Anne Bellows
Host: Public Advocates
Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Peter worked with low-income, excluded communities in North Carolina to prevent unjust and discriminatory actions by surrounding municipalities. He conducted a survey on the extend and manifestations of community exclusion in North Carolina to identify communities that could benefit from new water and sewer provisions in state annexation statutes.
Community exclusion is the manifestation of structural racism at the neighborhood level. When municipalities incorporated under Jim Crow segregation, black neighborhoods were generally excluded from municipal boundaries. As a legacy of segregation, black communities continue to be excluded from the political and economic life of surrounding municipalities, even as towns have grown and annexed new territory. Residents of excluded communities have no voice in the municipal government. The lack of municipal services, combined with a lack of political power, results in ongoing underdevelopment. Long-term effects of exclusion include no access to infrastructure and municipal services, siting of environmental hazards in excluded communities, exclusion from school districts and assignment to the best schools, substandard housing, and civic and political isolation. In 2011 the North Carolina legislature enacted annexation reform, part of which requires municipalities to annex certain low-income communities that request it and to provide them with water and sewer service. Prior to Peter’s project, no systematic effort had been made to identify excluded communities believed to exist across North Carolina.
During his Fellowship, Peter:
Peter assists excluded and other low-income communities on affordable housing issues as a Staff Attorney at Legal Aid of North Carolina
Host: Public Advocates
Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Host: Public Advocates
Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Host: Environmental Law & Justice Clinic, Golden Gate University
Sponsor: Individual Donors, Law Office of Fredric Evenson, Scott McDonald
Host: Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability
Sponsor: Apple, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
Current Fellow