for example, or subsidies for small businesses, or aid to renters, and first-time home buyers. It will be up to the individual district, county, and municipal governments to adopt policies to follow through.

Robert McCartney (19:43):

And there will certainly be political pushback. Imagine, for instance, what could happen when it's proposed that an affluent neighborhood has to wait to get a new bus route or school renovation, so a poorer community can be helped first. At the COG Board meeting in September, several elected officials acknowledged this reality. Arlington County Board Member, Christian Dorsey, said It wasn't enough just to "virtue signal," instead he said it was necessary to, "Bring high concepts into concrete action." But let's look at the positive side. Nobody ever thought it was going to be quick or easy to overcome social, economic and racial divisions that are decades or even centuries old. The good news is the region has not only formally committed to advance equity but is identifying solutions together to accomplish that. And that is a step forward that we can all applaud.

Robert McCartney (20:44):

We hope you enjoyed this episode. We welcome your comments. Please send them to thinkregionally@mwcog.org. This podcast is produced by Megan Goodman and Janele Partman at COG. Until next month, this is your host, Robert McCartney, urging everyone to Think Regionally.