Redlining in Chicago
How did Chicago’s 1930’s “Redlining Maps” shape the city?
What is Redlining?
In the 1930’s the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation was trying to decide the creditworthiness of properties inside American neighborhoods. During this time, creditworthiness was often based on the racial composition of neighborhoods. Due to “white flight” the non-presence of White Americans in these neighborhoods brought the housing market to collapse. The loan corporation would then make a map of a city and label different parts of that city for different “tiers” of loans. Allowing Whites the best “tiered” neighborhoods and African-Americans the lower “tiered” neighborhoods. Different areas of the city were color coded for their desirability ranking. The best neighborhoods were marked blue and green. While the less desirable neighborhoods were colored yellow and red. African Americans were blocked out from getting loans to purchase housing in the desirable neighborhoods.
How Were Neighborhoods Chosen to Redline?
The Chicago Defender claims “FHA has in it’s “Underwriter’s Manual” a rule that prohibits the guaranteeing a loan to a Race citizen if the neighborhood is considered white.” However, “The FHA has turned down loans in neighborhoods with even 30 percent Race citizens” This shows that the FHA would try to shape neighborhoods to be more “desirable.” Often times neighborhoods were chosen because they were areas that rich white populations wanted to live in and systematically made the neighborhoods solely available to them.
Short Term Affects of Redlining
After World War II ended in 1945, over one million African American veterans came home and were entitled to a business or home loan provided by the VA. One veteran after returning home to Corpus Christi, Texas in 1946 said “Under government stipulations a veteran is entitled to a home…, but apparently leading financial [institutions] of the GI Bill in Corpus Christi have so divided locations of residential sections and placed restrictions on certain areas that as it is, under the present set up, no negro veteran is eligible for a loan.” This even prompted the NAACP to create a veteran’s affairs department.
How Redlining Has Shaped Chicago Today
Redlining has shaped the racial makeup of Chicago and many other US cities for decades, and these cities still haven’t full recovered from it’s effects. In this graph you can see the gap in the share of African-American residents between C and D tiered neighborhoods. You can see that the effects of redlining peaked 20 and 40 years after the 1930’s. Redlining, while in it’s peak occurred in the 1930’s, wasn’t officially outlawed until 1968. As we can see these gaps finally beginning to close, we can look back on this event and realize how much a time where banks were given so much control over where different races of people were allowed to live, and how much that shaped the city today.
