housing 
-
SOURCE: The Atlantic
5/2/2022
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.
-
5/1/2022
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.
-
SOURCE: The New Republic
4/5/2022
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.
-
SOURCE: Public Books
3/22/2022
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."
-
SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/29/2021
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.
-
SOURCE: NPR
11/17/2021
Unenforceable Racial Covenants are Still Part of Property Deeds Across America
"I'd be surprised to find any city that did not have restrictive covenants," said LaDale Winling, a historian and expert on housing discrimination who teaches at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.
-
SOURCE: Platform
11/1/2021
How Academia Laid the Groundwork for Redlining
by Todd Michney and LaDale Winling
Richard T. Ely and his student Ernest McKinley Fisher pushed the National Association of Real Estate Boards to adopt "the unsupported hypothesis that Black people's very presence inexorably lowered property values," tying the private real estate industry to racial segregation.
-
SOURCE: Public Books
10/6/2021
"No There There": Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on the Future of the Left
"I’m sitting in the car, barreling down the highway, asking myself, 'What happened in my life that has put me in this position where I have to like listen to this &%$*@ nonsense?' I needed to leave. But like most people, I needed the health insurance."
-
SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
9/28/2021
When the Real Estate Industry Led the Fight to Defend Segregation
California's battle over fair housing legislation in the 1960s shows a key development of modern conservatism: raising property rights to an absolute and brooking no infringement on it, particularly for the sake of racial equality, argues Gene Slater, author of a new book on fair housing.
-
SOURCE: Governing
9/21/2021
Redlining Happened, but Not Exactly the Way We've Thought it Did
New economic research reinforces an argument made by historian Amy Hillier, that federal agencies didn't invent "redlining" but responded to widespread public prejudices that imagined Black residents as threats to neighborhood property value.
-
SOURCE: TomDispatch
9/16/2021
Homelessness and Eviction in the Land of the Free
by Liz Theoharis
Homeless activists in the 1980s and 1990s began to push back against the narrative that mass homelessness reflected the defects of individuals instead of a profit-driven housing system. As the Supreme Court has thrown out a federal eviction moratorium, that lesson is more relevant than ever.
-
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
9/10/2021
Los Angeles Pioneered American Racial Segregation
by Gene Slater
The real estate industry acted as a cartel to limit the free market in housing to preserve racial homogeneity, claiming it was necessary to protect property values. This form of housing segregation was tested in the booming market of 1920s California and spread nationwide.
-
SOURCE: MSNBC
9/4/2021
House Hunting While Black: Racism Sabotages the American Dream
by Keisha N. Blain
"The current rate of mortgage denials — and the interrelated patterns of housing discrimination and exclusion — is rooted in American history. Discrimination against Black Americans applying for mortgage loans is not new."
-
SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
9/9/2021
SCOTUS Ended the Eviction Ban, but not the Fight Against Eviction
by Maia Silber
Philadelphia's housing crisis during the first world war shows that worker and citizen activism is essential to compel governments to act to secure adequate affordable housing.
-
SOURCE: Savannah Morning News
8/16/2021
The Odd Place of one Savannah Neighborhood in the History of Redlining
by Todd Michney
The history of the Cuyler-Brownville area shows that HOLC risk assessments and Federal lending practices were responsive to local banks' perception of lending risk and desire for profit, factors which resulted in the rarity of an African American community retaining a "green" rating.
-
SOURCE: Last Week Tonight
7/26/2021
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Ties the History of Housing Discrimination to Reparations
John Oliver breaks down the long history of housing discrimination in the U.S., the damage it’s done, and, crucially, what we can do about it.
-
SOURCE: Dissent
7/8/2021
Redlining, Race, and the Color of Money
by Garrett Dash Nelson
"Redlining maps reveal how the federal government managed risk for capital—a role that has perpetuated inequality long after the end of explicit discrimination in the housing market."
-
SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/27/2021
The Housing Market is Booming but Remains Deeply Unequal
by LaDale Winling
The standards and practices of real estate appraisal were developed in the context of white supremacy in the 1920s and since then have worked to make home ownership a path toward building wealth that has favored white Americans.
-
SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/10/2021
Solving Homelessness Requires Getting the Problem Right
by Ella Howard
American policy initiatives to reduce homelessness and aid homeless people have generally misunderstood the roots of homelessness and offered therapeutic or police solutions. Ironically, only recently have cities recognized providing housing as the vital central hub of homelessness programs.
-
SOURCE: Edge Effects
4/15/2021
What 19th-Century Domestic Manuals Say about Housing as Infrastructure
by Leah Marie Becker
"We are only as safe as the person breathing the most polluted air or with the least access to stable housing."
News
- The Battle over Reproductive Freedom Still Rages at Dr. George Tiller's Former Clinic
- How Decades of Coal Mining Left West Virginia Vulnerable to Flooding
- Can 500 Dinner Discussions Bring Atlantans to Recognition and Reconciliation over the 1906 Race Massacre?
- Remember Vin Scully With His Classic Call of the Last Outs of Sandy Koufax's Perfect Game
- How Trumpism Changed the Claremont Institute (and Vice-Versa)
- Katherine Stewart Joins Jane Coaston to Discuss the Rise of Christian Nationalism
- Edward Miller on the Resurfacing of Bircher Conspiratorialism on the Right Today
- Review: Two Books on the Recent History of Polarization
- Corey Robin on the Enigma of Clarence Thomas
- Review: David Sehat on the Struggle to Make a Secular America