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I'll get to the latter in a minute but they state pretty explicitly that overcrowding is a concern, too many rental units, proximity to noxious fumes from industry, etc.
The reason why they were that close to those "noxious fumes" was because the government encouraged businesses to build next to poorer communities, exposing them to all types of pollution.
I love how many people admit that the policies that the government proposed were obviously racist, but since it wasn't a massive conspiracy document manifesto posted that explicitly laid it out, this means we can argue semantics around the original point.
Government policies created the ghetto and starved communities of needed resources yet we have conservatives and conservative urban planners blaming the victims.
"Dumps" are in the eye of the beholder--the difference between an "uninhabitable firetrap" and a "priceless landmark" is often just a matter of rehab and repair, but if you can't get a home loan, you can't reinvest and repair a building. Also note that redlining meant that it wasn't just the buildings in poor repair that couldn't get loans, but also well-maintained homes in the same neighborhood. Demolition by association. I live in a 107 year old house in a neighborhood that was once redlined (well, technically, in the "yellow" category in 1938, but thus considered unsuitable for home loans) that was considered "hazardous" from a single-family dwelling standpoint, due to the intrusion of apartments, lack of deed restrictions, and the presence of foreign-born families and blacks (even though they are reported as "few" in the standardized fields on the form for both. Today, my neighborhood is a "historic district" and old firetraps like my house are considered extraordinarily beautiful and rare, selling for as much as suburban homes twice their size on bigger lots. But back then, my house was nothing special--the home of an Italian immigrant blacksmith.
A house with dirt floors is a dump. These buildings were owned by landlords, who didn't care to "rehab and repair".
The reason why they were that close to those "noxious fumes" was because the government encouraged businesses to build next to poorer communities, exposing them to all types of pollution.
I love how many people admit that the policies that the government proposed were obviously racist, but since it wasn't a massive conspiracy document manifesto posted that explicitly laid it out, this means we can argue semantics around the original point.
Government policies created the ghetto and starved communities of needed resources yet we have conservatives and conservative urban planners blaming the victims.
In my hometown, virtually everyone lived within walking distance of a factory, and I'm taking heavy industry, steel mills and cork works. The well off just lived a few blocks farther away. In Pittsburgh, there were few mills in the city; none in the area generally known as the ghetto. One of the biggest mill works in the city was on the South Side, the historically Polish neighborhood.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 05-24-2014 at 12:40 PM..
Yes, most towns began with the town square and then the factories were built outside of it. I'm talking about the industrialization that began at the turn of the century, right before mass suburbanization. Granted, some businesses were built close to rivers or other natural resources, but in large part, industrial zoning was located right next to areas that were red or yellow lined.
This is true in almost every American city, especially in the Rust Belt.
I haven't had a chance to read this article yet, but housing policy (and the related wealth creation) is a key reason for this argument for reparations.
Also, the new book by Ben Ross, Dead End, about the rise if suburbia in the US is a good primer on all of our policies that shaped the suburbs, from zoning to financing. It is a well researched read (a little biased but packed with good info).
My dad told me an interesting story the other week. We have some family land near his hometown and one of my dad's cousins donated land to the city so we have both a park and street named after us. The naming is fairly recent (happened about 15-20 years ago) but the land has been in the family since the late 1800s. Anyway when my dad was a kid, they used to call the entire area something else. It was named after a white guy who didn't even have land nearby. His land was 2 miles away, our relatives owned all of it in the vicinity and he had no idea until much later. It should have been named after us the whole time!
** this land isn't worth much it is in a super rural area....no developers are banging down the doors! so there wasn't much incentive for anyone to take it. But when my granddad was in early adulthood, the county tried to claim we owed back taxes to claim the land. But he had enough gumption and education to dispute it so it didn't become a problem.
My dad told me an interesting story the other week. We have some family land near his hometown and one of my dad's cousins donated land to the city so we have both a park and street named after us. The naming is fairly recent (happened about 15-20 years ago) but the land has been in the family since the late 1800s. Anyway when my dad was a kid, they used to call the entire area something else. It was named after a white guy who didn't even have land nearby. His land was 2 miles away, our relatives owned all of it in the vicinity and he had no idea until much later. It should have been named after us the whole time!
** this land isn't worth much it is in a super rural area....no developers are banging down the doors! so there wasn't much incentive for anyone to take it. But when my granddad was in early adulthood, the county tried to claim we owed back taxes to claim the land. But he had enough gumption and education to dispute it so it didn't become a problem.
Yes, this was a very common occurance and land on my mom's side of the family actually switched hands a couple of times, but the people that took it supposedly died not too long after.
I'm not misreading anything. I read the article you linked to and I'm familiar with 'TNC' and it says pretty plainly - "the FHA explicitly refused to back loans to black people or even other people who lived near black people. As TNC puts it, "Redlining destroyed the possibility of investment wherever black people lived."
And this isn't true. The FHA, as a rule, didn't dole out loans in neighborhoods that were "mixed". It didn't stop people in neighborhoods that were 90% AA from getting FHA guarantees and it certainly didn't stop people borrowing from local banks without the FHA guarantee. After all, the majority black neighborhood right next to mine has a homeownership rate of around 60% and it's been that way for 2 or 3 generations.
The FHA labeled neighborhoods with an increase of black people as "declining" or an increased credit risk.
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No, a lot of old neighborhoods were doomed to decay because the housing was obsolete, was of poor construction because it was thrown together hastily to house workers, because the neighborhood was full of poor people, the federal government was fully disinvesting in cities, and all while industry was in rapid decline
Check the OP's linked map of San Francisco and Oakland. A large check of the obsolete housing marked in red is still with us today. Much of it was very expensive, some not so much. Apparently what was obselote 70 years ago isn't anymore.
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I don't think most people appreciate just how terrible some of these neighborhoods were 60 or 70 years ago or just how many houses lacked running water or indoor toilets. https://archive.org/details/PlacetoL1948_2
Sure there were some slums. Most urban housing didn't lack running water. I downloaded a spreadsheet of housing with running water by county. Most big city counties were high. Some counties:
County / % running water / % shower/bath
Philadelphia, PA / 97.6% / 95.8%
Brooklyn,NY / 97.6% / 95.6%
Alameda, CA / 98.1% / 97.4% [contains Oakland]
San Francisco, CA / 97.2% / 98.%
This is part of the problem with the left's go-to narrative about racism. The Irish didn't just become white all of the sudden. If you were an Irish protestant then you were always white. Irish Catholics and Italians were accepted into the mainstream as ethnic groups when people stopped being afraid of Catholics and when those two groups stopped being associated with ghettos . . . a process that took 50 years but one that was ultimately reached because they were . . . white.
The reason why they were that close to those "noxious fumes" was because the government encouraged businesses to build next to poorer communities, exposing them to all types of pollution.
Noxious industry predates the industrial revolution and urban ghettoes.
Factories sprang up where land was cheap. Factory workers had to live within walking distance of where they worked.
It's really that simple.
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