golbatsforequality:Fun depressing fact: In the late 1940s, the US government started subsidizing ho
golbatsforequality:Fun depressing fact: In the late 1940s, the US government started subsidizing housing loans so that people could buy houses for only a little down, pretty much starting today’s system. However, they excluded Black people and other racial minorities from the loan program. In addition, they started classifying housing areas as more or less “secure” based on the amount of minorities in them (color coding them on maps—high minority areas were in red, thus the term “redlining”), specifically making it so areas “in the process of becoming integrated” had their property values drop. This was then taken up by the private sector; most de facto housing segregation is half a step from de jure.With the passage of the civil rights act, the government had to open up housing loans to Black people. However, the old “redlining” system was still in use by private real estate. You can legislate who is allowed to live in an area, but it is practically impossible to legislate the market values of that area. So, what real estate agents would do is, once one or two Black families moved into a neighborhood, they’d go to all the White families and convince them to sell their houses at reduced prices “before the market drops even further,” and “you know you want your children to live in a good neighborhood,” and then they’d mark up the houses and sell them to Black people with the new housing loans. And that’s what White Flight is.—Golbat(Source: The House We Live In, PBS) -- source link
#racism#housing