{"id":7703,"date":"2022-03-07T15:00:08","date_gmt":"2022-03-07T20:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.realtyhop.com\/blog\/?p=7703"},"modified":"2022-03-07T14:50:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-07T19:50:40","slug":"redlining-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realtyhop.com\/blog\/redlining-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"The History and Ongoing Impact of Redlining in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1976, historian Kenneth T. Jackson discovered a decades-old, previously secret government document that displayed visual proof of America\u2019s racist housing policies in the 1930s and beyond, using a discriminatory practice later known as redlining.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Redlining began during the Great Depression, at a time when the government created homeownership programs to stimulate the economy. As part of the program, FDR\u2019s administration funded government-backed mortgages for homeowners, a form of federal aid designed to stop a tsunami of foreclosures. The homeownership programs successfully saved many homeowners from foreclosing on their homes, but not everyone benefited equally \u2014 or at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The government created criteria for appraising properties and evaluating homeowners who may qualify as a way of determining lending risk. They rated the risk of neighborhoods in over 200 cities across America, with each neighborhood assigned one of four color-coded rankings. However, bureaucrats kept the specifics of these criteria secret from the American public for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although black Americans already knew that the country\u2019s lending practices were racist, Jackson\u2019s discovery in 1976 showed visual proof that the government\u2019s housing policies were far from fair and balanced. One day, when he was searching for unrelated housing records, he found a color-coded map of St. Louis from 1937, ranking every neighborhood in the city based on how qualified the residents there were of receiving a mortgage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The map color-coded the neighborhoods into four categories, from least to most risky:<\/span><\/p>\n