Federal housing programs institutionalized residential segregation through redlining and demolition

Evidence

During the New Deal, federal agencies like the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration encouraged redlining practices that explicitly marked minority neighborhoods as risky investments and, therefore, discouraged bank loans, mortgages, and insurance there. Other policies simply targeted Black communities for isolation and demolition. The postwar programs for urban renewal, for instance, destroyed Black neighborhoods and displaced their residents with such regularity that African Americans came to believe, in James Baldwin’s memorable line, that “urban renewal” meant “Negro removal.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1196

Categorization

• CANDY: Baldwin’s ‘urban renewal means Negro removal’ line is a quotable, tweetable soundbite that lands without context.
• SHARE: The Baldwin ‘Negro removal’ quip is worth sending to anyone who does urban planning or public-policy work.
• XREF: connects to: Outlawing explicit race measures resegregates schools through residential sorting — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 394; Federal housing policy institutionalized the equation of black occupancy with falling property values — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 144; Residential segregation was deliberately constructed, not natural or market-driven — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 340 (+10 more)