Post-Katrina SBA lending rebuilt whiter neighborhoods while black wards stayed ruined.

Evidence

A staggering 82 percent of the 276,000 loan applications received to date have been rejected, overwhelmingly because incomes are too meager or credit ratings too low to qualify. The loans that have been approved have gone exclusively to wealthier and whiter neighborhoods in New Orleans, those thus more readily able to rebuild. Rejected applicants are eligible for home repair grants from the FEMA but the grant amount in each case is capped at about one-seventh the loan amounts available from the SBA. The likes of New Orleans’ black and mixed neighborhoods, mainly the Ninth and Lower Ninth Wards, largely remain empty, mildewed, cordoned-off disaster areas with little relief in sight. Federal policy reinstates the privatized racial divide between the haves and the “would rather not have around.” — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 438

Categorization

• XREF: A precise, numbers-anchored case of the institutional gap: ostensibly neutral credit criteria reproduce pre-existing racial segregation of the built environment. Evidence my threatened-privilege-writ-large piece would want. — connects to: Federal disaster loans excluded poor black homeowners while funding white rebuilding; Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath exposed the racialized stripping of the welfare state.; Post-Katrina rebuilding prioritized wealthier whiter neighborhoods over poor black areas — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 141 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: Grief/sacrifice/‘who gets to return’ — who is allowed back into a rebuilt place — could pair with the sacrifice piece on who is expendable in a city’s recovery.

Broader Connections

• Federal disaster loans excluded poor black homeowners while funding white rebuilding #corroborates (0.95)
• Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath exposed the racialized stripping of the welfare state. #expands (0.80)