APACC Submits Testimony to Committee on Recreation and Youth Affairs: Reinvestment in Parks is a Reinvestment in Public Safety, Health, and Justice for People
Testimony of the Anacostia Park & Community Collaborative before the Council of the District of Columbia Committee on Recreation and Youth Affairs Virtual Public Oversight Hearing on the Department of Parks and Recreation
June 15, 2020
The Anacostia Park and Community Collaborative is a 31-member network that includes community organizations in Ward 7 and Ward 8 as well as environmental advocates focused on improving the Anacostia River and the District’s parks across the city. Since our inception several years ago, we have collectively advocated that quality parks and outdoor environments play a significant and underappreciated role in building safe, healthy, just, and thriving communities in the District.
We appreciate that the Council has considered holistic reforms in recent weeks to address how best to keep our communities safe. We echo the voices of other advocates who have called in this moment for increased investment in schools, community centers, youth programs, education, housing, and we submit this testimony to emphasize that the District’s parks and outdoor spaces are also critical for advancing community health, youth development, equity, jobs, and justice.
We assert that re-investing in the District’s most underappreciated parklands to create high quality outdoor spaces and meaningful outdoor experiences for residents will unlock previously unleveraged power to reduce crime, transform young people’s lives, and improve mental and physical health of the District’s most vulnerable residents.
The Uncaptured Value of Parks
The University of Virginia recently released a study that showed that “properly designed and maintained outdoor green space has the potential to reduce violent crime and gun violence, to make communities safer and keep residents healthier. Conversely, green space that is poorly designed and inadequately maintained can help crime take root and spread.” Other studies show that having access to quality green spaces can help children cope with adversity and reduce symptoms of depression for people who live near them, especially in low-income neighborhoods. Children who play and learn outdoors develop more empathy towards others, as well as independence, confidence, creativity and problem-solving skills.
Countless studies have shown that spending time outdoors has numerous mental, physical, social and spiritual health benefits, and that resident proximity to quality green space is associated with reduced anxiety, reduced rates of Type 2 Diabetes, reduced obesity, and fewer hospitalizations. All of these benefits can help build communities with healthy, happy residents who are less inclined to resort to crime or violence to address challenges in their lives.
However, access to quality of parks and programs that carry all of these benefits are not equitably distributed in the District of Columbia. The DC Health Equity Report shows that District residents who earn less than 75% of the median city income have reduced levels of park access. Especially troubling, residents east of the River have some of the District’s highest percentages of public parkland, but vast portions of that are severely unmaintained, unprotected, unprogrammed, unfunded, and unsustainable. The Anacostia River, adjacent to Ward 7 and Ward 8, may feature vast open space areas like Marvin Gaye Park, Oxon Run Park, Fort Dupont Park and the Fort Circle, Anacostia Park, Shepherd Parkway, Kenilworth Park (formerly Kenilworth Landfill) and more, but these spaces are more often than not excruciatingly under-improved park spaces. While some of these spaces are Federally owned, the District nevertheless has an important role to play in investing in programming and potential improvements through cooperative management agreements.
Reinvestment in Parks is Reinvestment in Public Safety, Health, and Justice for People
As North America’s greenest major city, with the continent’s highest percentage of public green space, the District’s challenge is not lack of outdoor space but lack of equitable access to high quality and well-managed parks. DC’s parklands are pivotal in determining whether our most vulnerable residents have safe, sustainable communities with equitable access to the fresh air, stress relief, play, outdoor learning, food security, green workforce development, and peaceful public areas that are all critical social determinants of health. Reinvesting funds into parks and programs can bring dramatic results. The following are ways to boost public safety, health, and justice by shifting funds to proactive community- and park-based preventative approaches, which are ultimately more cost-efficient and effective than public safety efforts that simply respond to crime or violence that has already taken place:
Investing in restoring the park patrols of DPR's Urban Park Ranger program, a proven unarmed mentorship approach to lifting up youth and promoting park safety and peace that has sadly been removed from park patrols and programs for a number of years;
Investing more, not less, in DPR's Roving Leaders Program, a violence intervention program based in part in public housing - especially in park-based programming that the program has cut back;
Investing more in outdoor classrooms, service learning, and other programming by DCPS, DOEE, the DC Arts Commission, and Serve DC so that our parks can come alive for our youth;
Investing more in park-based workforce development by DOES, DOEE and community partners, especially through Project Empowerment and other efforts to help returned citizens gain lasting employment, and linking these jobs to the DDOT Urban Forestry Administration through community and non-profit partners to support forest reclamation through massive invasive weed removal and native tree and habitat planting;
Investing more in DDOT's contracted trail patrol program so that it can serve park corridors year-round;
Shifting land stewardship functions to the DC Department of Energy and the Environment, and boosting contract compliance and equity on grass mowing, park lighting and playground repairs, graffiti removal, and trash pick-up; and
Investing more in DOH's drug intervention and needle exchange programs to interrupt the cycles of addiction and violence, and incentivizing health providers to weave park prescriptions into all of their care;
Countering discrimination against employing and contracting with low-income Black residents;
Investing more in food security through intensive community agriculture via the DOEE Office on Urban Agriculture and community partners, modeled after sites such as Washington Parks & People’s Marvin Gaye Community Greening Center that simultaneously grow food, jobs, arts, learning, environmental sustainability, and community year-round;
Investing more in park- and community-based youth development and mentorship through community partnerships and partnerships with DYRS;
Expand enforcement against environmental crime by DOEE to stop dumping in poor neighborhoods exemplified by such long-entrenched illegal dumping sites as the toxic dump at 4214 Hunt Place NE next to the Watts Branch stream and Marvin Gaye Park;
Investing in community-based park partnerships such as Friends of Oxon Run Park, Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, Ward 8 Woods, Washington Parks & People, and other organizations to make the city's vast parks system into zones of peace and opportunity for all.
As the Council looks into holistic solutions to reduce crime, improve safety, invest in neighborhoods in lieu of reliance on police forces, we encourage you to consider the extremely lucrative return on investment in community wellbeing associated with channeling resources into outdoor spaces and programming.
The Anacostia Park and Community Collaborative would be happy to continue this conversation at any time. Our Policy Working Group can be reached through Danielle Burs (dburs@dcappleseed.org). Thank you for the opportunity to provide this testimony.