The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood

[kwassa]

Last edited Thu May 22, 2014, 08:13 PM - Edit history (1)

edit to add this from a better article on the subject, Ta-Nehisi Coates "The Case for Reparations"

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

From the 1930s through the 1960s, black people across the country were largely cut out of the legitimate home-mortgage market through means both legal and extralegal. Chicago whites employed every measure, from “restrictive covenants” to bombings, to keep their neighborhoods segregated.

Their efforts were buttressed by the federal government. In 1934, Congress created the Federal Housing Administration. The FHA insured private mortgages, causing a drop in interest rates and a decline in the size of the down payment required to buy a house. But an insured mortgage was not a possibility for Clyde Ross. The FHA had adopted a system of maps that rated neighborhoods according to their perceived stability. On the maps, green areas, rated “A,” indicated “in demand” neighborhoods that, as one appraiser put it, lacked “a single foreigner or Negro.” These neighborhoods were considered excellent prospects for insurance. Neighborhoods where black people lived were rated “D” and were usually considered ineligible for FHA backing. They were colored in red. Neither the percentage of black people living there nor their social class mattered. Black people were viewed as a contagion. Redlining went beyond FHA-backed loans and spread to the entire mortgage industry, which was already rife with racism, excluding black people from most legitimate means of obtaining a mortgage.

the original article referenced in the OP title.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-racist-housing-policy-that-made-your-neighborhood/371439/

One of the most heinous of these policies was introduced by the creation of the Federal Housing Administration in 1934, and lasted until 1968. Otherwise celebrated for making homeownership accessible to white people by guaranteeing their loans, the FHA explicitly refused to back loans to black people or even other people who lived near black people. As TNC puts it, "Redlining destroyed the possibility of investment wherever black people lived."

To understand the depth of the racism of these regulations, you have to read the descriptions of the grades that FHA gave to neighborhoods from A (green) to D (red). I've included them all at the end of this post, but here is the "C" classification (emphasis added), which is where my Oakland neighborhood fell (keep in mind restrictions as used here, means clauses, written into the title, not to sell to non-whites).


"Yellow areas are characterized by age, obsolescence, and change of style; expiring restrictions or lack of them; infiltration of a lower grade population; the presence of influences which increase sales resistance such as inadequate transportation, insufficient utilities, perhaps heavy tax burdens, poor maintenance of homes, etc. "Jerry" built areas are included, as well as neighborhoods lacking homogeneity. Generally, these areas have reached the transition period. Good mortgage lenders are more conservative in the Yellow areas and hold loan commitments under the lending ratio for the Green and Blue areas.

And, of course, the mortgage industry as a whole—the expansion of which allowed people without large savings or family money to buy homes—adopted many of these same practices. This had all sorts of truly horrific consequences for black people, black families, and black neighborhoods.

[wercal]

1. I deal with land surveying in my job

Occasionally we stumble across a Plat of Subdivision with language written on it forbidding certain races.

The plat is still considered valid, with the exception of any part that violates civil rights law.

An interesting reminder of the past.

I have also seen "half-breed" used for American Indian on similar documents...legal descriptions that may tie to the "Half Breed Reservation" boundary, fro example.

[upaloopa]

2. Just about all white neighborhoods were racist

I grew up in the 50's and 60's.
Attempts to sell a home to a Black family into a white neighborhood was called block busting. The fear was if one Black family owned a home on your block more Black families would move there also thus reducing the value of your white owned home. It was really pure racism.
I lived in Dayton Ohio. The city was segregated mostly. African Americans lived on the "west side" meaning west of Main Street.
When a Black family tried to buy a house on our street the White homeowners tried to buy the house first. They formed a committee and went door to door soliciting donations to buy the house.
My dad would not contribute mostly because we were poor and could not afford to do so. The next morning our house was covered in broken eggs.

[kwassa]

6. Along the city boundary with Detroit, a wall was actually built.

at 6 Mile Road, I believe, in the documentary I saw on it. Racist housing covenants were largely responsible for creating the slums we have today.

All supported by Federal money, for 34 years.

[Lars39]

7. Another way black communities were devastated

was by major roads being built straight thru flourishing black communities' business centers. Happened in Nashville.

[ljm2002]

9. It happened in Oakland, CA, too...

...the Cypress freeway was built right through a nice, middle class black neighborhood with neat shops and homes. This was the freeway that many years later, collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, causing the largest loss of life in that disaster. Anyway I was doing some historical research about Oakland, at the Oakland library, and happened across some historical photographs of the streets and how they looked before the Cypress was built, and after. I was surprised, having had no idea about that aspect of it. Anyway, now the Cypress is torn down but I don't know what has become of the surrounding areas -- lots of factors at play, different time, etc.

[Art_from_Ark]

12. That sort of wanton desctruction of neighborhoods probably started with Robert Moses

in New York City:

http://online.barrons.com/news/articles/SB50001424052748704759704577271393988247900

[scarletwoman]

14. Happened in St. Paul, MN.

They tore apart an entire thriving black neighborhood to put in Interstate 94. An entire historical cultural hub was simply bulldozed into oblivian.

[Supersedeas]

15. community integrity can be busted up in all kinds of ways

[Supersedeas]

24. Where segregation exists, it should be eliminated...by force if necessary

[SevenSixtyTwo]

3. That was 80 years ago.

This is now.

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/progdesc/title8

If you see a violation of this act, HUD is who you file a complaint with.

[kwassa]

5. Try again. 1968 was 46 years ago. That was when the policy was ended.

The point it that the Federal government had a very large hand in creating poor black neighborhoods and a cycle of poverty that has continued into the present era, and that is responsible for the social ills, and the lack of wealth accumulation in black communities that most whites gain through their property ownership.

[SevenSixtyTwo]

8. Thanks

I stand corrected.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

4. K & R nt

[HeiressofBickworth]

10. I posted the following in April 2013 about this subject:

I worked in a real estate office during a time when real estate offices were being accused of colluding to keep black families from purchasing properties in white neighborhoods (and this was in the Seattle area). The office I worked at was cited by the NAACP as one of those offices. It, of course, made the local TV news when the black test-couple reported on their experiences with the office. The office was a neighborhood office, right next to the community pool. One Saturday, a nice car drove into the parking lot and two well dressed black people came into the office. I welcomed them and went to the back room where the salesmen were congregated over coffee. The back door was standing open and there was no one around. I went back into the reception area, told the couple that there didn't appear to be any sales people in the office at the moment but there were a number of open houses in the area they could visit. I gave them a brochure and a map of the neighborhood showing the open houses. The man smiled at me and said he understood what just happened. He said he appreciated my help. I was 17 and had a mouth. When the couple left and the salesmen returned, I gave them a piece of my mind. I'm still amazed I wasn't fired for telling them what I thought of what they were doing. I nearly lost my job one time because my mother's best friend (a real estate agent) sold a house in this white neighborhood to a black family. They were furious but had no where to vent but on me. My mother intervened and I wasn't fired. I remember a debate at my school early in 1964 between the Seattle Real Estate Board and the NAACP regarding open housing. It was an interesting time.

[kwassa]

16. This kind of soft racism is the hardest to catch.

The applicants who are told the job has been filled, the would-be buyer being told the house has been sold.

[Gormy Cuss]

17. That's why various EEO/Fair Housing enforcement agencies and CBOs use testing.

Last edited Thu May 22, 2014, 11:03 PM - Edit history (1)

Send comparable applicants in with the only significant variable being race and compare the results. I've worked in Fair Housing on national studies using this method.
Testing will miss some of these illegal actions but it's always amazed me how blatant some people are about it.

[kwassa]

18. I think this is the only effective strategy to combat this type of racism.

Nothing else will expose those that practice this.

[Gormy Cuss]

19. Aggregate statistics on applicants help too.

That's why mortgage documents, hiring documents, and applications often have voluntary race disclosure questions, to get a handle on whether there is a systematic bias in the way applicants are recruited and screened. If Bank X only draws 10 percent of its applicants from POCs yet its service area is 40% POC, there may be a problem in the way they present their products or in their application scoring process. Simply being required to keep such statistics has been shown to have a positive effect on institutions where the bias wasn't intentional.

[kwassa]

20. Thanks for injecting some experience into this discussion.

Statistics can be very revealing.

[Supersedeas]

26. once it is rooted out, it needs to be exposed

[Liberal_in_LA]

11. kick

[Baitball Blogger]

13. They can also socially engineer exclusively white neighborhoods by

massive land rezonings that upgrade to single family housing. Eliminate or reduce multi-family housing, and you can lock out minorities from moving into suburban areas. And then there's that "soft" racism that comes from realtors who intentionally steer "the right" people to the right areas. Can't say that I have any definitive proof that it exists, but, I can say that there is a strong insular society mentality among some realtors that I know.

[Supersedeas]

25. good point

[butterfly77]

21. K&R..

[Number23]

22. K&R

[ismnotwasm]

23. K&R

[RainDog]

27. k&r n/t