History of Redlining
Redlining was used historically all over the country, mainly in neighborhoods of ethnic and racial minorities. Redlining had many forms. For instance, banks might give out unfavorable loans to people of color, or investors wouldn’t invest in certain neighborhoods which they deemed “hazardous” to investment, and this was usually because these neighborhoods housed people of certain races (1). Additionally, real estate companies would sell houses at certain prices to racial and ethic minorities in specific areas, because no white people would want to live there. Real estate companies and investors would draw lines in red around these “hazardous” areas.
Even the government was involved. The Federal Housing Administration justified this discrimintation by reasoning that if African-Americans bought homes in the suburbs near white people, then they thought that the property value would decline (2). They thus refused to insure mortgages and had it written in the deeds of the houses that “such property shall be restricted to persons of the Caucasion race forever” (3).
Although many people back then thought that selling these houses to people of color would lower the value, the opposite was actually true. After no longer investing in these neighborhoods, because they thought it was no longer important, factories, highways, and more were built. For instance, in St. Louis, Missouri, the area where African Americans resided was demolished and the people displaced, all so the Gateway Arch and a university could be built. The area where they were displaced to became redlined. In neighborhoods all over the country, disinvested areas like these turned to slums, because of the overcrowding of these neighborhoods and the factories and waste plants that were built in some of these neighborhoods. (4).
Real estate agents used a tactic known as “blockbusting,” where they would hire African Americans to push strollers through the neighborhood, drive cars blasting loud music, or fake call houses looking for someone with stereotypical African American names, all to get the whites out of the neighborhood. They would then buy the houses for below market price due to the panic by Caucasians, and sell for higher than market prices to African Americans. And the government didn’t do anything about this blatant disregard of justice.
Something similar even happened in Sacramento. In the Oak Park neighborhood, before World War II, “most people in Oak Park were of European ethnicity, although African Americans and Mexican Americans were present in the neighborhood” (5). However, because of redlining and so-called “white flight,” whites began to move out of the neighborhood, and the property value diminished (5). Highway expansion and the building of the Interstate-50 and Highway 99 made Oak Park more susceptible to “deterioration of the living standards” (6, 7).
In addition, this occurred in the Meadowview area as well. In the late 1960’s, the Meadowview area of Sacramento was about 90% white (8), but in just the next decade, “the area was approved for low income loans and many of the area's new residents were afraid that Meadowview would change and become a high crime area” (8). The Interstate-5 Highway was also built around this time (9), and was built to go through the neighborhood. Mostly though, redlining was illegal by this time, so the social inequities that happened were more “unofficial” or just implied or implicit. Clearly, Meadowview was not exempted from this form of racial injustice.
Although this seems like it happened in the past, and despite redlining being illegal, the injustice is not over. Today, many people living in these areas still feel the effects after all these years. Check out the next article to learn more about the long term effects that are still experienced in current times.
Sources
1. Wikipedia contributors. “Redlining.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 3 Oct. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining.
2. Gross, Terry. “A 'Forgotten History' of How the U.S. Government Segregated America.” NPR, NPR, 3 May 2017, https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america.
3. Rodd, Scott. “'Restricted to Persons of the Caucasian Race Forever': Racist Language in California Property Records Could Finally Be Erased.” CapRadio, Capital Public Radio, 5 Aug. 2020, https://www.capradio.org/articles/2020/08/05/restricted-to-persons-of-the-caucasian-race-forever-racist-language-in-california-property-records-could-finally-be-erased/.
4. Lopez, Mark, director. Segregated By Design. Silkworm, Vimeo, 5 Apr. 2019, https://vimeo.com/328684375. Accessed 9 Oct. 2022.
5. Wikipedia Contributors. “Oak Park, Sacramento, California.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia., 26 May 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Park,_Sacramento,_California.
6. Joaquin Castañeda, "The Oak Park Redevelopment Plan: Housing Policy Implications for a Community Undergoing Early Stage Gentrification" (April 1, 2008). National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Annual Conference. Paper 14. http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/naccs/2008/Proceedings/14.
7. Burg, William. “A Brief History of Oak Park.” Midtown Monthly RSS, 1 Feb. 2010, http://www.midtownmonthly.net/life/a-brief-history-of-oak-park/.
8. Wikipedia Contributors. “Meadowview, Sacramento, California.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 4 Feb. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadowview,_Sacramento,_California.
9. Wikipedia Contributors. “Interstate 5.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 29 Sept. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_5#:~:text=I%2D5%20largely%20follows%20the,99%20was%20removed%20in%201972.