In the 1950s the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul was a thriving Black community, with increasingly affluent residents who could easily walk to schools, churches, and grocery stores. Then, in 1956, the Federal Aid Highway Act became law, and a few years later a new interstate highway split the Rondo neighborhood apart.
The ripple effects of that decision are still keenly felt today in a struggling neighborhood now beset by unemployment and a host of social ills. And it’s exactly the kind of thing that nonprofits want to ensure doesn’t happen again under President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan. In fact, advocates for the poor are hoping Biden’s plan will reverse some of the harm done by past infrastructure plans to neighborhoods dominated by people of color, the poor, and others who are marginalized.
“It did a lot of damage,” says Marie Ellis, public policy director of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.
Carefully targeting future infrastructure spending is just one of the ways nonprofits and their advocates are trying to shape Biden’s plans, which are still evolving and will include another phase soon that focuses on the people who help keep the nation running, including support for workers at cultural institutions and the 211 human-service helpline. Some advocates hope that ideas like adding incentives for charitable giving will also fit into a broad definition of infrastructure.
The plans already announced include numerous provisions that would help the people many nonprofits serve or the causes they care about — $400 billion to help with care giving for people who are older and those who have disabilities, $88 billion for work-force development and to assist dislocated workers, $100 billion for expanded high-speed internet access, $35 billion for climate-change research, and a new tax credit for solar power.
Ellis says the infrastructure plans are “really exciting for lots of nonprofits.” She is particularly pleased that the plans make clear that infrastructure projects should never again do what the interstate did to Rondo; tear apart neighborhoods where people of color live. A smarter infrastructure plan can provide jobs, Ellis says, but it also could do much more, such as knit communities back together. For example, Ellis hopes Biden’s proposed $20 billion to “reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments” will fund projects such as a land bridge over the interstate that will help revive the Rondo neighborhood. The land bridge would cover a broad expanse of the interstate in the Rondo neighborhood with parks and walkways.
She’s also pleased with Biden’s $45 billion lead-pipe abatement proposals. Lead pipes are particularly damaging to the brain development of children. Those pipes were replaced long ago in many white and more affluent communities, Ellis says, but they remain common in poor neighborhoods.
Ilana Levinson, senior director for government relations at the merged Alliance for Strong Families and Communities and Council on Accreditation, sees the administration’s big plans for broadband as another proposal grounded in equity. While many kids from wealthier families have access to high-speed internet, many poor kids have no access and are falling behind as a result, especially as the pandemic drags on.
Bigger Voice
Biden has already announced phase one of his infrastructure plan — $2 trillion for transportation, public water improvements, health care, broadband, community care for the elderly, research and development, and other items.
Many Republicans have said the plan is too expensive and its proposals go far beyond the typical definition of “infrastructure.”
Independent Sector, a national coalition of charities and foundations, along with Kaboom, a group that promotes playgrounds for needy children, has created a Nonprofit Infrastructure Investment Advocacy Group composed of a wide variety of charity leaders to draw attention to the infrastructure needs of nonprofits. The group has the ear of the administration, says Dan Cardinali, CEO of Independent Sector.
For example, more than 200 nonprofit leaders joined an online meeting last week with two Biden senior advisers: Cedric Richmond, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, and Gene Sperling, who oversees the work to carry out the just-passed stimulus law. The government relies heavily on nonprofits to provide many of the services that the new stimulus law subsidizes, but nonprofit leaders are making sure the White House knows “that we’re not just implementors”: Nonprofits can also be valuable partners in designing smart policies, Cardinali says.
“The administration has really reached out to us,” says Cardinali.
Independent Sector is pushing for the creation of a new Office on the Nonprofit Sector in the Biden White House and has sent the administration draft language for an executive order that would make it happen. Ultimately, Independent Sector and other nonprofit advocates are hoping that such an office could be made permanent, which would require an act of Congress.
“That has not yet broken through,” Cardinali says of those efforts, although he hopes for progress.
