Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
A lot of the neighborhoods with the worst housing stock were torn down in the 50s and 60s to make way for freeways, parking lots, industrial zones, public housing, parks, etc. Cities could do it easily because it was the cheapest land.
I'm sure if you find some old ortho photos of Oakland you'll find that quite a few of those old neighborhoods are completely gone. There wasn't a lot of time between the end of "urban renewal" and the civil rights era/the official end of redlining.
I think what you're also seeing is the slow decline of the once wealthy areas since the 1930s and especially since the 50s. When all of the houses have a patina it's more difficult to judge what the differences would've been 60 years ago.
The process didn't have to happen (urban renewal). Philly had great success in stabilizing and rebuilding Society Hill (houses with no running water or missing major bathroom fixtures ran 20-30%) . . . but at the same time they knocked down the adjacent waterfront areas (oldest houses in the city) for I-95 and knocked down half of Old City for Independence National Park.
The redlining was self-fulfilling. It pointed out neighborhoods suffering from disinvestment then made sure that those neighborhoods would continue to suffer. It doesn't mean that there was no access to credit and of course a lot of people made improvements without borrowing any money at all.
It's important to note that FHA loans are just for first-time borrowers and when those loans were made accessible to AAs to buy wherever they wanted to (in the early 70s) is the very beginning of the black migration to the suburbs. The VA loans (0% down in the 1950s with loans 1% below prime) were a much more powerful vehicle in moving white people to the suburbs.
It wasn't until the Clinton administration (being generally pro-urban) put requirements on banks regarding lending in urban areas that we started to see a real change in investment there and it was only 4 years ago that the Obama admin changed the rules on lending for mixed-use buildings. It used to be really difficult for developers to get lending to build mixed-use projects or even to convert old office buildings to apartments or condos.
Oakland really packed the freeways close to the housing. Where the freeways are now are in the middle of pretty intact areas. West Oakland, the subject of urban renewal, lost tons of Victorians when the freeway, BART and other renewal came in. What remains looks like what is there now. (I have seen old photos).
Where I live is more of a mixed bag. It is about 50/50 pre 1950 and post 1950. But lots and lots of places still have original housing stock. So it was pretty arbitrary.
One of the redlined areas, Temescal went from Italian to becoming the first integrated area. So it was a double whammy. But when you look at the housing stock in that area, and the west Oakland park on the other side, you can imagine easily what sort of housing was lost. It is the same on both sides of the freeway.
Oakland really packed the freeways close to the housing. Where the freeways are now are in the middle of pretty intact areas. West Oakland, the subject of urban renewal, lost tons of Victorians when the freeway, BART and other renewal came in. What remains looks like what is there now. (I have seen old photos).
Where I live is more of a mixed bag. It is about 50/50 pre 1950 and post 1950. But lots and lots of places still have original housing stock. So it was pretty arbitrary.
One of the redlined areas, Temescal went from Italian to becoming the first integrated area. So it was a double whammy. But when you look at the housing stock in that area, and the west Oakland park on the other side, you can imagine easily what sort of housing was lost. It is the same on both sides of the freeway.
My main point in my previous (rambling) post wasn't to spell out a 1950s blueprint of Oakland but just to talk about US cities in general and to say that the urban renewal of mass demolitions was completely unnecessary - that there were other ways to do it and Philly did it successfully in Society Hill where they only demolished the houses that were beyond repair and rehabbed the rest. The city and federal gov't led the project and invested just enough to get the private market to pick up the torch.
I see that Oakland tried to do a very similar thing. This video, for 1954, is well before it's time. It's amazing really . . . but it makes clear that slums were definitely a problem in Oakland but that the city made major investments to strengthen neighborhoods as opposed to knocking them down.
people choose to self-segreate and live with their own kind. all this forced integration is ridiculous.
redlining wasn't a "racist" concept, it was used to accurately predict risks to banks in making mortgages.
were those areas mostly black? yup.
are black people the highest credit risk in america? you betcha.
has anything really changed? not really.
a mortgage/home is a HUGE financial responsibility. some people are unfit for that burden.
believe me, banks could give two ****s less about who they're lending money to. they only care about the bottom line.
You should probably read the article I posted about reparations and the housing contracts used. Black people weren't allowed to get mortgages and the housing contracts targeted middle class black Americans who saved up down payments, by scamming them out of their money and home equity. At the time the FHA started Americans didn't have credit as a society. Everyone was an equal risk. You are just trading in stereotypes here.
ETA: What is the purpose of this thread title? Even I was too young to buy a house in 1968, when some of these policies that resulted in racial segregation were abolished.
I'm obviously too young to have bought a house in 1968 (or any year in the 20th century). However, policies and settlement patterns from long ago (say mid 20th century) affected the existing neighborhood patterns. For example, Long Island is very segregated in the sense most blacks live in specific areas. Likely that was influenced by policy choice occurring when the neighborhoods were first established.
The thread title is a word choice. Why should it be particularly purposeful. The OP's title is copied from the linked to article, which has the same title. I'd presume they chose a somewhat inflammatory title to maximize the attention it got the internet. I noticed elsewhere in a bunch of places, so it seems the article title succeeded in its purpose.
I'm obviously too young to have bought a house in 1968 (or any year in the 20th century). However, policies and settlement patterns from long ago (say mid 20th century) affected the existing neighborhood patterns. For example, Long Island is very segregated in the sense most blacks live in specific areas. Likely that was influenced by policy choice occurring when the neighborhoods were first established.
The thread title is a word choice. Why should it be particularly purposeful. The OP's title is copied from the linked to article, which has the same title. I'd presume they chose a somewhat inflammatory title to maximize the attention it got the internet. I noticed elsewhere in a bunch of places, so it seems the article title succeeded in its purpose.
Yup in fact HOAs were invented with the purpose of segregation. The Dead End book was very enlightening.
Poke around the history part of the Wikipedia article.
Hmm. Long Island has few HOAs, definitely the racially segregated housing patterns predated HOAs. Levittown, NY didn't permit blacks to move in. It did have plenty of "white ethnics" from the start. It's diversified in a way common to much of the NYC Metros: others moved in, but no black people. 81% non-hispanic white, less than 1% black.
I'm obviously too young to have bought a house in 1968 (or any year in the 20th century). However, policies and settlement patterns from long ago (say mid 20th century) affected the existing neighborhood patterns. For example, Long Island is very segregated in the sense most blacks live in specific areas. Likely that was influenced by policy choice occurring when the neighborhoods were first established.
The thread title is a word choice. Why should it be particularly purposeful. The OP's title is copied from the linked to article, which has the same title. I'd presume they chose a somewhat inflammatory title to maximize the attention it got the internet. I noticed elsewhere in a bunch of places, so it seems the article title succeeded in its purpose.
When we moved to Louisville in 1982, it had a population of 5000 people. Ten years earlier it was half that, and had been around that since 1950. NONE of this has anything to do with MY neighborhood, despite the inflammatory thread title. Also, I found no cites for redlining in Denver, though it's certainly possible it happened.
Now I'm sure you'll just tell me to ignore the thread, but that's not the point. I thought being inflammatory was against the TOS, despite the title of some article.
Hmm. Long Island has few HOAs, definitely the racially segregated housing patterns predated HOAs. Levittown, NY didn't permit blacks to move in. It did have plenty of "white ethnics" from the start. It's diversified in a way common to much of the NYC Metros: others moved in, but no black people. 81% non-hispanic white, less than 1% black.
My neighborhood over on the other side of NYC is one of the exceptions -- there's a band of integrated suburbs (white, Asian, and black, anyway -- there is Hispanic population but it's more concentrated) separating eastern and western Essex county. This pattern is certainly post-housing-desegregation; I suspect it's due to black flight from Newark and other eastern Essex county towns. To the east is black and Hispanic, to the west is mostly white and Asian. There's some other integrated areas in Morris County also.
HOAs are used for all sorts of control and discrimination. There really isn't anything good about them at all. The fact that they are involuntary membership organizations indicates that they aren't there for the benefit of the homeowner.
Nowdays they are used to segregate you from your money to benefit the HOA attorneys, HOA management companies, developer, and local government.
Hmm. Long Island has few HOAs, definitely the racially segregated housing patterns predated HOAs. Levittown, NY didn't permit blacks to move in. It did have plenty of "white ethnics" from the start. It's diversified in a way common to much of the NYC Metros: others moved in, but no black people. 81% non-hispanic white, less than 1% black.
Pretty much everything Robert Moses did was to try to keep blacks and whites apart. He wasn't alone in the power structure of metro NY in that regard, not in the 50s anyway.
As soon as black vets started coming back from Korea, GI Bill in hand, a lot of the BS with HOAs was struck down in the courts and those early decisions in NJ and NY were the precedent for most other states . . . but if you're black in Brooklyn or Queens in the early 60s and most of your family also lives there how much are you really going to want to be the pioneer out in Ronkonkoma?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
