Black occupancy raised Mozley Park property values despite white predictions

Evidence

The city’s neglect of Mozley Park and its assault on middle-class standards there can perhaps be explained by the fact that white officials, like white residents, assumed that property values would inevitably decline once the neighborhood “went colored.” In truth, however, the opposite was true. In spite of all the changes that should have demonstrably lowered property values in the area—introduction of new industrial sites and warehouses, construction of a housing project and apartment complexes for the poor, intrusion of an interstate highway, and general neglect by municipal officials—property values in the black-occupied section of Mozley Park actually witnessed a boom. A comparison of census block statistics, taken first in 1950, when the neighborhood was still all-white, and then a decade later, after the “transition” had long been completed, shows that property values, measured in constant dollars, rose by an average of 27 percent over the decade. According to the then-dominant theories of real-estate value, a brief surge in prices would be expected, since “the first black families had to pay a premium to break the color barrier,” but such a rise would be short-lived and followed by a “drastic decline.” However, in Mozley Park, some of the largest increases were found on blocks with the longest history of black occupancy. For instance, the four blocks straddling Mozley Drive, the street where the “transition troubles” first began, showed price increases of 17, 20, 42, and 50 percent over the decade. By comparison, on blocks to the south—blocks that underwent transition later and stood even farther removed from the Ashby Street enclave—homes of almost identical 1950 appraisal values only showed increases of 6, 12, and 16 percent over the same period. By all objective measurements, the transition of property from white to black ownership did not lower its value but raised it instead. White assumptions that black ownership would automatically lower home prices reflected not the realities of the free market as a whole, but an artificial market that segregated not just white and black homes by race, but white and black buyers as well. Only a slanted perspective, one that interpreted “value” according to what whites would pay, could see homes in a black neighborhood as worth less. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 179

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ideological core of the blockbusting prophecy — an artificial, racially split buyer market, not real supply-demand, drove the ‘decline’ assumption.
• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s stated interest in segregationist ideology being reinvented: the ‘property values’ myth is the economic foundation later suburban color-blind conservatism rests on. — connects to: White-only public spaces enclosed Mozley Park protecting its residential segregation — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 141; Black homeownership actually raised property values in Mozley Park — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 179; Black presence above 10 percent of a neighborhood triggers falling property values — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 1266 (+8 more)
• SHARE: The concrete 17/20/42/50 versus 6/12/16 percent census comparison is a sharp, citeable empirical rebuttal worth sharing with anyone working on housing segregation economics.
• SEED: Possible essay angle: how the empirically false ‘decline-when-colored’ claim manufactured the segregated buyer market that then made it self-fulfilling — ideology creating the material structure it pretended to fear.

Broader Connections

• Black homeownership actually raised property values in Mozley Park #corroborates (0.98) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 179
• Black presence above 10 percent of a neighborhood triggers falling property values #contradicts (0.95) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1266
• Property values fall once a neighborhood’s black population passes ten percent #contradicts (0.94) — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 210
• Black entry into neighborhoods was wrongly believed to lower property values #expands (0.92) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1310
• Neighborhood property values track racial demographics even when income and housing are otherwise identical #complicates (0.85) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1233
• Race-conscious homeownership remedies fail when white flight depresses resale values #complicates (0.83) — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 483
• Housing discrimination creates a negative feedback loop harming Black property values #contradicts (0.80) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 451
• White homebuyer preferences undermine progressive homeownership proposals for black Americans #complicates (0.80)
• White homebuyer preference, not borrower behavior, determines black home wealth gains #complicates (0.80) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1264
• Federal housing policy institutionalized the equation of black occupancy with falling property values #qualifies (0.78) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 144