Editing Redlining (section)

== History ==
{{further|Sundown towns|Racial covenants}}
The specific process termed "redlining" in the United States occurred on the background of racial segregation and discrimination against minority populations. It had its origins in sales practices of the [[National Association of Real Estate Boards]] and theories about race and property values codified by economists surrounding [[Richard T. Ely]] and his Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities, founded at the [[University of Wisconsin]] in 1920.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Winling |first1=LaDale C |last2=Michney |first2=Todd M |title=The Roots of Redlining: Academic, Governmental, and Professional Networks in the Making of the New Deal Lending Regime |journal=Journal of American History |date=1 June 2021 |volume=108 |issue=1 |pages=42–69 |doi=10.1093/jahist/jaab066 |doi-access=free }}</ref> With the [[National Housing Act of 1934]] the federal government began to be involved in the practice and the concurrent establishment of the [[Federal Housing Administration]] (FHA).<ref name="Madrigal">{{Cite news |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-racist-housing-policy-that-made-your-neighborhood/371439/ |title=The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood |last=Madrigal |first=Alexis C. |date=22 May 2014 |work=The Atlantic |access-date=10 November 2018}}</ref> The FHA's formalized redlining process was developed by their Chief Land Economist, [[Homer Hoyt]], as part of an initiative to develop the first [[Mortgage underwriting in the United States|underwriting criteria]] for [[mortgages]].<ref name="color">{{cite book |last=Rothstein |first=Richard |date=2017 |title=The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America |publisher=Liveright |pages=93–94 |isbn=978-1-63149-286-0}}</ref><ref name="hoytbiography">{{Citation |title=Homer Hoyt: An Introduction |date=2019-01-29 |url=http://hoytgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Homer-Hoyt-Bio-Grant-and-Steve-Final-1-29-2019.pdf |access-date=2021-05-25}}</ref> The implementation of this federal policy accelerated the decay and isolation of minority inner-city neighborhoods through withholding of mortgage capital, making it even more difficult for neighborhoods to attract and retain families able to purchase homes.<ref name="Wilson">{{cite book |last1=Wilson |first1=William J. |title=When work disappears: the world of the new urban poor |date=1996 |publisher=Knopf |location=New York |isbn=978-0-679-72417-9 |page=50 (PDF page 10) |edition=1st |url=https://www.benjaminjameswaddell.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/wilson-when-work-disappears1.pdf}}</ref> The discriminatory assumptions in redlining exacerbated residential [[racial segregation]] and [[urban decay]] in the United States.
[[File:Philadelphia_HOLC_Redlining_Zone_Descriptions,_1937.pdf|page=100|thumb|Page of HOLC document for above Philadelphia redlining map. Covering zone D20, one of the red areas.{{Br|2}}It lists one of the 'Detrimental Influences' as a "concentration of Negros and Italians."]]
In 1935, the [[Federal Home Loan Bank Board]] (FHLBB) asked the [[Home Owners' Loan Corporation]] (HOLC) to look at 239 cities and create "residential security maps" to indicate the level of security for real-estate investments in each surveyed city. On the maps, the newest areas—those considered desirable for lending purposes—were outlined in green and known as "Type A". These were typically affluent suburbs on the outskirts of cities. "Type B" neighborhoods, outlined in blue, were considered "Still Desirable", whereas older "Type C" were labeled "Declining" and outlined in yellow. "Type D" neighborhoods were outlined in red and were considered the most risky for mortgage support. While about 85% of the residents of such neighborhoods were white, they included most of the [[African-American]] urban households.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Maas |first1=Steve |title=Searching for the Origins of Redlining of Black Neighborhoods |url=https://www.nber.org/digest-202102/searching-origins-redlining-black-neighborhoods |website=NBER |access-date=1 October 2021 |archive-date=October 1, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211001095413/https://www.nber.org/digest-202102/searching-origins-redlining-black-neighborhoods |url-status=dead }}</ref> These neighborhoods tended to be the older districts in the center of cities; often they were also [[African-American neighborhood]]s,<ref name="jackson">{{cite crabgrass}}</ref> and only six majority African-American neighborhoods in the entire United States were not evaluated as "Type D."<ref name="Federal 'redlining' maps: A critica">{{cite journal |last1=Markley |first1=Scott |title=Federal 'redlining' maps: A critical reappraisal |journal=Urban Studies |date=July 7, 2023 |volume=61 |issue=2 |pages=195–213 |doi=10.1177/00420980231182336 |s2cid=259557704 }}</ref> Urban planning historians theorize that the maps were used by private and public entities for years afterward to deny loans to people in black communities,<ref name = "jackson"/> though planners and historians have debated the exact role of HOLC and its maps in redlining.<ref name="Federal 'redlining' maps: A critica"/>

Redlining maps even became prominent under private organizations, such as appraiser J. M. Brewer's 1934 map of Philadelphia.<ref name="BrewerMapSouth">{{cite web |title=J.M. Brewer's Map of Philadelphia (1934) |url=https://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/view-image.cfm/JMB1934.Phila.002.SouthSection |publisher=GeoHistory Resources |access-date=10 April 2021}}</ref> Private organizations created maps designed to meet the requirements of the [[Federal Housing Administration]]'s underwriting manual. The lenders had to consider FHA standards if they wanted to receive FHA insurance for their loans. FHA appraisal manuals instructed banks to steer clear of areas with "inharmonious racial groups", and recommended that municipalities enact racially restrictive zoning ordinances.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor=20868512 |last1=Schill |first1=Michael H. |last2=Wachter |first2=Susan M. |title=Principles to Guide Housing Policy at the Beginning of the Millennium |journal=Cityscape |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=5–19 |year=2001 |citeseerx=10.1.1.536.5952 |s2cid=154443509}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |chapter-url=http://wbhsi.net/~wendyplotkin/DeedsWeb/fha38.html |quote=Recommended restrictions should include provision for the following: Prohibition of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they are intended [...] Schools should be appropriate to the needs of the new community and they should not be attended in large numbers by inharmonious racial groups |publisher=[[Federal Housing Administration]] |title=Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act With Revisions to February 1938 |location=Washington, D.C. |chapter=Part II, Section 9, Rating of Location |title-link=National Housing Act of 1934 |access-date=May 30, 2014 |archive-date=December 20, 2012 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20121220101009/http://wbhsi.net/~wendyplotkin/DeedsWeb/fha38.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Between 1945 and 1959, African Americans received less than 2 percent of all federally insured home loans.<ref name="Hanlon">{{cite book |last1=Hanlon |first1=Bernadette |last2=Short |first2=John Rennie |editor1-last=Anacker |editor1-first=Katrin B. |editor2-last=Nguyen |editor2-first=Mai Thi |editor3-last=Varady |editor3-first=David P. |display-editors=1 |title=The Routledge Handbook of Housing Policy and Planning |date=2020 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |isbn=978-1-1381-8843-3 |chapter=Housing Policy and the Suburban Metropolis: A Focus on the United States and France}}</ref><ref name="Hanchett">{{cite book |last=Hanchett |first=Thomas W. |chapter=The Other 'Subsidized Housing': Federal Aid to Suburbanization 1940s-1960s |editor1-first=John F. |editor1-last=Bauman |editor2-first=Roger |editor2-last=Biles |editor3-first=Kristin M. |editor3-last=Szylvian |display-editors=1 |title=From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth Century America |publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press |year=2000 |pages=163–179 |isbn=978-0-271-02012-9}}</ref><ref name="Gelfand">{{cite book |last1=Gelfand |first1=Mark I. |title=A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933–1965 |date=1975 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |isbn=978-0-19-501941-4 |url=https://archive.org/details/nationofcitiesfe0000gelf/page/220 |page=221 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Banks and mortgage lenders were not the only private entities to develop redlining practices. Property insurance companies also instituted rigid redlining policies in the post-World War II period. According to urban historian Bench Ansfield, the postwar advent of comprehensive homeowners' insurance was limited to the suburbs and withheld from neighborhoods of color in U.S. cities. One Aetna bulletin from 1964 advised underwriters to "use a red line around questionable areas on territorial maps." The New York Urban Coalition warned in 1978, "A neighborhood without insurance is a neighborhood doomed to death."<ref name="Journal of American History 2021">{{cite journal |last1=Ansfield |first1=Bench |title=The Crisis of Insurance and the Insuring of the Crisis: Riot Reinsurance and Redlining in the Aftermath of the 1960s Uprisings |journal=Journal of American History |date=1 March 2021 |volume=107 |issue=4 |pages=899–921 |doi=10.1093/jahist/jaaa533 }}</ref>

Following a [[National Housing Conference]] in 1973, a group of Chicago community organizations led by The Northwest Community Organization (NCO) formed [[National People's Action]] (NPA), to broaden the fight against [[disinvestment]] and mortgage redlining in neighborhoods all over the country. This organization, led by Chicago housewife [[Gale Cincotta]] and [[Shel Trapp]], a professional community organizer, targeted The Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the governing authority over federally chartered [[Savings and loan association]]s (S&L) that held at that time the bulk of the country's home mortgages. NPA embarked on an effort to build a national coalition of urban community organizations to pass a national disclosure regulation or law to require banks to reveal their lending patterns.<ref name="CAKirk">{{Cite journal |last=Hallahan |first=Kirk |date=1992 |title=The mortgage redlining controversy, 1972-75 |oclc=31165884 |journal=Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (75th, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 5–8, 1992) |url=http://lamar.colostate.edu/~pr/redlining.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130809022759/http://lamar.colostate.edu/~pr/redlining.pdf |archive-date=2013-08-09}}</ref>

For many years, urban community organizations had battled neighborhood decay by attacking [[blockbusting]] (deceptive encouragement of [[white flight]] from neighborhoods in order to buy up real estate at a huge discount and then rent to low-income, usually black tenants), forcing landlords to maintain properties, and requiring cities to board up and tear down abandoned properties.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Taylor |first=Keeanga-Yamahtta |title=Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=2019 |isbn=9781469653679 |location=Chapel Hill |pages=48}}</ref>These actions addressed the short-term issues of neighborhood decline. Neighborhood leaders began to learn that these issues and conditions were symptoms of disinvestment that was the true, though hidden, underlying cause of these problems. They changed their strategy as more data was gathered.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Michael Westgate |author2=Ann Vick-Westgate |title=Gale Force, The Battles for Disclosure and Community Reinvestment |year=2011 |publisher=Harvard Bookstore |location=Cambridge, Ma. |isbn=978-0-615-44901-2 |pages=40–41}}</ref>

With the help of NPA, a coalition of loosely affiliated community organizations began to form. At the Third Annual Housing Conference held in Chicago in 1974, eight hundred delegates representing 25 states and 35 cities attended. The strategy focused on the [[Federal Home Loan Bank Board]] (FHLBB), which oversaw S&Ls in cities all over the country.

In 1974, Chicago's Metropolitan Area Housing Association (MAHA), made up of representatives of local organizations, succeeded in having the Illinois State Legislature pass laws mandating disclosure and outlawing redlining. In Massachusetts, organizers allied with NPA confronted a unique situation. Over 90% of home mortgages were held by state-chartered savings banks. A Jamaica Plain neighborhood organization pushed the disinvestment issue into the statewide gubernatorial race. The Jamaica Plain Banking & Mortgage Committee and its citywide affiliate, The Boston Anti-redlining Coalition (BARC), won a commitment from Democratic candidate [[Michael S. Dukakis]] to order statewide disclosure through the Massachusetts State Banking Commission. After Dukakis was elected, his new Banking Commissioner ordered banks to disclose mortgage-lending patterns by [[ZIP Code|ZIP code]]. The suspected redlining was revealed.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Jordan |first=Patricia |title=Mass Thrifts Plan Suit Over Redlining, Commissioner Stands Firm |journal=American Banker |date=June 12, 1975}}</ref> Richard W. "Rick" Wise, a former community organizer who led the Boston organizing, has published a novel, ''Redlined'', which gives a somewhat fictionalized account of the anti-redlining campaign.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wise |first1=Richard W. |title=Redlined; a novel of Boston |date=1 October 2019 |publisher=Adelaide Books |location=New York |isbn=978-1-950437-24-5 |page=335 |edition=1st }}</ref>

NPA and its affiliates achieved disclosure of lending practices with the passage of The [[Home Mortgage Disclosure Act]] of 1975. The required transparency and review of loan practices began to change lending practices. NPA began to work on reinvestment in areas that had been neglected. Their support helped gain passage in 1977 of the [[Community Reinvestment Act]].

Redlining was prevalent in Canada from the 1930s to 1950s in Ontario, with intergenerational consequences that persist to the present day.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Redlining in Canada: Past and Present Impacts on Communities |url=https://www.koho.ca/learn/redlining-in-canada/ |access-date=2023-06-16 |website=www.koho.ca}}</ref>