Cleburne overhaul a model for equity
The Third Ward project shows decades of infrastructure neglect can be overcome.
Along Cleburne Street last week, near the Texas Southern University campus, the quick day gave way to people strolling in the cool evening or rolling past on bikes with no problem, thanks to wide sidewalks, smooth pavement and ample lighting.
That simple scene — routine in a few parts of Houston and in cities with bettermaintained infrastructure — is remarkable in Third Ward, one of far too many neighborhoods here where sidewalks tend to vanish without warning and potholes outnumber streetlights. For too long, those without cars, especially in communities of color, have been neglected. A recently completed overhaul of Cleburne — a mere speck in scale and cost compared to highway projects — represents a welcome shift in priorities.
County officials, Mayor Sylvester Turner and numerous Texas Southern dignitaries gathered on campus earlier this month to celebrate the completion of the project’s first phase. The ribbon-cutting was more than three years in the making, as Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis and his colleagues on Commissioners Court approved the funding in 2018.
The $12 million investment in Cleburne, the road between the TSU campus and the public housing complex Cuney Homes, is one part of a multi-phase $43.1 million commitment to five streets in Third Ward. Ellis told the editorial board that the project is designed to intentionally address decades of neglect and poor funding as money for streets and drainage usually went to other, often whiter, parts of the city.
We applaud the project. Truth is, residents in all of Houston’s neighborhoods deserve streets and sidewalks that let people commute, exercise and even just explore their surroundings without constant risk to life and limb. Joggers shouldn’t have to risk breaking an ankle on a cracked sidewalk. People in wheelchairs shouldn’t have to ford a fresh lake of rainfall on a street lacking proper drainage.
The Cleburne improvements come at a time when experts in the fields of transportation, urban planning and infrastructure are working to figure out how to address inequities based on decades of neglect and underfunding. Carol Lewis, a TSU professor and director of the school’s Center for Transportation, Training and Research, told the editorial board recently that transportation resources have often gone to places deemed to have the highest congestion. Bias against communities of color can lurk within the seemingly neutral math of such a funding formula. Always prioritizing traffic relief can put the needs of people without cars at the back of the line.
In Harris County, as of 2018 data, about 2.7 percent of households lack an automobile. In the Census Bureau tracts that include TSU, UH and the immediate surrounding neighborhoods, that number leaps to nearly 10 percent. Safe routes to walk or bike are critical not just for recreation but for accomplishing everyday errands and getting to work and back.
The next phase, Ellis told us, includes similar street enhancements and a bikeway for Blodgett and Rosewood. And near the UH campus, the city and county are working together on a $19 million project that will improve a 1.5-mile stretch of Cullen Boulevard from North MacGregor Way. When phase two is done, both TSU and UH will have direct, dedicated bikeways into the surrounding areas.
TSU’s very existence, founded as it was during the time of the Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” doctrine of racial segregation, speaks not only to a troubling history but our capacity to address past wrongs. Former City Council Member Carroll Robinson, now a TSU professor, celebrated at last week’s sidewalk ribbon-cutting that two Black elected officials with Tiger ties — Ellis, a 1970s Texas Southern graduate, and Turner, who taught law classes there — are now in positions to work with other leaders to get resources to help the university and Third Ward.
“This university, for all the bad intentions it grew out of, is a beacon and a place of power and light for the advancement of folks who they once decided could not participate,” Robinson said.
“Every resident ought to know they should not have to leave their respective neighborhood to enjoy the finer things in life,” Turner said last week. Houston contributed $3.7 million in city funds. While Third Ward remains a historic center of Houston’s Black community even as it rapidly gentrifies and our leaders are right to focus reinvestment there, Turner’s message will only ring true if leaders follow through in the many other neglected parts of Houston.
We spoke last week with Keith Downey, director at the Northeast Houston Redevelopment Council, who said the needs are every bit as imminent in Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens.
Downey likens Houston to an orange cut into four pieces, and said residents of the northeast “orange slice,” with dire transportation needs, flooding issues and poor access to nutritious food, are often left behind. He praised the county’s recent work on flood mitigation but said “the city and county need to invest much more into these communities.”
It’s not going to be easy to overcome decades of neglect in northeast Houston and in other struggling parts of Harris County, but those folks strolling down Cleburne are reminding their elected officials how it’s done. Put one foot in front of the other and keep going.