housing

Big Win for Victims of Restrictive Covenants

by James Gregory

Restrictive covenants and other housing policies created a housing market defined by racial segregation and locked generations of Black Americans out of wealth-building. Now courts frown on race-aware remedies for past discrimination. Has the state of Washington figured out a way around that to deliver reparations? 

To Understand America's Failure on Housing Desegregation, Look at the Capital City

by Kaila Philo

With federal support, the private housing market was built around racial segregation. To understand how federal fair housing law and policy adopted since the 1960s failed to undermine it, it's not necessary to venture too far from Capitol Hill. 

Black San Franciscans Have Been Leaving—Could Reparations Bring them Back?

A city commission has issued non-binding advisory recommendations for extensive cash reparations to Black residents and their families who were pushed out of now-valuable property through urban renewal. It's not likely that the local government will implement any of them, so activists are trying to help make housing more affordable.

Why a Long-Maligned Housing Style Endures in Leeds

Once a progressive improvement on court-style housing in working class neighborhoods, then disfavored as cramped and lacking in privacy, urbanists look to Leeds's back-to-back rowhouses as a guide to more efficient and affordable housing for modern cities. 

Atlanta Outsources Collecting Tax Liens to Private Investors; Black Taxpayers are Losing their Homes

By outsourcing collection of delinquent taxes to private investors, Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, takes away incentives to keep people in their homes. Housing scholar Dan Immergluck says allowing private speculators to auction off properties is driving unaffordable housing and gentrification

Will the Battle of the Suburbs Play Out Differently This Time?

by Lily Geismer

One of the most important failures of the civil rights era was allowing affluent suburbs to block requirements to build affordable housing in their jurisdictions. As housing costs climb higher, is there the political will among Democrats to risk angering suburban voters? 

Don't Bother Looking for a Place to Rent in DC

by Rebecca Gordon

New congressman Maxwell Frost's struggles to find an apartment in the capital echoes the "Bourgeois Blues" Leadbelly sang in 1937. What does it say about democracy if representatives of the people can't live in Washington? 

When the Public University is a Corporate Landlord

by Charmaine Chua, Desiree Fields and David Stein

During negotiations with graduate student workers, UCLA administrators claimed that increasing stipends would effectively subsidize local landlords through higher rents and squeeze the poor in the Los Angeles housing market. The reality is that the university is an investor in a huge real estate trust that is hiking rents itself. 

Atlanta's BeltLine Project a Case Study in Park-Driven "Green Gentrification"

by Dan Immergluck

Although the ambitious combination of multiuse trails and apartment complexes "was designed to connect Atlantans and improve their quality of life, it has driven up housing costs on nearby land and pushed low-income households out to suburbs with fewer services than downtown neighborhoods."

Biden Administration Plans Action on Fair Housing

State and local governments are required under the Fair Housing Act to examine and act to eliminate patterns of discrimination in housing within their boundaries. The federal purse has seldom been used as leverage to ensure they comply. 

The Tyranny of the Maps: Rethinking Redlining

by Robert Gioielli

The four-color mortgage security maps created by New Deal-era bureaucrats and bankers have become a widely-known symbol of housing discrimination and the racial wealth gap. But does the public familiarity with the maps obscure the history of housing discrimination? And what can historians do about that?

LA Council Racism Shows Ethnic Politics Covers for War by Landlords on Renters

The recorded remarks in a council meeting show that while Angelenos have been encouraged to vote along ethnic lines, their representatives have been more intersted in catering to politically powerful landlords and developers. 

The Crossroads: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on the Inadequacy of Politics as Usual

"Today, we have lived through two terms of a Black presidency and the highest concentration of Black elected officials in Congress and beyond in American history. So the question of whether we can vote our way into liberation is no longer an abstraction."

Are Co-Ops the Lost Solution to the Housing Crisis?

by Annemarie Sammartino

At its 1966 opening, New York's Co-Op City was heralded as the solution to the nation's affordable housing crisis. What went right, what went wrong, and can it help guide better housing policy today?

How "Sales Comps" Built Racism Into the Housing Market

by Elizabeth Korver-Glenn

The recent ordeal of a Johns Hopkins historian whose house was appraised for more money when he removed pictures of himself and his Black family points to a key finding: the use of sales comparisons to appraise homes enshrines racism in the market. 

Is Historic Preservation Ruining American Cities?

by Jacob Anbinder

Historic preservation laws often have a loose relationship to the actual historic significance of buildings, and an even looser relationship to the interests of cities in meeting their residents' social needs. 

High Crimes and Lingering Consequences: How Land Sale Contracts Looted Black Wealth and Gutted Chicago Communities

by Tiff Beatty

Chicago artist Tonika Lewis Johnson is creating public installations documenting properties where Black residents were subjected to predatory contract home sales, and connecting the past to the present struggles of the city's south and west sides.

How the "Jewel of Harlem" Became Unlivable

Opened in 1967, Esplanade Gardens’ co-op apartments were seen as a way for Black families to acquire intergenerational wealth and gnaw away at centuries-long inequality in housing.Then it started falling apart.

Is "Regulation from Below" Possible? Historian Rebecca Marchiel on Community Housing Activism

"Marchiel’s narrative paints the picture of a remarkably powerful national reinvestment campaign against an almost unstoppable force of ever more inventive flows of capital. Perhaps the lesson should have been that capitalism refuses to work for people."

The Invention of America's Most Dangerous Idea

by Gene Slater

How did a right-wing conception of "freedom" rooted in the individual's absolute property rights supersede an idea of freedom based in social equality? Blame the real estate industry.