In response to the Great Depression, the Federal Housing Administration was created through the National Housing Act of 1934. The purpose of the FHA was to regulate interest rates and mortgage terms. While this new government agency created an opportunity for whites to become homeowners and begin accumulating wealth, government-sanctioned racism kept blacks out of the housing market. The FHA regularly denied mortgages to black people and limited loans to new residential areas on the outskirts of the city, where the white population tended to live; this contributed to the decay of inner city neighborhoods as middle-class residents left to build new homes in the suburbs. Federal policy also dictated that the home values of predominantly black neighborhoods were to be lower than in neighborhoods that were mostly white. Even though that law is no longer on the books, its legacy remains: Homes in black neighborhoods still have lower values than homes in white neighborhoods with similar incomes. The Federal Housing Administration also practiced redlining, the practice in which lenders would deny or limit financial services based on race, regardless of other financial qualifications. The term redlining comes from the practice of drawing red lines on maps to mark the black neighborhoods where banks would not invest. The FHA was firm in its racial bias; in one of its publications, the agency even declared that neighborhoods should not be racially integrated. Finally, by 1968 as part of the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act was implemented. It was a victory for blacks nationwide, but the damage had already been done. While white families had been building wealth for decades, blacks found themselves behind. In the years after housing act’s passage, the wealth gap would certainly shrink, but never come close to closing. http://prospect.org/article/staggering-loss-black-wealth-due-subprime-scandal-continues-unabated
Yeah. Learned this in high school AP history actually. Redlining and block busting. Good thing is that they are both systematically unenforceable after fair housing act, unfortunately white flight still largely exists that won't ever be solved.
When it comes to housing, everything revolves around socioeconomic circles... not race. I see every race in nice neighborhoods, especially in a city like Houston. Sure, some people are not comfortable living in a neighborhood with the majority of another race, but that is their own doing-- not the FHA.
That's not accurate. I did some work for HUD for a while. When there were complaints of racism, they would test exactly what you described. If a minority were rejected housing or shown different houses or apartments, then a white tester with a profile of the exact same earning, stability of career would go to the same places and see if the same areas, and houses. There were many times when they weren't despite having the same socio-economic profile as the minority. This was in NYC, and there were times when asking about roommates if some old school landlords would ask point blank if the roommate was black. There is absolutely discrimination based on race that occurs in housing.
And now the law prohibits things like redlining and discriminatory lending, and as far as socioeconomic discrimination, I think that's a bit overblown because just about everybody and their mother can qualify for a mortgage in today's environment. But as far as the actual qualifications go, a lender can only base their decision on a persons creditworthiness.
Not really overblown. 8% of mortgages during a four year span in this investigation of one company. http://www.theatlantic.com/business...ending-practices-were-fueled-by-greed/250424/ Economic racism is a slippery thing in 2011. It's not out in the open, like a "whites only" sign above a lunch counter. And it's not explicit, like the deed to a house barring its sale to blacks or Jews. Instead, it's submerged. It lives in patterns of discrimination hidden within reams and reams of hard to analyze data. It's not necessarily driven by animus or hate. Sometimes it's just a product of garden-variety greed. For proof, direct your attention to the record-setting settlement announced this week between the Justice Department and Bank of America over the mortgage lending practices of Countrywide Financial. The bank agreed to pay $335 million dollars to settle claims that, at the height of housing boom, Countrywide routinely discriminated against blacks and Hispanics by charging them higher interest rates and fees than equally qualified white customers. The 45-page complaint that accompanies the settlement may be one of the most extensive studies of housing discrimination ever completed in this country. The court papers outline what Justice investigators found when they analyzed 2.5 million mortgages Countrywide issued between 2004 and 2008. Bank of America, which bought the enormous mortgage lender in 2008, has not admitted or denied any of the government's alleged facts. Here is the ugly story made brief. According to Justice, Countrywide overcharged more than 200,000 black and Hispanic borrowers for their loans. About 10,000 were sold risky subprime mortgages, even though their finances were good enough to qualify for cheaper prime rates. Black customers who obtained their mortgages through a Countrywide-affiliated broker were more than twice as likely to get a subprime loan than similar white borrowers. In some markets, they were as much as eight times more likely.
This is not about FHA or anything, but I thought I would share it anyway. I was reading through some old deed restrictions on a property in Montrose the other day when I came across an interesting restriction (dated near 1930): It stated that the property could not be sold to or occupied by persons of "African blood." The restriction was nice enough to stipulate that persons of African blood could stay in the back of the property in servant's quarters, though. Just thought I'd share, as I found the deed restrictions to be interesting in a historical sense.
Blatant racism, or differences in education? To the original post, I'm curious how many blacks could afford homes in 1934-1968.
And now Countrywide is defunct, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created, and Fair Lending Laws have been implemented in the mortgage industry making any form of discrimination, whether intentional or unintentional, overt or covert, illegal. If a company is found to be in violation of this, the borrowers are to be compensated for being overcharged or otherwise discriminated against, and can even have their loans forgiven. Furthermore, origination fees are statutorily limited, so a loan officer can't hike up somebody's rate or overcharge their borrowers to line their own pockets. In fact loan officers receive the same compensation on every loan they originate. This wasn't the case back when that article was written. The industry today is quite a bit different than it was when this article was written, and while, historically speaking, the FHA institutionalized discrimination, that simply isn't the case today. People who do discriminate are punished severely in today's environment.
Federal agencies subsidized white suburban development by guaranteeing loans to mass-production builders who created places like Levittown on Long Island, Lakewood in California, and similar uncounted suburbs in metropolitan areas nationwide. Homes were inexpensive and theoretically affordable to black and white workers alike, especially to returning World War II veterans. But the Federal Housing and Veterans administrations encouraged and usually required these builders to refuse sales to African Americans. Whites who were permitted to buy benefited from ensuing decades of equity appreciation; this wealth helped finance college for their children and was later bequeathed to them. Black families, prohibited by federal policy from buying into these initially low-priced suburbs, lost out. http://prospect.org/article/race-or-class-future-affirmative-action-college-campus
Fair question--but the "caveat emptor" explanation can't apply if the decision is made for the buyer before they even attempt a purchase. This is what black people largely mean when we say "racism". It's not the individual--it's the game and the way the rules are structured --and restructured --and restructured some more -- to affect a desired result. And that's why often it is difficult to accept "lawful" decisions that exclude or define a large segment of people out of hand. The difference between a "liberal Negro" and a "conservative Negro" is the same as making a distinction between a "nice" slave-master and a "mean" one. Like Muhammad Ali once said, famously: "...No matter what we do, we's still N!gg3rs, ain't we...?" I wouldn't be much of a race-baiter if I didn't squeeze that in there, now would I?:grin:
And this was in the charter for Rice University until 1964: The original charter of Rice Institute dictated that the university admit and educate, tuition-free, "the white inhabitants of Houston, and the state of Texas".
White flight exist because anyone who can afford to move out of an increasingly dangerous neighborhood is going to do so, including minorities. Address poverty and you see crime reduction, and a reduction in crime would also reduce White flight, which helps reverse the shrinking tax base, which makes it easier to protect anti poverty programs. See how it all goes in a circle? These problems are all connected like a jigsaw puzzle, and trying to address them individually is a recipe for failure.
