Remnants of Redlining Remain Relevant Right Now
More than 50 years after the practice was outlawed, the effects of redlining are still being felt in neighborhoods across the nation. According to a new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, modern-day problems with public housing and vouchers are reinforcing the same old dividing lines.
While we hear a lot of talk about neighborhood choice from politicians, the issues that families are still facing now would sound all too familiar to families in the same neighborhoods decades ago. Being stuck in deliberately disinvested areas, cut off from access to quality schooling, and limited by lackluster transit and job access could just as easily describe then as now.
A Brief History of Redlining
The longstanding discriminatory practice of redlining saw countless primarily Black families shut out of the housing market by bankers who would decline them mortgages based solely on where they lived. Maps were made dividing towns and cities all over the country into different segments based on their so-called desirability.
Type A neighborhoods were the most desirable, usually containing suburbs on the outskirts of cities where affluent people tended to live. These were outlined in green. Type B areas were still desirable and outlined in blue. Type C areas were outlined in yellow and considered to be declining areas, though mortgages could still be offered in these areas with certain restrictions.
Type D areas were concentrated in city centers and encompassed most of the country’s Black neighborhoods. In fact, by the time all the maps were drawn, there were only 6 Black neighborhoods in the United States that weren’t deemed Type D.
Type D neighborhoods were outlined in red, and any place behind that red line was considered ineligible for a mortgage loan, regardless of the financial qualifications of any individual applicant. This practice and others effectively shut out the majority of Black American families from the housing market—and the generational wealth it can build—completely legally until it was finally outlawed by the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, these redlining maps have been used both then and now to determine such things as where grocery stores are built, which neighborhoods have access to healthcare, where parks are placed, which neighborhoods are exposed to more pollution, and, of course, where resources should be allocated for everything from school funding to pothole filling. The effects of this process are so widespread, varied, and far-ranging that it’s difficult to overstate them. And they are still being felt in these communities to this day.
The System Is Built on Inequality
The current American system of housing is built on a mishmash of historically discriminatory systems, with a few hasty repairs done. At the same time, the ship was still in motion, repeated ad nauseam up until the present day. The central structure of the ship is inequality, and we would have to stop and rebuild the whole thing in order to truly get rid of that.
Instead, some of the programs we’ve instituted over time to plug the leaks are Housing Choice Vouchers, Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance, and Public Housing. These programs do help people and keep many families out of homelessness, but they also fall short of achieving true equality. Since the inequality of certain neighborhoods being more advantaged than others is baked into the basic structure of the system, assistance programs have had to try to work around this.
While policy slogans often tout the importance of each person being able to live in their neighborhood of choice, the reality is that more often than not, assisted housing options are located in high-poverty areas that have been starved of access to the resources lower-poverty areas get. In a country where something as fundamental as health outcomes can be determined by your zip code, this is significant.
Separate and Unequal
The CBPP analysis of the 100 most populous metro areas in the US shows that of the three major federal housing assistance programs, some provide greater housing choice than others. Public housing residents are the most likely to live in high-poverty areas, with 51% of all households assisted by public housing being located in such an area.
When the public housing program was instituted in the 1930s, it provided separate and unequal housing for white and Black residents. The white developments were more favorably located in neighborhoods with more opportunities and amenities, and over time, many of the white residents were able to secure mortgages and move out of the program.
Black families did not have these same opportunities, and many remained in the substandard public housing developments that are still part of the program today. Only 9% of public housing in the analysis was located in a low-poverty area.
By comparison, project-based rental assistance provides housing in a more diverse range of neighborhoods. 29% of PBRA developments are located in high-poverty areas, while 19% are located in low-poverty areas.
Tenant-based voucher recipients are slightly more likely to live in low-poverty areas than high-poverty ones, at 23% and 21%, respectively. This keeps the Housing Choice Voucher program true to its name, providing the greatest level of housing choice among the major federal housing assistance programs. There is still room for improvement, though.
The analysis found that while nearly a quarter of voucher-assisted households live in low-poverty areas, 36% of voucher-affordable units are located in low-poverty areas. The gap is likely caused in part by landlord discrimination against voucher users in these low-poverty areas.
Policy Recommendations
As a result of their detailed analysis, CBPP has published several recommendations for policy changes that could improve housing assistance programs going forward. These include:
- Expanding federal rental assistance to make it available to everyone who needs it
- Making programs more flexible to better respond to participants’ needs and preferences
- Preventing discrimination through both laws and the enforcement of those laws
- Building and preserving low-income-accessible housing in a wide range of neighborhoods
- Investing in under-resourced neighborhoods
Following this blueprint could go a long way toward rectifying the inequalities that have become entrenched in our housing system and compounded over decades, until their ripples can be felt in every area of life. They can not only create a better system of housing assistance, but also a better system overall that allows all neighborhoods to provide a similar level of safety and opportunity to all their residents.