When Carolyn Rivera moved to Settegast, a majority-Black neighborhood in northeast Houston, 45 years ago, horses roamed the streets and nearly every homestead had a backyard farm where chickens and speckled feather guinea hens darted between rows of corn and greens.
Rivera, who turns 83 next month, remembers those early days with a kind of wistful reverence. “It was absolutely a beautiful community,” she said. “Families looked out for one another. The land was a source of pride and sustenance.”
But as Rivera and other Black families put down roots, Settegast began to shift beneath their feet.
Recent research, co-led by Black women researchers and conducted specifically with Black women residents, found that 80% of Black women in the neighborhood live in high-risk soil contamination zones, with 80% of those residents reporting chronic health conditions.
Black women surveyed in the research, like Rivera, are joining together to use the data to work with local officials to push for stricter industrial oversight, expanded access to fresh food and medical care, and funding for soil remediation to restore the neighborhood’s health and vitality.
“We know our worth,” she said, “and it has taken me all this time to realize we also need to be the ones to fight for it, and that we have the power to.”
In a neighborhood once defined by its rural charm and tight-knit community, the slow encroachment of industry, neglect and gentrification has transformed both the landscape and the lives of its residents. The average resident in Settegast is expected to die before they reach retirement age. About a 30-minute drive south along the highways that split up the city, residents in majority-white areas live on average 24 years longer.
The neighborhood sits trapped between a massive rail yard, a freeway, and five industrial sites that release thousands of pounds of lead and toxic chemicals.
Lead researcher Jacquita Johnson, who just completed a doctoral program at Texas A&M, said research focusing on women, especially Black women, is rare, but deeply needed: “Those narratives are left out when we think about environmental justice and the history of environmental racism, but we know through our elders that not only are Black women disproportionately impacted, they’re also leading the charge.”
As the city’s hottest real estate market rises around them, these women face not only displacement but the compounding effects of “weathering,” a term researchers use to describe the accelerated aging caused by chronic stress and exposure to pollution.
How environmental racism and displacement go hand in hand
When Rivera moved to Settegast in the late 1970s, “it was changing over from a white community to a Black one,” she explained. “Once we came in here, we did not get the same services as the other community had, and we really didn’t know how to fight for resources to keep it up.”
The neighborhood’s neglect became visible in the crumbling drainage system, sewage build-up, and the slow but steady encroachment of industry. She watched as concrete batch plants and metal recycling companies crept closer, their hulking machinery and clouds of dust transforming the area.
“Not only did it start to look different, we lost the smell of the neighborhood, too,” she said. The air, once sweet with the scent of the green earth, became tinged with the pungent smell of industry.
The transformation of Settegast not only scarred the land but also the humanity of its residents. Residents are more vulnerable to poor health from environmental and climate threats than 99% of Americans, according to research by the Environmental Defense Fund and Texas A&M University.
Living in a neighborhood where there aren’t grocery stores with fresh food and hospitals remain distant, Rivera’s seen her neighbors die at younger and younger ages. Today, life expectancy there is the lowest in Houston, and men often die before reaching their 60th birthday. She has seen families unravel under the weight of this loss, as well as unpaid mortgages, and mounting property taxes.
Since the neighborhood has an average household income that is less than half the Houston average, she said, when people die young without wills or estate plans, “their families find themselves drowning. Many simply walk away or sell for whatever they can get.”
This tragedy has become an economic opportunity for others. The area that offered rare homeownership opportunities to Black families systematically excluded from other Houston neighborhoods is now being transformed by the very environmental burdens that kept property values artificially low for decades.
As the neighborhood’s demographics shift and property values soar, Rivera’s own home, once worth under $25,000, is now worth nearly $200,000. Since 2016, no other area has experienced such a dramatic surge in property sales and skyrocketing prices as developers market the proximity to downtown and cheap prices without disclosing the community’s proximity to cancer clusters and pollution threats, residents say. (Despite Settegast’s record increase in housing value, homes still sell for half the price of the average Houston property.)
The Houston Land Bank, a city agency that acquires tax-forfeited, vacant, and deteriorating properties, owns more lots in Settegast’s 2 square miles than any other neighborhood in the city — a sign of disappearing families. And because the city of Houston lacks traditional zoning laws, many of these empty lots are being turned into dumping grounds, parking lots for 18 wheelers, and car repair shops, increasing the pollution residents face.
Before the surge in costs, the community homeownership rate was 60%. Now it is around 40%.
Over that same period, the share of Black residents in the neighborhood has dropped from 72% to just around 50%.
And Black women in the community are the area’s last line of defense from total displacement, residents said. For the mothers and grandmothers who remain, they have become the backbones who hold families together, raise children and grandchildren alone, and carry the community’s institutional memory forward through generations of loss.
Rivera has become a pillar among those remaining. “Most of the people in this community, as far as African Americans, are women, head of household, dealing with all the problems — mental, physical, environmental, inadequate medical attention,” she said. She described how, only in the past five years, she’s learned to fight: attending community meetings, working with her church, and reaching out to young people. “That’s what we are going to have to do to stop this devastation of life in our community.”
Black women leading the fight for change
This is where Johnson, the researcher, came into the fold. Her work, rooted in a deep respect for community leadership, focused on the health of Black women in Settegast. She described how the project pivoted from researching air quality to soil contamination at the request of residents: “Originally, the idea was to focus on air pollution, because that was my interest. But I got with the community, and they basically were like, ‘Girl, we don’t want that air stuff. … What we want to know about is the soil,’” she said. “We wanted to make sure that we were very community engaged, making sure that not only that their concerns were addressed, but they were leading the project.”
Historically, Rivera said, studies and surveys have come and gone in the neighborhood: “You’d be surprised how many studies they’ve had since I’ve been in this community, yet the community continues to deteriorate because they’re not done in partnership.”
Johnson’s research in Settegast found that the majority of women in Settegast report chronic health conditions, including mental health ailments related to the pollution and constant onslaught of industrial actors.
Researchers and community organizers conducted the survey by canvassing Settegast, going door-to-door and leveraging local networks to recruit participants. This grassroots approach ensured that residents’ voices guided the project and that those most impacted by environmental issues were directly involved in the research.
The findings were confirmation of how environmental toxicity translates directly into bodily harm for Black women. Community members shared stories that spanned generations, like memories of mothers who went to great lengths to protect their families from contaminated water. “They would carry water from miles away because they refused to let them drink from the faucet, knowing it was tainted by sewage,” Johnson explained.
These conversations show the immediate dangers of exposure, she said, but also how the consequences ripple through families over time, shaping the health and well-being of each new generation.
Rivera spoke of neighbors whose property lines border the metal recycling plant, their soil “full with arsenic and everything in it.” She’s seen how the government’s indifference — city officials passing responsibility to the state, and vice versa — erodes community self-esteem, feeding cycles of despair, drug use, and violence.
“It just turned into a generational thing,” she observes. “It’s hard when you’re young and see your people struggling and not getting anywhere.”
Yet despite bearing this disproportionate burden, these women continue organizing community meetings, documenting health impacts, and demanding accountability from city officials and industrial polluters.
With this data and new sense of urgency, Rivera has written newspaper editorials and met directly with elected officials calling for change.
As Kyle Maronie, a local activist and lifelong resident, explained, change can’t happen without women like her. “Black women are the loudest champions for the neighborhood and just ensuring that we are not taken advantage [of] often.”
He added, “It’s these elders giving their perspective, giving their stories about how the environment has impacted not only their family’s health, that has shown us that we’re not going to lay down and be victims. We will not leave.”
“I’m proud of this work,” Rivera said.
Great Job Adam Mahoney & the Team @ Capital B News Source link for sharing this story.
