housing

• 
• SOURCE: The Metropole
  11/3/2022
  

  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?

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  10/19/2022
  

  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. 

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• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  10/15/2022
  

  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."

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/24/2022
  

  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?

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  8/24/2022
  

  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. 

• 
• 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.