More than 60 years ago, the city of St. Paul bulldozed homes and displaced about 25,000 people from the West Side Flats neighborhood to make way for a new industrial park and flood wall after perpetual high-water problems.

But, according to the West Side Community Organization, most of those families were immigrants and many did not get fair market value, or nothing at all, for their properties.

Now, Mayor Melvin Carter is proposing some financial reinvestment on the West Side for descendants of those displaced families from the West Side Flats.

“I propose we finally own up to the injustice and harm caused by the displacement of our historic West Side Flats neighborhood by expanding our inheritance fund to include descendants of residents who were displaced from property ownership in our historic West Side Flats neighborhood,” said Carter. “We established the inheritance fund just a few years ago to offer up to $110,000 in fully forgivable loans to help descendants of property owners on old Rondo–our vibrant, mostly African American community that was uprooted to build the freeway–to help them build wealth through homeownership.”

Jazmin Glaser-Kelly is one of those descendants.

She told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS she is pleased with the overture from the mayor, but the loss of generational wealth and a big part of her family’s history and culture in the neighborhood still stings.

“To me, I am very angry at times about it,” said Glaser-Kelly. “It’s not the same. Like, I feel like, if it was here there would have been so much rich heritage and culture and things to share”

Larry Lucio, Jr. told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS his grandparents’ and father’s home was torn down and he, too, still feels a tremendous sense of loss.

“Now, seeing where they came from it’s emotional. It’s emotional,” said Lucio, Jr. “Before we knew what that was, it was taken away. So, it pushed us back.”

No dollar amount has been given for any of this, but the inheritance fund money did give forgivable loans up to $110,000 for descendants of people displaced when the Rondo neighborhood was split up to make way for a new interstate freeway.