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NPR podcast | “Racist Housing Practices From The 1930s Linked To Hotter Neighborhoods Today”

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In cities around the country, if you want to understand the history of a neighborhood, you might want to do the same thing you'd do to measure human health: Check its temperature.

That's what a group of researchers did, and they found that neighborhoods with higher temperatures were often the same ones subjected to discriminatory, race-based housing practices nearly a century ago.

In a study of 108 urban areas nationwide, the formerly redlined neighborhoods of nearly every city studied were hotter than the non-redlined neighborhoods, some by nearly 13 degrees.

Redlining refers to the federal government's practice in the 1930s of rating neighborhoods to help mortgage lenders determine which areas of a city were considered risky. The federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation made maps and shaded neighborhoods red that it deemed "hazardous." That risk level was largely based on the number of African Americans and immigrants living there. The practice, along with the other segregationist housing policies of the time, had lasting effects - from concentrating poverty to stifling home ownership rates.

You can still feel those effects - literally. Nearly 90 years after those maps were created, redlined neighborhoods are hotter than the highest-rated neighborhoods by an average of almost 5 degrees, according to the research from Portland State University, the Science Museum of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University.

"It's like stepping into a parking lot from a park. You would feel that relatively quickly," says Vivek Shandas, a professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University, who co-authored the study. "It was very surprising when we saw that it was a pattern that we were seeing consistently across the country."

The link between higher heat and redlined neighborhoods, many of which are still struggling economically from decades of disinvestment, echoes the findings of a joint investigation last September by NPR and the University of Maryland's Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. In an analysis of heat and income in 97 of the most populous U.S. cities, we found low-income areas in the vast majority of those cities were more likely to be hotter than their wealthier counterparts. Those poorer areas were also disproportionately communities of color.

That extra heat can have dangerous, and sometimes deadly, health consequences. Extreme heat kills more Americans every year than any other weather-related disaster, and heat waves are growing in intensity and frequency as climate change progresses. In Baltimore, NPR and the Howard Center found dramatic increases in the rates of emergency calls during dangerous heat waves, and low-income patients in the city's hot spots visited the hospital more often than low-income patients in cooler areas.

"Those communities are much more likely to face grave consequences in terms of their human health, their financial health or generally their ability to cope with these effects," Shandas says.

The way cities are built often creates what is known as an urban heat island, meaning they tend to be hotter than their rural surroundings. That's largely because cities usually have more pavement and concrete, which absorb heat and release it slowly. They also tend to have fewer trees, which cool the air and provide shade. Cities in general are hotter, but green space and concrete also aren't distributed evenly across an urban area. That can create micro heat islands within a city.

Shandas says the heat patterns seen in his study are likely the result of more concrete and fewer trees and green spaces in those hotter areas. Other recent research helps bear that out: In 37 cities around the country, formerly redlined neighborhoods have about half as many trees on average today as the highest-rated predominantly white neighborhoods on those maps. That's according to research released last week by the U.S. Forest Service, the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Dartmouth College, Bates College, Arizona State University and the University of Vermont. An additional study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin also found a similar pattern: In nearly 90% of the 115 cities they looked at, the highest-rated neighborhoods on the redlining maps had the most tree cover in the city by 2011.

Researchers on all three studies used the redlining maps made available by the University of Richmond's Mapping Inequality database and compared them to heat and tree canopy data. The researchers looking at heat patterns used surface temperature data from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. The researchers with the Forest Service team used tree canopy data mainly from individual cities and the University of Vermont, and the Wisconsin researchers used the National Land Cover Database.

"Research on environmental justice has yet to really try to understand how systems are at work that may cause inequities," says Morgan Grove, a research scientist at the Forest Service's Baltimore Field Station and co-author of the service's study. "There are these explanations that require understanding history to understand why we see what we see today in cities."

The federal segregationist policies that went along with redlining, particularly those of the Federal Housing Administration, ensured many communities of color stayed where they were and moved white families into single-family homes in the suburbs.

"The policies of segregation that were followed by the federal government were so powerful that they determine the racial landscape of today," says Richard Rothstein, a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and the author of The Color Of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America. "African Americans are restricted to neighborhoods because the other neighborhoods are now unaffordable to them, restricted to neighborhoods where there are fewer trees, where there is more heat."

The 1968 Fair Housing Act prohibited ongoing housing discrimination, but it didn't look backward on the damage already done, Rothstein says.

"Unless explicit action is taken to subsidize people who are denied the right to move into those kinds of homes in the 20th century, to now subsidize them to move," Rothstein says. "You can't undo the damage. You need explicit policy, race-based policy. You need affirmative action in housing."

Those communities of color also often had less political power when it came to resisting denser housing and the construction of major industry or roadways in their neighborhoods, which in turn can generate more heat.

"Honestly, the results of these studies confirm what we've been talking about for years," says Sarah Lillie Anderson, senior manager of tree equity programs at the nonprofit American Forests. "Our cities, they're not like jungles where they developed just by natural selection on their own. People designed these places, which means that they were designed for particular people, and that means that not everybody was held in mind when plans for cities and communities were made."

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Racist Housing Practices From The 1930s Linked To Hotter Neighborhoods Today

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In cities around the country, if you want to understand the history of a neighborhood, you might want to do the same thing you'd do to measure human health: Check its temperature. That's what a group of researchers did, and they found that neighborhoods with higher temperatures were often the same ones subjected to discriminatory, race-based housing practices nearly a century ago.

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Infographic on Housing Inequalities in the US

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The lasting effects of redlining in urban communities

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Baltimore rowhouses in 1938. (John Vachon/Farm Security Administration/Library of Congress)

Racial discrimination in mortgage lending in the 1930s shaped the demographic and wealth patterns of American communities today, a new study shows, with 3 out of 4 neighborhoods "redlined" on government maps 80 years ago continuing to struggle economically .

The study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, released Wednesday, shows that the vast majority of neighborhoods marked "hazardous" in red ink on maps drawn by the federal Home Owners' Loan Corp. from 1935 to 1939 are today much more likely than other areas to comprise lower-income, minority residents.

"It's as if some of these places have been trapped in the past, locking neighborhoods into concentrated poverty," said Jason Richardson, director of research at the NCRC, a consumer advocacy group.

The Senate rolls back rules meant to root out discrimination by mortgage lenders

Researchers compared the HOLC maps, the most comprehensive documentation of discriminatory lending practices, with modern-day census data to determine how much neighborhood demographics have changed in 80 years. The findings have implications for today's po litical debates over housing, banking and financial regulation, as well as civil rights, as Congress seeks to weaken the government's ability to enforce fair-lending requirements. Policies that influence access to capital and credit have long-lasting effects on residential patterns, neighborhoods' economic health and household accumulation of wealth, the report said.

In the 1930s, government surveyors graded neighborhoods in 239 cities, color-coding them green for "best," blue for "still desirable," yellow for "definitely declining" and red for "hazardous." The "redlined" areas were the ones local lenders discounted as credit risks, in large part because of the residents' racial and ethnic demographics. They also took into account local amenities and home prices.

Neighborhoods that were predominantly made up of African Americans, as well as Catholics, Jews and immigrants from Asia and southern Europe, were deemed undesirable. "Anyone who was not northern-European white was considered to be a detraction from the value of the area," said Bruce Mitchell, a senior researcher at the NCRC and one of the study's authors.

White families have nearly 10 times the net worth of black families. And the gap is growing.

Loans in these neighborhoods were unavailable or very expensive, making it more difficult for low-income minorities to buy homes and setting the stage for the country's persistent racial wealth gap. (White families today have nearly 10 times the net worth of black families and more than eight times that of Hispanic families, according to the Federal Reserve.)

"Homeownership is the number-one method of accumulating wealth, but the effect of these policies that create more hurdles for the poor is a permanent underclass that's disproportionately minority," said John Taylor, president and chief executive of the NCRC. "I think most people believe the problem is not with the rules but with the people. Most middle-class whites in America don't have empirical observations of what happens in underserved neighborhoods or understand the historical treatment of poor and minority communities."

The Federal Housing Administration institutionalized the system of discriminatory lending in government-backed mortgages, reflecting local race-based criteria in their underwriting practices and reinforcing residential segregation in American cities. The discriminatory practices captured by the HOLC maps continued until 1968, when the Fair Housing Act banned racial discrimination in housing.

Could the #BankBlack movement help African Americans close the wealth gap?

But 50 years after that law passed, the lingering effects of redlining are clear, with the pattern of economic and racial residential segregation still evident in many U.S. cities - from Montgomery, Ala., to Flint, Mich., to Denver.

Nationally, nearly two-thirds of neighborhoods deemed "hazardous" are inhabited by mostly minority residents, typically black and Latino, researchers found. Cities with more such neighborhoods have significantly greater economic inequality. On the flip side, 91 percent of areas classified as "best" in the 1930s remain middle-to-upper-income today, and 85 percent of them are still predominantly white.

Researchers found that redlined neighborhoods in the South and the West are more likely today to be home to a largely minority population. Neighborhoods in the South and Midwest display the most persistent economic inequality.

In Macon, Ga., 65 percent of neighborhoods were marked "hazardous" in the 1930s, making it the most redlined city in the United States, followed closely by Birmingham, Ala., and Wichita, Kan.

Here are the 10 U.S. cities with the highest percentages of neighborhoods marked "hazardous" in the 1930s:

The racial disparity is reflected in the city's poverty statistics. Nearly 35 percent of blacks in Macon live in poverty today, compared with less than 13 percent of whites, according to 2012 to 2016 census data.

In Baltimore, one of the earliest cities to officially adopt restrictive covenants limiting African Americans and Jews to certain neighborhoods, nearly every census tract labeled "hazardous" in the 1930s remains low-to-moderate income today, researchers found. The only exceptions are the areas surrounding Baltimore's harbor, a former industrial front that's been redeveloped to attract businesses and tourism.

Nearly 70 percent of formerly redlined communities in Baltimore remain predominantly minority, as well as lower income. Even neighborhoods in western Baltimore that had been rated as "desirable" subsequently became populated with minority, low-income residents as middle-class whites fled to the suburbs, researchers said.

A 2015 study of home mortgage and small-business lending in Baltimore by the NCRC found that race, more than income, affected mortgage lending in the city. Lending is greater in neighborhoods with larger white populations, with banks making more than twice as many mortgage loans to whites as they did to blacks.

Interactive: View and download NCRC maps for 114 metropolitan areas

A February report by the Center for Investigative Reporting showed that redlining persists in 61 metro areas - from Detroit and Philadelphia to Little Rock and Tacoma, Wash. - even when controlling for applicants' income, loan amount and neighborhood, according to its analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act records.

Banks have largely blamed the racial lending discrepancies on borrowers' credit scores. Lenders were supposed to soon start reporting extra information about credit scores and other loan-pricing features. But the Senate recently voted to roll back the new reporting requirements for small lenders.

The researchers also analyzed 30 cities for patterns of gentrification, where once-redlined neighborhoods showed an increase in median home values and educational attainment between 2000 and 2010. They found that in cities with higher levels of gentrification, more redlined neighborhoods had become middle-to-upper-income neighborhoods. These areas saw a greater influx in economic activity and changes to their downtowns. They also now have lower levels of segregation, with more interaction between blacks and whites, as well as greater economic inequality between newcomers and those who have historically lived there.

Researchers ranked Portland, Ore., which has seen an influx of financial investment from the tech sector, as the most gentrified American city, with 58 percent of its census tracts having gentrified. It is followed by Minneapolis, Seattle, Atlanta and Denver.

Detroit was the least gentrified city, the research showed, with less than 3 percent of its census tracts having gentrified, and only around the downtown core. But artists and other "urban pioneers" have in recent years begun moving into more pockets of the city, researchers said.

Longtime residents of formerly redlined neighborhoods are often pushed out when the areas' economic fortunes are reversed, researchers said. Many can no longer afford the rising rents. Homeowners often can't afford the increases in property taxes, and as their home values rise, many are tempted to sell and cash out.

"Is gentrification promoting sustainable desegregation?" Mitchell said. "Or is it just a movement towards increased segregation in the next census period?"
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Analysis | Redlining was banned 50 years ago. It's still hurting minorities today.

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These government maps documented racist lending practices that gave rise to today's segregated neighborhoods.

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"According to African Americans and the Color Line in Ohio, 1915-1930, options for African Americans were extremely limited because by 1914 housing had “a noticeable tendency toward inserting clauses in real estate deeds restricting the transfer of the property to colored people, Jews, and foreigners generally.”

The Legacy of Housing Discrimination in Cleveland

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The photo above shows typical housing available in the Cedar-Central neighborhood around East 22nd Street before the area was cleared for public housing projects in 1935. (Photo Courtesy of Cleveland Public Library, Photograph Collection).

At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States experienced a momentous population shift that affected a number of northern cities, including Cleveland. The Great Migration rapidly increased the population of northern industrial cities like Cleveland, which attracted African American laborers in search of jobs who were trying to escape the racial violence and segregation of the South. Although the North was seen as a vehicle for upward mobility by former black southerners, new citizens of Cleveland soon discovered that racial segregation would persist in the North's housing policies.

The largest influx of African Americans occurred between 1910 and 1930 during Cleveland's industrial boom. A similar phenomenon was happening across the north in cities like Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia due to the expansion of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the construction of refineries and manufacturing industries at the time. This era was ripe for American industrialization. Fueled by the World War I manufacturing push, Cleveland and neighboring cities had a high demand for labor but were unprepared to house such a large incoming population of workers.

Because of proximity to industry and discriminatory housing policies, African Americans and ethnic white immigrants were often pushed into inner-city housing. Some of these discriminatory policies were masked by zoning ordinances. Deeds were not issues for land that was meant for integrated or African American housing, "housing covenants" were enacted in areas in order to prevent integration, and the HRA redlining all contributed to the racial segregation in the city of Cleveland.

Due to racist policies, African Americans were often pushed into slums, high-population areas that required families to sublet their housing, which contributed to the rapid decay of the structures. According to African Americans and the Color Line in Ohio, 1915-1930, options for African Americans were extremely limited because by 1914 housing had "a noticeable tendency toward inserting clauses in real estate deeds restricting the transfer of the property to colored people, Jews, and foreigners generally."

Discriminatory zoning practices were so frequently used in the Cleveland area that one case, Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co., became a Supreme Court landmark case in 1926. A key issue in the case asked if zoning ordinances in effect violated the Fourteenth Amendment and equal protection of the laws. The Supreme Court ruled that the government had a vested interest in regulating land use and neighborhood composition. The verdict in part, stated, "Due Process involves a fundamental interest; if we are talking about equal protection, what would raise the level of scrutiny would be a law that inherently discriminates. You as the challenger, have to show there is no rational basis or governmental interest at stake."

The Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co. kicked off an explosion of zoning ordinances used for thinly veiled racial housing discrimination. This era would segue into the era of racially segregated public housing, Home Owners' Loan Corporation redlining maps, and predatory subprime mortgages targeting African Americans in traditionally segregated neighborhoods.

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Cleveland's Legacy of Housing Discrimination: The Great Migration

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The photo above shows typical housing available in the Cedar-Central neighborhood around East 22nd Street before the area was cleared for public housing projects in 1935. (Photo Courtesy of Cleveland Public Library, Photograph Collection). At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States expe

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Learn about how the Civil Rights Era Influenced CMSD's model of school of choice

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For millions of children across the country, where they go to school is largely determined by where they live. Public school districts have historically assigned students to schools located in or near their neighborhoods.

Cleveland is trying a different approach by integrating school choice into its district model, but you could say the city's school choice movement began in the 1960s, a time of racial tension that led to the Cleveland school system we see today.
Cleveland Leadership in the 1960s
George Forbes is one of the most prominent names in modern Cleveland history. Elected to city council in 1963, Forbes was one of several black politicians who led Cleveland through the nation's Civil Rights Era, and through the fall out of desegregation in the city's schools.

"I hadn't been in office, but three or four months and we were confronted with this big issue of equality in schools," Forbes said.

At the time, there were nearly 135,000 students in the district. Black schools throughout the city were overcrowded, but instead of integrating school populations, the district chose to build new ones - keeping black children isolated.

"The Board of Education had taken the position that they were going to build new schools and decided that Stephen E. Howe was one of the places they were going to build schools," Forbes explained.

During its construction, Stephen E. Howe Elementary School, in the Glenville neighborhood that Forbes represented, became the site of protests led by civil rights activists.

On April 7, 1964, 27-year-old white protestor Rev. Bruce Klunder was killed as he and others laid themselves in front of and behind the tracks of a bulldozer at the construction site.

Klunder's death slowed the school's completion, but it didn't stop it, and racial tensions grew, Forbes said, as African Americans protested and boycotted more black schools.

"It came from people, the groundswell," he said. "We don't want the school. We're not going to go there."

More than a decade later, a federal court ordered Cleveland to bus kids into other neighborhoods to achieve racial balance in the schools.
School Choice Comes to Cleveland
Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eric Gordon said the decision resulted in the first instance of school choice in the city: white flight and wealth flight from the district into the surrounding suburbs.

"It was a tough form, right?" Gordon said. "I had to make a choice as a parent whether I would send my child to the assigned school across the city for integration purposes, or whether I would choose to pay for a parochial or private school, or whether I would choose to move out of the city."

"It was absolutely a form of choice," he added.

The exodus of white, middle income families led to a massive decline in enrollment in Cleveland schools. Between 1980 and 1990, CMSD went from 92,000 to 69,000 students. That decline strained resources and concentrated poverty in the district.

After years of mismanagement and financial turmoil, legislation in the mid-90s led to the introduction of school vouchers in Cleveland-one of the first cities in the country to incorporate the form of choice that give children public funds to attend a private school.

Then came charters, which Gordon said led to the departure of another 10,000 kids from the district.

"All while the school district was saying we will assign you to xyz school," Gordon said. "You don't have any choice inside the district."
Then Comes 'The Cleveland Plan'
Gordon's tenure as CEO and the implementation of a new education reform plan-known as The Cleveland Plan-marked a change in that culture.

Implemented five years ago, The Cleveland Plan allowed parents to send their children to any school in the district, including CMSD-sponsored charters.

District enrollment is up for the first time in 40 years, Gordon said, to 39,000 students and achievement is starting to follow.

"Families were choosing. They had been choosing for decades. The only place they weren't choosing was CMSD because we were saying you shouldn't be allowed to choose and we were saying we will assign you where you will go to school, very much like traditional school districts across the country have always done," Gordon said.

"Our notion was, if families are choosing, let's get into the choice game, let's compete, let's be part of the choice," he added.
Does Choice Lead to Academic Success?
In the majority minority district, CMSD's scores on state report cards are up, but its overall grade is an F.

The four-year graduation rate has increased and so has the number of K through 3 rd grade students reading at grade level, but when you break down the scores by race, the numbers tell a different story.

A quarter of African American students in the district are meeting English Language Arts learning goals compared to about half of their white peers. The rates are almost identical when it comes to math, and only marginally better for the district's Hispanic population.

Dr. William Sampson of DePaul University does not believe choice leads to academic success for minority students. Nationwide, Sampson said vouchers, charters, and other forms of choice have resulted in a new surge of segregation in the education system that's fueled poor academic outcomes.

White, middle-income parents have the means to take advantage of options, he added, leaving minority and low-income students behind, students who need more resources to succeed.

"It's not that the presence of white kids has some sort of magic power over the quality of education," Sampson explained. "Unfortunately, white folks aren't that great."

"It's that the resources typically follow white kids, whether they be financial resources, [or] student support services."
Choice and Competition in the Classroom
But it's not just the loss of resources that Sampson said hurts minority students in this era of school choice. It's the loss of opportunity for a child to compete, Sampson said, and overcome the racism and the inferiority they're taught by society.

"When you grow up next door to a kid, or in the next classroom or the next row in a classroom, and you're a black kid and you're doing better in class than that white kid, then you start to question whether or not you are inherently inferior," Sampson explained.

"You realize that you can do just as well as this white kid," he said. "That dispels that self-hatred, and that's critical in our society."

That's what black Clevelanders wanted in the 1960s, Forbes said, a mixing of races in schools that would help all children learn they were more alike than different.

But Forbes said the city's first experience with school choice-the white flight of the Civil Rights era-- is still evident in Cleveland public schools today.
Did Integration Work?
The current state of the district makes it difficult for Forbes to believe that minority students are any better off than they were when he attended a segregated Memphis school during his youth, either because of the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown versus Board of Education decision that ended legal segregation in public schools, or the fight he helped lead for integration.

"It didn't work," Forbes said of Cleveland's desegregation struggle. "If I had to do it again, I would not have done it."

"But this was part of the times," he went on. "It was happening all over the country. Education was at an apex and that was what black folks demanded, but we did not get...we got the Supreme Court decisions. We got those things, but when you look back at it, it is what it is."

Gordon disagreed with both Sampson and Forbes. With Sampson on the outcomes Cleveland children are achieving, and with Forbes on the success of the city's Civil Rights struggles.

"Have we achieved the outcome yet that we desire for every kid? No," he said. "I would say that the system that I'm running is not yet what I want for every child, a black child, a white child, a Hispanic child."

"But," he added, "we are actively working on it because of the really tough decisions that George Forbes and his peers made decades ago."

Gordon said choice works for Cleveland, but the legacy of segregation, of inequity in the school system is a battle the district could face for years to come.

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From Desegregation to School Choice: How the Civil Rights Era Influenced the Cleveland Schools of Today

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For millions of children across the country, where they go to school is largely determined by where they live. Public school districts have historically assigned students to schools located in or near their neighborhoods.

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Neighborhoods in red were deemed hazardous in the 1930s and did not receive adequate government support and attention after the great depression.

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Fair Housing Center for Rights and Research

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Cuyahoga County has a long history of racial segregation, mortgage redlining of African American neighborhoods, and predatory lending based on race. Cuyahoga County remains part of one of the most racially segregated regions in the United States, and people in predominantly African-American neighborhoods often cannot get mortgages to buy houses in their neighborhoods. The Fair Housing Center has published multiple reports examining local racial and ethnic disparities in mortgage lending patterns, which are available for download below.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MORTGAGE LENDING DISCRIMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Racial discrimination and segregation in the mortgage lending market were put in place by two federal programs: The Home Owner's Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

HOLC was created in 1933 in response to a growing foreclosure crisis as a means to preserve homeownership in the United States. HOLC considered the racial makeup of a neighborhood to affect the values of the homes in that neighborhood, and created "residential security maps," otherwise known as "redlining maps," for most metropolitan areas as a tool to assess home values. Neighborhoods with or near African American communities were shaded red and excluded from the program.

The FHA was created in 1934 to insure private, amortized mortgages in order to increase home-ownership in the U.S. The FHA adopted HOLC's practice of redlining by limiting its program to white borrowers seeking homes in white-only neighborhoods. The FHA officially endorsed racial segregation both in residential and school settings and actively discouraged banks from lending in urban areas.

Through the 30 year mortgage, HOLC and the FHA effectively created a transfer of wealth, solely to the white, working and middle classes. African Americans were cut off from the wealth creation during the 1950s and 1960s.

They did this while backing explicit racial discrimination, racial segregation, and racialized poverty as policies of the federal government, then passed these practices on to private lenders. Redlining and racial discrimination in housing continued legally until 1968, with the passage of the Fair Housing Act. However, even in the 21st century, lenders have been prosecuted by the Department of Justice for engaging in redlining.

Segregated living patterns in Cuyahoga County were, in part, created and maintained by discriminatory mortgage lending practices. Compare the redlining map from 1940 (above) to the 2016 map of where nonwhite and/or Hispanic populations live in Cleveland (below). The segregated living patterns of the Cleveland area are nearly unchanged after 76 years.

Download the reports to learn more: Cuyahoga County Mortgage Lending Patterns 2018 BEST FOR PRINT
Cuyahoga County Mortgage Lending Patterns 2018 BEST FOR SCREEN
Racial & Ethnic Disparities in 2012 and 2013 Ohio Mortgage Lending: June 2015
Racial & Ethnic Disparities in 2011 Ohio Mortgage Lending: March 2013
Racial & Ethnic Disparities in 2010 Ohio Mortgage Lending: February 2012
Racial & Ethnic Disparities in 2009 Ohio Mortgage Lending: January 2011
Racial & Ethnic Disparities in 2008 Ohio Mortgage Lending: December 2009
Racial & Ethnic Disparities in Ohio Mortgage Lending: February 2009
Racial & Ethnic Disparities in Ohio Mortgage Lending: November 2006

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Racial & Ethnic Disparities in Ohio Mortgage Lending - Fair Housing Center for Rights and Research

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Cuyahoga County has a long history of racial segregation, mortgage redlining of African American neighborhoods, and predatory lending based on race. Cuyahoga County remains part of one of the most racially segregated regions in the United States, and people in predominantly African-American neighborhoods often cannot get mortgages to buy houses in their neighborhoods.

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Learn about plans to create value-engineered homes in Hough.

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CLEVELAND - Historic League Park in Cleveland's Hough Neighborhood sits right across the street from a handful of relatively new homes, but also open lots and blighted homes.

"When I came here and I walked about, I was blown away," said Cleveland Custom Homes President Jeff Crawford.

He says it was partially by the historic and refurbished League Park, but also because of the opportunity in those open plots of land in Hough.

Cleveland Custom Homes specializes in custom-built homes, which tend to be expensive.

Councilman Basheer Jones says expensive homes wouldn't help Hough.

"We can't continue to have low housing product and very high housing product," said Councilman Jones. "In order to be a stable community, we're going to really need to focus on the middle."

That's why Councilman Jones pulled in Crawford and Cleveland Custom Homes, which also builds a "value-engineered," home.

It's high-quality, not cheap, but attainable.

The homes will be between 1,300 and 1,700 square feet, costing about $250,000.

"We love homebuilding, we're good at homebuilding, but we also use it as a platform to give back and make the world a better place," said Crawford.

Since Hough has so many open lots, many of which are owned by the Land Bank, Crawford says his plan is to use the lots to build 100 homes over the next three to five years. The first one could break ground across the street from League Park in March.

It would provide a path to homeownership, building equity in a mostly black neighborhood.

Historically, redlining maps show much of Cleveland's east side, Hough included, was considered the riskiest for mortgage lending, meaning people who lived there often couldn't purchase homes.

Now, there are conscious efforts to chip away at redlining's impact.

GO Green Energy has plans to hook up Hough homes to a solar energy grid, helping cut down on utility costs while allowing homeowners to build equity in that system. They can borrow against that equity to help improve their homes or make other purchases.

The Cleveland Public Library is designing a Hough Branch that would be across the street from the entrance to League Park, a block away from Crawford's first home.

The Allen Estates will be just down the block from Crawford's first home. Shelia Wright's Frontline Development Group is acquiring land for six homes on East 65th Street and could eventually grow to other nearby locations. Wright says later phases could include townhomes and space for mixed-use commercial and residential structures.

"It's very exciting and long overdue," said Hough's Block Club President Cindy Mumford.

But Mumford says even though Councilman Basheer Jones is involved in the process, her club and its members have not been.

Mumford is happy the investment is coming in but she also wants neighbors to have input at early stages of projects like it. She says Hough also needs reliable lighting and safe sidewalks among other things to help the community improve.

"We can make sure that these projects are successful and that everyone benefits from these types of projects rather than having just a nice house next door to you," said Mumford.

Crawford says he has assurances from Councilman Jones and the City of Cleveland that they'll address those types of issues around the community.

The goal for everyone is the same: build high-quality homes at fair prices and increase homeownership in a community that needs a helping hand.

"The freedom that gets people to say, 'You know what, this is mine,' it changes a neighborhood," said Councilman Jones. "It brings stability to the neighborhood."

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Custom home builder turning open lots into new, attainable homes in Hough

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CLEVELAND - Historic League Park in Cleveland's Hough Neighborhood sits right across the street from a handful of relatively new homes, but also open lots and blighted homes. "When I came here and I walked about, I was blown away," said Cleveland Custom Homes President Jeff Crawford.

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Review these 9 charts about the wealth gap in America

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Average wealth has increased over the past 50 years, but it has not grown equally for all groups. Between 1963 and 2016,

families near the bottom of the wealth distribution (those at the 10th percentile) went from having no wealth on average to being about $1,000 in debt,

those in the middle more than doubled their wealth,

families near the top (at the 90th percentile) saw their wealth increase fivefold,

and the wealth of those at the 99th percentile-in other words, those wealthier than 99 percent of all families-grew sevenfold.

These changes have increased wealth inequality significantly. In 1963, families near the top had six times the wealth (or, $6 for every $1) of families in the middle. By 2016, they had 12 times the wealth of families in the middle.

Income is money coming into a family, while wealth is a family's assets -things like savings, real estate, businesses-minus debt. Both are important sides of families' financial security, but wealth cushions families against emergencies and gives them the means to move up the economic ladder. Also, wealth disparities are much greater than income disparities: three times as much by one measure.

Income inequality can worsen wealth inequality because the income people have available to save and invest matters. Focusing on private income, such as earnings and dividends, plus cash government benefits, we see that the income of families near the top increased roughly 90 percent from 1963 to 2016, while the income of families at the bottom increased less than 10 percent.

Families of color will soon make up a majority of the population, but most continue to fall behind whites in building wealth. In 1963, the average wealth of white families was $121,000 higher than the average wealth of nonwhite families. By 2016, the average wealth of white families ($919,000) was over $700,000 higher than the average wealth of black families ($140,000) and of Hispanic families ($192,000).

Put another way, white family wealth was seven times greater than black family wealth and five times greater than Hispanic family wealth in 2016. Despite some fluctuations over the past five decades, this disparity is as high or higher than it was in 1963.

White families accumulate more wealth over their lives than black or Hispanic families do, widening the wealth gap at older ages. In their 30s, whites have an average of $147,000 more in wealth than blacks (three times as much). By their 60s, whites have over $1.1 million more in average wealth than blacks (seven times as much).

Median wealth by race is lower. Though the dollar gap grows with age, the ratio doesn't grow in the same way: whites have seven times more median wealth than blacks in their 60s and 70s.

Why is the racial and ethnic wealth gap so big? People with lower earnings may have a harder time saving. The average white man earns $2.7 million over a lifetime, while the average black man earns $1.8 million and the average Hispanic man earns $2.0 million. The difference in lifetime earnings is lower for women: the average white woman earns $1.5 million, while the average black woman earns $1.3 million and the average Hispanic woman earns $1.1 million. These disparities partly reflect historical disadvantages that continue to affect later generations.

Blacks and Hispanics are less likely to own homes, so they more often miss out on this powerful wealth-building tool. Homeownership makes the most of automatic payments-homeowners must make mortgage payments every month-to build equity.

In 1976, 68 percent of white families owned their home, compared with 44 percent of black families and 43 percent of Hispanic families. By 2016, the homeownership gap had narrowed slightly for Hispanics but widened for blacks. Black and Hispanic families were also less likely to own homes than white families with similar incomes.

In 2016, white families had about $130,000 more (or six times more) in average liquid retirement savings than black and Hispanic families. In sheer dollar terms, this disparity has increased more than fivefold over the past quarter-century: in 1989, white families had about $25,000 more (or five times more) in average retirement savings than black and Hispanic families. This gap is becoming more important as liquid retirement savings vehicles, like 401(k)s, replace more traditional defined-benefit pension plans.

Why does this gap exist? It's not just income differences; even at the same income level, gaps remain. Black and Hispanic families have less access to retirement saving vehicles and lower participation when they have access. But lower access and participation isn't the full story.

Black workers are somewhat less likely to participate in employer retirement plans than white workers ( 40 percent versus 47 percent in 2013, respectively) but have much lower average liquid retirement savings. This suggests that simply having more employers offer retirement plans will not be enough to close the gap, especially if lower-income groups contribute smaller portions of their income to retirement plans and are more likely to withdraw money early to cover financial emergencies. Lower-income families may also get lower returns on average if they invest in safer, shorter-term assets.

Since the mid-2000s, black families, on average, have carried more student loan debt than white families. This is driven in large part by the growing share of black families that take on student debt. In 2016, 42 percent of families headed by black adults ages 25 to 55 had student loan debt, compared with 34 percent of similar white families.

Because black families, on average, have less wealth and fewer private resources, they may be more likely to turn to loans to finance their education. White families are five times more likely than black families to receive large gifts or inheritances, which can be used to pay for college.

However, black students also have lower graduation rates than white students. Student loan debt doesn't always translate into a degree that promotes economic mobility-and income and wealth-in the long run.

The federal government spends over $400 billion to support asset development, but those subsidies primarily benefited higher-income families- exacerbating wealth inequality and racial wealth disparities.

About two-thirds of homeownership tax subsidies and retirement subsidies go to the top 20 percent of taxpayers, as measured by income. The bottom 20 percent, meanwhile, receive less than 1 percent of these subsidies. Blacks and Hispanics, who have lower average incomes, receive much less of these subsidies than whites, both in total amount and as a share of their incomes.

Low-income families benefit from safety net programs, such as food and cash assistance, but most of these programs focus on income-keeping families afloat today-and do not encourage wealth-building and economic mobility in the long run. What's more, many programs discourage saving: for instance, when families won't qualify for benefits if they have a few thousand dollars in assets or when they have to give up rent subsidies to own a home.

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Nine Charts about Wealth Inequality in America (Updated)

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Average wealth has increased over the past 50 years, but it has not grown equally for all groups.

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American Segregation | Day and Night

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American segregation, mapped at day and night

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Forbes | Five Big Ideas to Narrow the Racial Wealth Gap

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After centuries of systemic barriers, the median net worth of Black households is one tenth that of white ones. Without changes such as these, the Covid-19 crisis will only widen the divide.

I n April, Bill Bynum,CEO of Mississippi-based credit union Hope Enterprise, watched in frustration as a $350 billion well of forgivable Payroll Protection Program loans was emptied in just 13 days. Hope serves 110,000 mostly African American and Latino members in the Mississippi Delta. But it had just one license for the software required to submit PPP applications to the Small Business Administration, meaning it had to wait for the SBA to process one loan before it could submit another. Hope had hundreds of applications teed up, yet only got 46 through, totaling $13 million.

Meanwhile, hundreds of publicly traded companies rode a tsunami of big bank applications to get $1.4 billion in PPP loans approved. "Black businesses were at the back of the bus,'' laments Bynum.

That same month, as it became clear that both the health and economic effects of Covid-19 were hitting Black and Brown Americans the hardest, a group of academics and ex-Hill staffers-members of the Experts of Color Network -began meeting on Zoom to come up with ideas to make the rush of economic stimulus spending more socially just.

Bill Bynum, 61, founded Hope Enterprise in 1994 and has built up its credit union and loan fund to $500 million in assets.

Now, with the urgent discussion of structural racial inequities following the killing of George Floyd, some members of the Zoom group are hopeful that fundamental changes are possible.

"Weeks of civil unrest demanding social justice-in many communities led by majority non-Hispanic white protesters-suggest our nation could be on the precipice of taking major steps toward true equality for all," says James H. Carr, a visiting fellow at the Roosevelt Institute think tank who has worked to close the racial wealth gap for three frustrating decades.

The Federal Reserve's 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances (the latest available) shows the median net worth for Black households was only $17,600, one-tenth of the $171,000 median for non-Hispanic white households. Since 1995, even as African Americans have narrowed the four-year college completion rate gap by 15%, the net worth gap has widened by 4%, calculates Ray Boshara, director of the Center for Household Financial Stability at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

If the U.S. is indeed ready for big ideas, here are five to consider. Two of them-improving access to capital for Black-owned businesses and reparations for descendants of slaves-aim directly at historic and current barriers that have made it so hard for African-Americans to build wealth. Three others-Baby Bonds, partial student debt forgiveness and incentives for emergency savings-would help any Americans (and particularly young ones) struggling to build assets without the cushion of inherited wealth.

Black entrepreneurs are more likely than those of any other race to fund their businesses on their personal credit cards and nearly three times as likely as white business owners to say their profits have been hurt by a lack of access to capital, the Kauffman Foundation reports. Private equity billionaire Robert F. Smith, the nation's wealthiest African American, noted at the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy last week that 70% of African American communities don't have a single branch bank, and only 21 banks are Black-owned or -led. Those banks hold just $5 billion in assets-a speck in the $20-trillion-in-assets U.S. commercial banking sector.

That's one reason attention has turned increasingly to Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). They can be organized as credit unions, banks, loan funds or venture funds, but all provide financial services to low-income and underserved communities and most are not-for-profit. Bill Bynum's Hope Credit Union, for example, is a CDFI and was one of only about 100 of the nation's 1,100 CDFIs even certified to make SBA loans when the PPP program started on April 3. Since then, an additional 200 CDFIs have become certified to make PPP loans.

The Racial Wealth Gap: A Wide, Persistent Divide

Despite educational advances by Black Americans, the racial wealth gap has widened since 1995. Chart shows median household net worth, adjusted for inflation.

After lobbying by Bynum, Smith and others, $10 billion of a second $310 billion round of PPP funding was set aside for loans made by CDFIs. Hope has now pushed through 1,800 PPP loans, averaging $41,000 each. That's allowed Bynum to serve ordinary customers doing business as sole proprietors-for example, a hairdresser who got $5,200 to tide her over while her Hoover, Alabama, salon was shut. It also allowed Hope to get a $2 million PPP loan for Tougaloo College, an historically black liberal arts college that during the first round had applied unsuccessfully for a loan through a big bank.

But $10 billion out of $660 billion is a pittance considering that as of April, the pandemic had forced 41% of the nation's Black-owned businesses, compared with 17% of white-owned ones, to close, University of California at Santa Cruz economics Professor Robert Fairlie estimates. Black-owned businesses accounted for 441,000 of the 3.3 million businesses shuttered in April. (There's still more than $100 billion left in the PPP pot, which could do a lot for struggling small businesses-and particularly Black-owned ones-that didn't get loans or were scared away early on.)

Robert Smith, the founder and CEO of private equity giant Vista Equity Partners, has a $5 billion net worth and a plan for corporations to direct 2% of profits to Black entrepreneurs.

Beyond the temporary PPP money, strengthening CDFIs could help get more capital to Black entrepreneurs. Bynum wants federal funding for CDFIs-now a paltry $200 million a year-to be increased tenfold to $2 billion, with at least 40% of that reserved for CDFIs led by minorities. Some big banks have made substantial commitments to fund CDFIs, which, not coincidentally, helps them meet their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. Bank of America has already provided $1.6 billion in investments and loans to 250 CDFIs, and it announced in March it would invest another $250 million. In June, Goldman Sachs said it would commit another $250 million to CDFIs on top of the $500 million it announced earlier this year.

Now Robert Smith is calling on the big banks to commit 2% of their profits a year to funding CDFIs and minority-owned banks.

The government would put a certain amount of money per year in an account for each newborn that he or she can't touch until age 18; children from wealthy families would get only a token payment, with those from poor families receiving more.

If the term "Baby Bonds" sounds familiar, it's because Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) talked up his version of this plan while campaigning for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. In 2010, Darrick Hamilton, who leads Ohio State's Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, and William A. Darity Jr., a public policy and economics professor at Duke, suggested Baby Bonds could be a counterbalance to the intrafamily transfers and inheritances that help perpetuate the racial wealth gap over generations.

A new study by City University of New York Assistant Professor Naomi Zewde uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which tracks thousands of specific families' finances over time. It shows that Baby Bonds could dramatically reduce racial wealth inequality for young adults. As of 2015, the median net worth of young white adults in the sample was $46,000, or nearly 16 times the median of $2,900 for African-Americans ages 18 to 25. Zewde simulated what would happen if each young adult had received between $500 and $50,000 in a dedicated bond account at birth, depending on their parents' income. Assuming those bonds earned 2% real interest a year, white young adults would have seen their median net worth grow to $79,143, but that would be only 1.4 times the median net worth of Black young adults, which would jump twentyfold to $57,845.

Research by City University of New York Assistant Professor Naomi Zewde demonstrates that Baby Bonds, over time, could effectively narrow the racial wealth gap among young adults.

"At every point of the life course, the racial disparities in wealth are unbelievable,'' Zewde says. Family wealth, she adds, means "access to college tuition, help with a (house) down payment, versus starting out with debt. They're starting out unequal."

Zewde estimates her plan would cost $80 billion a year. That's less than half the amount Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the U.S. Treasury loses each year from the special lower income tax rate for long-term capital gains and dividends, which mostly benefits the well-off.

What about the possibility that colleges would suck up the Baby Bonds bounty by raising tuition or cutting aid to those from poor families? "If we implement Baby Bonds now, we'd have about 18 years to figure out how we're going to protect young people,'' Zewde answers.

The wealth gap between Black and white college graduates has been widening, in part because Black students take on more debt to get through school. Wesley Whistle, a federal higher education analyst at New America Foundation, calculates that 84% of Black Millennials who graduated from four-year colleges in 2016 had student debt, compared with 68% of white Millennials. Among those earning two-year degrees, 63% of Black graduates-but only 43% of their white counterparts-had student debt.

In addition to helping a higher percentage of Black graduates, a $10,000 write-off would dramatically reduce the student default rate, research from the Aspen Institute shows. That's because 66% of defaulters owe $10,000 or less, since many of them dropped out of school without a degree or attended for-profit schools-both more common among Black students. (The doctors, lawyers and M.B.A.s with scary-sounding graduate debt of $100,000 or $200,000 may feel stretched, but usually do fine.)

The Millennial Debt Divide

More Black college students have to take on debt to earn a degree. That means a broad $10,000-per-borrower loan forgiveness plan would help a higher share of Black graduates.

A $10,000 write-off for all 44 million Americans who owe money on federal student loans, regardless of their current income, would cost between $300 billion and $400 billion and wipe out all debt for about 15 million borrowers, Aspen estimates. (House Democrats had planned to include $10,000 of debt forgiveness in the HEROES stimulus bill they passed in May, but they ultimately balked at the cost and limited the relief to "economically distressed" borrowers. Senate Republicans are even less likely to embrace forgiveness when they fashion their own version of more stimulus spending.)

As recently as last September, only 15% of white adults, compared with 74% of Black adults, said the U.S. should pay reparations to African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved. But attitudes may be changing, particularly among Democrats, with presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden supporting a commission to study the idea and the House holding hearings on it. In January, the city of Evanston, Illinois, approved a program to dedicate part of the tax on marijuana sales to reparations payments.

Duke University's William Darity, who has studied reparations for three decades, chalks up the political resistance to "good old American racism." He cites examples of other groups receiving compensation from the U.S. government, including the $20,000 payments that Japanese Americans received more than 40 years after they were unfairly incarcerated during WWII. "There has never been the same degree of pushback for other races in the U.S. who have been subjected to other atrocities," Darity says.

In a new book, Darity and A. Kirsten Mullen, a writer and lecturer (and Darity's spouse), argue $11 trillion should be dedicated to a reparations program over ten years. Here's how they arrive at that number: Black Americans held $3.2 trillion, or 3%, of the nation's $107 trillion in household wealth as of mid-2018, and they constitute 13% of the U.S. population. Reparations should bridge that gap, boosting Black Americans' wealth to equal 13% of the country's wealth, Darity and Mullen argue. That would be "an average outlay of approximately $267,000 per person for up to 40 million eligible black descendants of American slavery," they write.

Other scholars have ideas for the money in addition to direct payments. For example, Mehrsa Baradaran, a University of California at Irvine law professor who wrote a book on the racial wealth gap, has argued that housing grants could be used as part of a wide-scale reparations package. BET founder Robert Johnson, the first Black billionaire and a longtime advocate of reparations, said this month that the government needs to transfer money ($14 trillion by his figuring) directly rather than start "more bureaucratic programs" that may not deliver. "I'm talking about cash. We are a society based on wealth. That's the foundation of capitalism."

In theory, everyone needs emergency savings to guard against sudden income loss or unexpected expenses (say, a medical emergency or car breakdown), although before Covid-19 only about half of families had such a dedicated fund. In practice, however, the need for a rainy-day fund is not equally distributed, since some are more likely to have family money to fall back on than others. According to the Federal Reserve, 71% of white Americans, but only 43% of African-Americans could get $3,000 from family or friends in a pinch.

Those who have neither emergency savings nor flush friends and family to tap are more likely to take high-rate loans from payday lenders, skip needed medical care, fall behind on rent, mortgage or other bills or even have trouble paying for food. Research from Boshara's St. Louis Fed team shows an emergency fund is so crucial that households are better off keeping $1,000 in a low-earning bank account than using that cash cushion to pay down high-interest-rate credit card debt. In addition to bolstering financial resiliency, a cash reserve can lead to upward mobility-a down payment for a house, for example, Boshara notes.

What can be done? Fintech apps and websites like Digit, Even and SaverLife nudge consumers to get into the habit of saving. And academics are now studying the usefulness of special rainy-day savings accounts, including those offered as a "sidecar" to a 401(k), complete with automatic payroll deductions for workers.

Meanwhile, Uncle Sam does nothing to encourage emergency savings and a lot to encourage retirement saving, doling out more than $165 billion a year in tax breaks for IRAs and 401(k)s, with most of that subsidy going to the top 20% of earners. The result is that cash-strapped workers end up taking out 30 cents to 40 cents of every dollar they put into retirement accounts before retirement, and millions of taxpayers a year are hit with a 10% tax penalty for withdrawing money before the age of 59½. (Congress has temporarily waived that penalty for those who withdraw up to $100,000 for hardships related to Covid-19.)

"The (savings) subsidies we have are poorly targeted, and we don't do anything to help families build emergency savings, especially the ones that need them the most,'' says Boshara. Ultimately, he says, it could make sense to offer some sort of refundable tax credit for emergency savings-for example, by making the current, little-used retirement savers' credit more generous and available to more taxpayers, for more types of savings.

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Five Big Ideas To Narrow The Racial Wealth Gap

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I n April, Bill Bynum,CEO of Mississippi-based credit union Hope Enterprise, watched in frustration as a $350 billion well of forgivable Payroll Protection Program loans was emptied in just 13 days. Hope serves 110,000 mostly African American and Latino members in the Mississippi Delta.

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The 1619 Project | NY Times

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Elmore Bolling, whose brothers called him Buddy, was a kind of one-man economy in Lowndesboro, Ala. He leased a plantation, where he had a general store with a gas station out front and a catering business; he grew cotton, corn and sugar cane. He also owned a small fleet of trucks that ran livestock and made deliveries between Lowndesboro and Montgomery. At his peak, Bolling employed as many as 40 people, all of them black like him.

One December day in 1947, a group of white men showed up along a stretch of Highway 80 just yards from Bolling's home and store, where he lived with his wife, Bertha Mae, and their seven young children. The men confronted him on a section of road he had helped lay and shot him seven times - six times with a pistol and once with a shotgun blast to the back. His family rushed from the store to find him lying dead in a ditch.

The shooters didn't even cover their faces; they didn't need to. Everyone knew who had done it and why. "He was too successful to be a Negro," someone who knew Bolling told a newspaper at the time. When Bolling was killed, his family estimates he had as much as $40,000 in the bank and more than $5,000 in assets, about $500,000 in today's dollars. But within months of his murder nearly all of it would be gone. White creditors and people posing as creditors took the money the family got from the sale of their trucks and cattle. They even staked claims on what was left of the family's savings. The jobs that he provided were gone, too. Almost overnight the Bollings went from prosperity to poverty. Bertha Mae found work at a dry cleaner. The older children dropped out of school to help support the family. Within two years, the Bollings fled Lowndes County, fearing for their lives.

The period that followed the Civil War was one of economic terror and wealth-stripping that has left black people at lasting economic disadvantage. White Americans have seven times the wealth of black Americans on average. Though black people make up nearly 13 percent of the United States population, they hold less than 3 percent of the nation's total wealth. The median family wealth for white people is $171,000, compared with just $17,600 for black people. It is worse on the margins. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 19 percent of black households have zero or negative net worth. Just 9 percent of white families are that poor.
[American capitalism is brutal. You can trace that to the plantation.]
Today's racial wealth gap is perhaps the most glaring legacy of American slavery and the violent economic dispossession that followed. The fate suffered by Elmore Bolling and his family was not unique to them, or to Jim Crow Alabama. It was part of a much broader social and political campaign. When legal slavery ended in 1865, there was great hope for formerly enslaved people. Between 1865 and 1870, the Reconstruction Amendments established birthright citizenship - making all black people citizens and granting them equal protection under the law - and gave black men the right to vote. There was also the promise of compensation. In January 1865, Gen. William Sherman issued an order reallocating hundreds of thousands of acres of white-owned land along the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina for settlement by black families in 40-acre plots. Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau to oversee the transition from slavery to freedom, and the Freedman's Savings Bank was formed to help four million formerly enslaved people gain financial freedom.

When Lincoln was assassinated, Vice President Andrew Johnson effectively rescinded Sherman's order by pardoning white plantation owners and returning to them the land on which 40,000 or so black families had settled. "This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men," Johnson declared in 1866. The Freedmen's Bureau, always meant to be temporary, was dismantled in 1872. More than 60,000 black people deposited more than $1 million into the Freedman's Savings Bank, but its all-white trustees began issuing speculative loans to white investors and corporations, and when it failed in 1874, many black depositors lost much of their savings.

"The origins of the racial wealth gap start with the failure to provide the formerly enslaved with the land grants of 40 acres," says William A. Darity Jr., a professor of public policy and African-American studies at Duke University. Any financial progress that black people made was regarded as an affront to white supremacy. After a decade of black gains under Reconstruction, a much longer period of racial violence would wipe nearly all of it away.

To assuage Southern white people, the federal government pulled out the Union troops who were stationed in the South to keep order. During this period of so-called Redemption, lawmakers throughout the South enacted Black Codes and Jim Crow laws that stripped black people of many of their freedoms and property. Other white people, often aided by law enforcement, waged a campaign of violence against black people that would rob them of an incalculable amount of wealth.
[To get updates on The 1619 Project, and for more on race from The New York Times, our weekly Race/Related newsletter.]
Armed white people stormed prosperous majority-black Wilmington, N.C., in 1898 to murder dozens of black people, force 2,000 others off their property and overthrow the city government. In the Red Summer of 1919, at least 240 black people were murdered across the country. And in 1921, in one of the bloodiest racial attacks in United States history, Greenwood, a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa, Okla., was burned and looted. It is estimated that as many as 300 black people were murdered and 10,000 were rendered homeless. Thirty-five square blocks were destroyed. No one was ever convicted in any of these acts of racist violence.

"You have limited opportunity to accumulate wealth, and then you have a process where that wealth is destroyed or taken away," Darity says. "And all of that is prior to the effects of restrictive covenants - redlining, the discriminatory application of the G.I. Bill and other federal programs."

The post-Reconstruction plundering of black wealth was not just a product of spontaneous violence, but etched in law and public policy. Through the first half of the 20th century, the federal government actively excluded black people from government wealth-building programs. In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal helped build a solid middle class through sweeping social programs, including Social Security and the minimum wage. But a majority of black people at the time were agricultural laborers or domestic workers, occupations that were ineligible for these benefits. The establishment of the Home Owners Loan Corporation in 1933 helped save the collapsing housing market, but it largely excluded black neighborhoods from government-insured loans. Those neighborhoods were deemed "hazardous" and colored in with red on maps, a practice that came to be known as "redlining."

The G.I. Bill is often hailed as one of Roosevelt's most enduring legacies. It helped usher millions of working-class veterans through college and into new homes and the middle class. But it discriminatorily benefited white people. While the bill didn't explicitly exclude black veterans, the way it was administered often did. The bill gave veterans access to mortgages with no down payments, but the Veterans Administration adopted the same racially restrictive policies as the Federal Housing Administration, which guaranteed bank loans only to developers who wouldn't sell to black people. "The major way in which people have an opportunity to accumulate wealth is contingent on the wealth positions of their parents and their grandparents," Darity says. "To the extent that blacks have the capacity to accumulate wealth, we have not had the ability to transfer the same kinds of resources across generations."

Seventy years later, the effects of Bolling's murder are still felt by his children and their children. "There was no inheritance, nothing for my father to pass down, because it was all taken away," says Josephine Bolling McCall, the only one of Bolling's children to get a college degree. Of the seven siblings, those with more education fared best; the men struggled most, primarily working as low-paid laborers. Of Elmore and Bertha Mae's 25 grandchildren, only six graduated from college; of those, two are McCall's children. The rest are unemployed or underemployed. They have never known anything like the prosperity of their grandparents.

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How America's Vast Racial Wealth Gap Grew: By Plunder

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Elmore Bolling, whose brothers called him Buddy, was a kind of one-man economy in Lowndesboro, Ala. He leased a plantation, where he had a general store with a gas station out front and a catering business; he grew cotton, corn and sugar cane.

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Want to know how you can help close the Racial Wealth Gap? Read more about it here!

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Pasha Carter (The VIP Network) was voted "Top 25 Women in Business." She is one of the world's top marketing and branding experts.

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Seek And Provide Mentorship
Closing the wealth gap between people of color and white America is a complex process, to say the least. There are some aspects that require personal change and others that require efforts from employers, as well as establishments within our communities. Regardless of the disadvantages we have (and there are many), the Black community must take action toward putting their own people in positions to succeed. Not sure where to start? The top ways Black Americans can decrease the wealth gap are below.
Support DE&I Efforts
One of the biggest challenges Black professionals face is getting on the radar of upper management. Excellent work is often overlooked, and innovative ideas can be misattributed. Having a mentor who advocates on your behalf and willingly shares essential knowledge with the intent of developing your business acumen can significantly accelerate your trajectory within a company. Providing mentorships and internship opportunities helps young Black men and women access information, training and resources that ultimately progress or conceptualize their professional desires.
Pursue Financial Education
Make sure your employer has a diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) department to assess and resolve inequalities throughout the workplace. This program, alongside compliance and HR, maintains inclusivity and evaluates concerns of equal opportunity. Minorities in senior management or executive positions will only increase if we challenge the existing recruitment processes and demand change for current strategies that are non-inclusive. In order to see significant changes in corporate America and in our economy, we need to have a seat at the table. We need to be in on the decision-making process and advocate for our communities.
Explore Entrepreneurship
In the Black community, we have often been conditioned to avoid discussing the fundamentals of money management and financial planning. Without knowing the programs, loopholes and rules that provide us with opportunities we may not otherwise have, our community continues to suffer. Public libraries, community centers or churches that provide free classes on taxes, healthcare programs, grants for home improvements and other financial assistance help the Black community learn and implement low- or no-cost programs, which leads to the basis of wealth among our people. In addition, real estate (fix and flip, wholesale, renting, etc.) and business acquisitions are two of the most effective contributors to the production of wealth. If given proper training and the same opportunities (with bank loans, interest rates and joint ventures), we can be just as profitable as our white counterparts. It first starts with a desire to learn, then having information available.

Our people have contributed to the advancement of this country with little to no recognition for hundreds of years. This purposeful lockdown used the innovation of minorities to establish the (financial) credibility and reputations of whites while dismantling the Black initiative to create businesses that served overlooked communities. The broken spirit of Black entrepreneurs resulted in some revolutionary trailblazers refraining from asserting their ideas or contributing to the legacy of Black entrepreneurship.
Know Your Worth
Fortunately, within the last decade or so, the floodgates have opened and tens of thousands of Black entrepreneurs began providing products, technology and services to their communities and beyond. Through idea cultivation and acquisition of private lending for small businesses, we are able to conquer entrepreneurial challenges, which leads to successful businesses and substantial economic growth. Despite the setbacks we've had, Black entrepreneurship has the ability to produce strong, multi-generational companies that add diversity to the country's business landscape.
Support Black-Owned Businesses
Researching the market pay scale of your field helps you successfully navigate salary negotiations. When meeting with your employer, be prepared to prove your value on paper, and make sure you understand the industry salary comps for your geographical location. If unsatisfied with the initial offer, counter - everything is negotiable. In short, when asking for a raise, or applying for a new position, preparation is key.

The most effective and long-term solution of shrinking the wage gap comes down to supporting Black businesses. Regardless of your desire to have a business of your own, spending money in Black-owned establishments provides a better foundation for increased resources for the Black dollar. Establishing and supporting businesses within our communities is how we maintain and build wealth of our own. By keeping our money "in-house," we invest in ourselves, support other Black professionals and establish independence from mainstream America.

Unfortunately, closing the wage gap isn't as simple as raising salaries to match those of our white counterparts. This complex issue is rooted in social and historical institutions established in many cases to present hardships for people of color. Income inequality disproportionately affects Black Americans, and as the Washington Post reports (paywall), little to no progress has been made in reducing income and wealth inequalities between Black and white households over the past 70 years. However, combating and dismantling this biased economy is easier to do when we aren't dependent on it for opportunities.

The time has come for us to tear it down. We must tear down the existing system and work together to build a new one.

Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?

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Council Post: What Black America Can Do To Close The Racial Wealth Gap

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Pasha Carter (The VIP Network) was voted "Top 25 Women in Business." She is one of the world's top marketing and branding experts. Seek And Provide Mentorship Closing the wealth gap between people of color and white America is a complex process, to say the least.

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What can I do if I'm denied access to housing because of discriminatory practices? Read this article for more information!

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Laws prohibit racial and other discrimination in housing. Yet housing experts and civil rights attorneys say bias remains stubbornly difficult to prove, let alone eradicate.

Here's how to recognize housing discrimination, the laws that are meant to protect you from it, and how to fight it.

What Is Housing Discrimination?

Housing discrimination is anyone involved in the process of renting, selling, or buying a property treating the person doing the buying, renting, or selling differently because they meet certain characteristics of a protected class. Examples of housing discrimination include charging higher fees to potential renters with children, refusing to show immigrant applicants homes in certain areas, or offering to buy a home for less because of the race of the person selling the home.

Federal housing discrimination is discrimination on renting or buying a property based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual harassment), familial status, and disability.

Housing Discrimination Laws

Discrimination against home renters and buyers by landlords, sellers, and lenders on account of race, color, religion, and nationality was outlawed in the United States by the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The federal government expanded the Fair Housing Act in 1974 to include protections for gender and in 1988 to protect families with children and people with disabilities.

Various state and local jurisdictions have added specific protections for sexual orientation and other categories. In New York, for instance, a bank or landlord can't inquire about a person's criminal record, says Damon P. Howard, a real estate attorney in New York City who handles residential and commercial litigation. New York City also prohibits discrimination on the basis of immigration status or lawful occupation, Howard notes. Prohibitions on racial discrimination have been extended to include the wearing of ethnic hairstyles, such as dreadlocks, as well as other attributes.

But even if it's illegal, racial segregation remains common in many communities, despite progress from the Civil Rights Act era. "The laws are well suited to protect people; the insidious problem is those things that are not instantly recognizable," Howard says.

Recent Regulatory Changes

Trump Administration Regulatory Changes

Regulatory changes made by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) during the Trump administration make it even harder to prove discrimination in many instances, civil rights and housing rights attorneys say. In early September 2020, HUD issued final rule changes proposed in 2019 that make it more difficult for individuals to file a complaint about housing discrimination citing disparate impact -that is, a practice or policy that on the surface seems neutral but that adversely affects members of a protected group. The new rule also shifts the burden of proof to the claimant, attorneys said. The final rule became effective 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, which was Sept. 4, 2020.

In early August 2020, HUD also terminated the former Obama administration's 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation, which intended to increase fair housing protections in communities. In an August 2019 statement, HUD said the rule changes were meant to "provide more appropriate guidance on what constitutes unlawful disparate impact to better reflect the Supreme Court's 2015 ruling in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. "

"The Trump administration rewrote the 2013 rules so that now not only do you have to prove that there is a harm caused by the policy or practice, but that it is significant-that there is a robust causal link and a direct relationship," says Ajmel Quereshi, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. (LDF). "These requirements are overlapping, confusing, and repetitive, and they work to keep a victim from even having their complaint heard."

Summing up the double impact of both regulatory changes, Howard says, "The disparate impact revisions make it more difficult to show a discriminatory impact if you are a person of color who was denied a tenancy in a predominately White neighborhood or building. But the change in the AFFH makes it less likely that an all-White neighborhood or building would be desegregated to begin with."

Biden Administration Regulation Reversals

In January 2021, President Biden signed executive orders that could ultimately reverse the former Trump administration's housing policies. One executive order asks that HUD review the changes by the then-Trump administration to AFFH and disparate impact regulations. Another directed all departments to implement a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that civil rights laws barring sex discrimination must include gender identity and sexual orientation. In early February 2021, HUD announced that it would investigate cases of discrimination against LGBTQ+ people seeking housing.

In the spring of 2021, HUD also reinstated rules removed by the former Trump administration to address systemic racism and housing discrimination.

The Biden administration also created a task force on property appraisals and valuation equity (PAVE) to identify and address racial bias in home appraisals. Researchers have shown that there exists a value gap between majority-Black and majority-White neighborhoods for otherwise comparable homes. Systematic undervaluation of properties by appraisers in such neighborhoods can have a significant negative effect on the wealth of minority homeowners and communities. PAVE seeks to address this.

Housing Discrimination Persists

Though the laws of the land now prohibit housing bias, the fact is that for renters and buyers, housing discrimination-especially racial discrimination-remains a serious problem in many places in the U.S. It's true that home sellers and landlords can no longer place ads that say "Whites only" or enforce restrictive covenants that forbid sale to racial or religious minorities (the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed this in the landmark 1948 Shelley v. Kraemer decision). Banks cannot overtly deny borrowers a mortgage solely because of their race-as was once common in the U.S. and, in fact, was perpetuated by federal housing policy through redlining.

But sellers, landlords, and bankers can discriminate in more subtle ways. These include refusing to show applicants listings in a specific neighborhood or steering applicants who are members of minority groups to communities where they are already prevalent, thereby promoting segregation.

Also, according to HUD, housing discrimination studies indicate that "same-sex couples and transgender persons in communities across the country experience demonstrably less favorable treatment than their straight and cisgender counterparts when seeking rental housing."

"Housing discrimination is one of the most insidious forms of discrimination," says New York civil rights attorney Alanna Kaufman, who represents clients in housing and employment discrimination cases. "It is particularly hard to tell if you have been discriminated [against] in housing as opposed to employment. You often don't know who else as a buyer or renter is looking at the same apartments or homes or units."

For instance, a three-year Newsday investigation published in 2019 found "widespread separate and unequal treatment of minority potential homebuyers and minority communities" in Long Island's Suffolk and Nassau counties in New York-one of the nation's most liberal states. Employing minority and White undercover homebuyers as testers, the evidence indicated that in 40% of the tests, brokers exposed minority testers to disparate treatment compared with White testers; for Black testers, that incidence rose to nearly half: Black testers experienced disparate treatment 49% of the time, Latinx testers 39% of the time, and Asian testers 19% of the time.

The disparate impact legal theory of liability was meant to address practices that have the effect of discriminating against a protected group whether or not that was their specific intent. An example would be a co-op board's giving preferential treatment to co-op applicants who are friends or family of existing residents of a co-operative apartment development, where the co-op board previously had engaged in racially discriminatory practices against a protected group, Kaufman says. Such a practice "would have a disproportionate impact on members of a different race, even though it appears on its face to be neutral. That is the type of claim affected by the rulemaking, and it makes it harder to succeed on those types of claims," she adds.

In communities or residential buildings with a history of segregation or discrimination against specific groups, disparate impact theory is often relevant.

Discrimination in Mortgage Lending

With respect to discrimination in mortgage lending, a January 2020 study of racial and ethnic discrimination in housing from 1976 to 2016 found that in the mortgage market, "racial gaps in loan denial have declined only slightly, and racial gaps in mortgage cost have not declined at all, suggesting persistent racial discrimination." The Biden administration has recently taken steps to combat the discriminatory practice of redlining and help reduce racial bias in lending.

Aside from outright denials, mortgage discrimination also includes making loans on less favorable terms than those for which minority applicants should qualify: An analysis of almost 7 million 30-year mortgages by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that Black and Latinx applicants paid nearly 0.08% more in mortgage interest and paid more in refinancing fees compared with White borrowers in face-to-face transactions. They fared only slightly better when using online or smartphone applications.

Antidiscrimination laws in mortgage lending are included in the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, passed in 1974, and are enforced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and state regulators.

Discrimination Stunts Wealth Building for Black Americans

Housing discrimination deprives people of more than a place to live. From a wealth-building perspective, it has been devastating to Black Americans' ability to build and transmit generational wealth. A 2019 analysis by the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, found that average housing wealth at age 60 or 61 for those who had purchased a home at age 45 or older was $26,668 for Blacks and $104,866 for Whites.

The wealth gap is largely attributable to the fact that a smaller percentage of Blacks are able to buy first homes before the age of 35, and their first homes are of lower value and purchased with more debt and less equity than Whites. In addition, Blacks often don't maintain homeownership beyond their first home, more often reverting to renting after the first purchase.

The median White family in the U.S. has 12 times the wealth of African American families, according to studies by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank, that cite federal government data. What's more, that gap has worsened rather than improved in the past couple of decades.

How to Fight Back Against Housing Discrimination

What can a prospective homebuyer or renter do if they believe they're experiencing discrimination?

Under antidiscrimination and harassment laws, owners of private property can legally refuse to rent or sell to anyone, and for any reason, as long as there is not a discriminatory basis against a "protected class," Howard says. This means that proving discrimination is not always easy.

Attorneys say that documenting the experience by actively listening to brokers, agents, and lenders and taking notes is the best way to gather the evidence needed to make a case with state or local fair housing officials or with HUD, the federal agency that enforces fair housing laws. They advise looking for the following:

Red-flag Language

Take note of statements or recommendations that may be a tip-off to discrimination.

"In dealing with a real estate agent, you can be attuned to the type of language the agent is using-for instance, if they say, 'This is a really good fit,' or 'I don't feel you would be at home in this neighborhood,' or 'I don't feel this would be a good fit for you,' or 'I feel you would be happier in this neighborhood.' If you feel the person is trying to direct you to certain neighborhoods with certain races or religions, that could often be a flag," Kaufman says.

Unexpected Roadblocks

Sudden obstacles that appear even after applicants are financially qualified for a home or apartment are another sign. "You try to rent or buy an apartment [and are denied] and then you see it is still on the market," Kaufman says.

"What we see most commonly in race discrimination is someone being told that apartments are not available when they are. A sign outside [says] that apartments are available and you go in and they are not. That is very common," Kaufman says.

In instances like these, it is helpful to reach out to organizations such as the Fair Housing Justice Center or similar nonprofit groups or to local human rights commissions, which can send out testers of different races to test for disparate treatment. "Often, as lawyers, we work with organizations that do testing with someone that is not in the same protected class, and that could be really good evidence," Kaufman says.

A homebuyer can also perform their own search to learn whether a broker failed to show all of the houses that are on the market or, in the case of mortgages, to check the bank's posted rates to confirm what rates are available, Howard says.

Negative Credit Information

Renters have recourse if they believe they have been discriminated against for one of the following reasons:

They have been denied a home because of negative or insufficient information obtained from a consumer reporting agency.

They are being charged a higher rent.

The terms of the rental are affected by adverse credit information.

In these cases, federal and state fair credit laws require that the applicant be informed of the reason why they were rejected or charged a higher rent; provided with the name and address of the agency that reported the negative information; and told of the applicant's right to obtain a free copy of the report by requesting it from that credit agency within 60 days. Renters can dispute the report's accuracy and add their own "consumer statement" to the report.

Similarly, suspected mortgage discrimination applicants also have the right to see any negative credit information and dispute it. They can report suspected mortgage discrimination or fraud to the CFPB for alleged violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and with HUD for alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act.

Steps to Get Help

The following are steps to take if you feel you have been discriminated against for housing on the basis of race, sex, national origin, religion, disability, or for other reasons forbidden by law:

Get State and/or Local Assistance

Contact your state or local fair housing commission or fair housing center. For help finding a local fair housing center, try contacting the National Fair Housing Alliance in Washington, D.C. Fair housing centers can send out testers to find evidence of discrimination in renting and home selling and in mortgage lending.

In some states, such as New York, individuals also can file a complaint with the state Division of Human Rights or state attorney general's civil rights bureau, or locally with a city commission on human rights. These government agencies can investigate complaints and, if there's probable cause, hold hearings to determine the facts, Howard says. But the alacrity with which local agents pursue a complaint sometimes depends on the politics of the area.

File a Federal Complaint

Fill out and file an administrative complaint with HUD's Fair Housing Equal Opportunity (FHEO) Office, which by law is supposed to investigate within 100 days of a filing. You can call the Housing Discrimination Hotline at (800) 669-9777, print out a form and mail it to the nearest regional office, or file a complaint online. The complaint form is available in English, Spanish, and seven other languages. Retaliation for filing a complaint is illegal. FHEO also enforces antidiscrimination laws with respect to mortgage lending and appraisals.

Sometimes, the U.S. Department of Justice will file lawsuits against people or companies that have violated the law, especially if there has been violence or a violation of criminal law, Howard says.

But the housing and civil rights attorneys said filing an administrative complaint with HUD-especially on disparate impact grounds-now faces substantial hurdles. People who live in states and cities with robust fair housing laws might be better off seeking a remedy in state courts.

"The 'disparate impact' standard recognized that it can be an insurmountable hurdle to prove that discrimination was intentional. The new rule would allow businesses to continue policies that have a demonstrably discriminatory effect if the claimant cannot establish that the policy was the direct cause of the discriminatory effect," Howard says.

For that reason, Howard suggests, in states and cities with tough fair housing standards and agencies, it may be preferable to pursue legal action through state and local agencies and courts rather than through HUD and federal courts. Local housing and civil rights attorneys and fair housing groups should know how best to proceed.

"It is fortunate that states like New York and many others have broader protections than federal laws, and you can seek remedies under your local laws," Kaufman points out.

File a Mortgage Lending Complaint

If you suspect mortgage lending discrimination, you can also file a complaint with the CFPB alleging violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Contact your state attorney general's office, too, to find out about state fair housing laws and the procedure for filing complaints at the state and local level.

If a complaint is upheld in federal district court, in general, victims can get actual damages or punitive damages for willful wrongdoing, depending on the circumstances, along with court costs and legal fees. In the case of class action lawsuits with others with the same claims, the government generally tries to win a settlement agreement with the defendant, Howard says.

Are there exceptions to housing discrimination laws?

What can I do if I experience housing discrimination?

How can I prove housing discrimination?

The Bottom Line

In general, when it comes to suspected housing discrimination, fighting back requires patience, gathering evidence and documentation, and often, good legal advice. "Pay attention, ask questions, take notes, investigate, and seek legal counsel. That is always the best advice," Kaufman says.

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Housing Discrimination: What Is It, and What Can You Do About It?

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Laws prohibit racial and other discrimination in housing. Yet housing experts and civil rights attorneys say bias remains stubbornly difficult to prove, let alone eradicate. Here's how to recognize housing discrimination, the laws that are meant to protect you from it, and how to fight it.

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Participation in this challenge will help us to discover how racial inequity and social injustice impact our community, to connect with one another and identify ways to dismantle racism and other forms of discrimination.

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What is my community doing to change the discriminatory practices of the past and move toward a more equitable future? Read about a city-wide ordinance that would bring an end to these practices!

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - The fair housing movement is on the brink of a critical and hard-fought victory in Cleveland.

City Council could soon take a giant leap toward protecting low-income renters with legislation amending the city's fair housing law to ban landlords from rejecting tenants simply because they plan to use a housing subsidy to pay rent.

After researching similar "source-of-income" protections in other cities and consulting with fair housing advocates, Councilman Kerry McCormack told me he expects to introduce Cleveland's ordinance in the coming weeks with at least two colleagues, Anthony Hairston and Jenny Spencer, signing on as co-sponsors. The legislation -- combined with Cleveland's right-to-counsel program, which guarantees legal representation for impoverished families facing eviction - positions Cleveland as a leader in progressive housing policy in Ohio and beyond.

"To me, it's simple," McCormack said. "You shouldn't experience discrimination based on how you pay your rent. And let's be real. We know some landlords use source of income as an excuse not to rent to certain populations and to advance systemic racism. It's exactly the kind of discrimination we need to root out."

The federal housing voucher program, better known as Section 8, was designed to give families in poverty an alternative to public housing complexes and the chance to live in high-opportunity communities that otherwise would have priced them out. Voucher recipients pay 30 percent of their income toward rent and the voucher covers the rest, capped by the area's fair market rent. The program is in high demand, with tens of thousands of families applying for one of 15,000 federal vouchers available in Cuyahoga County.

At its best, the program has the power to dilute a city's concentrated poverty and desegregate communities, while giving families and children access to good schools, decent housing and stable neighborhoods.

But rampant discrimination in the private rental market often sets those goals out of reach and thwarts the program's objectives. Landlords routinely refuse to accept tenants with housing subsidies. As a result, families often end up living not far from the neighborhoods they tried to escape. Only a tiny handful of Ohio municipalities ban discrimination against voucher holders. The topic has been at the heart of at least a dozen of my columns during the past year-and a-half, urging the kind of bold step that Cleveland might be taking now.

Cleveland's ordinance spells out the process and timeline for filing complaints and designates the city's Fair Housing Board to hear them. The legislation also clearly defines "source of income" to include all housing subsidies, social security and child or spousal support among other sources. Adding that definition is expected to help the ordinance survive judicial scrutiny, because similar laws without it have been challenged on the grounds that housing vouchers do not qualify as sources of income.

To be clear, Cleveland's law doesn't ban landlords from evicting tenants for good cause. Nor does it mean landlords must rent to someone who doesn't meet other qualifications for tenancy, such as passing a background check. McCormack says it was important to him that those landlord rights are preserved. It's also important to separate fact from fiction when it comes to voucher recipients, he said, adding that the majority of calls he's received as a councilman about disruptive tenants have involved non-voucher renters.

The ordinance would put action behind council's June resolution declaring racism a public health crisis and pledging to pursue policies to bring about racial equity.

Nearly 90 percent of voucher recipients in Cuyahoga County are Black. That means that rejecting a tenant simply because they are using a housing voucher could equate to racial discrimination - even if that's not the landlord's stated intent -- because that practice disproportionately disenfranchises Black families and contributes to racial segregation in the region.

According to data collected by the Cleveland-based Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research, two-thirds of voucher recipients live in neighborhoods that are majority Black, though many indicated on a survey that they would have chosen to live elsewhere if options were available. Eighty percent of survey respondents reported landlords' refusal to accept vouchers as a major limitation on their choices. And testing outside of areas of concentrated voucher use showed that landlords rejected vouchers 92 percent of the time.

While this type of discrimination is most prevalent in suburbs, it also abounds in neighborhoods on Cleveland's West Side, such as the ones McCormack represents.

McCormack says he's unafraid of potential political blowback for his endorsement of a policy that might be unpopular among landlords in his ward. He believes many residents - and his council colleagues -- value housing equality and would support the measure.

Brave leadership like McCormack's is rare in today's political climate. It should inspire Cuyahoga County Council to live up to its own declaration condemning racism as a public health crisis and take this housing policy countywide.

"There are certain issues that I fundamentally believe in," McCormack told me. "And if I get push back for them, so be it. If we're not willing to make systemic changes that make some folks uncomfortable, then we're not going to see any movement in the deep poverty and disparity in our community. These are steps that are long overdue. And guess what - it's good for the economy and health of the region to help more Clevelanders live successful lives."
You can reach columnist Leila Atassi at latassi@cleveland.com.

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No more 'No Section 8!' Cleveland City Council poised to ban housing voucher discrimination: Leila Atassi

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - The fair housing movement is on the brink of a critical and hard-fought victory in Cleveland. City Council could soon take a giant leap toward protecting low-income renters with legislation amending the city's fair housing law to ban landlords from rejecting tenants simply because they plan to use a housing subsidy to pay rent.

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