How Government Redlining Maps Encouraged Segregation in California Cities

[KamaAina]

http://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2016/04/27/redlining/

He did not, however, elaborate on the various federal government policies in place before the Civil Rights Movement that actually encouraged housing discrimination and segregation. It’s these policies, some historians argue, that helped determine the demographic makeup of the neighborhoods many of us live in today.

One example is the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). Established by Congress in 1933, the initiative was promoted by President Franklin Roosevelt to help stem the urban foreclosure crisis that had spiked during the Great Depression....

To show which areas were safe investments, HOLC gathered reams of local data to draw up “residential safety maps” of cities across the nation. Neighborhoods were classified into one of four categories based on “favorable” and “detrimental” influences. Factors included terrain and type and age of buildings, as well as the “threat of infiltration of foreign-born, negro, or lower grade population.”...

Not surprisingly, HOLC’s classification method was heavily influenced by a neighborhood’s racial and economic demographics.

[RepubliCON-Watch]

1. I have been extremely proud of Sacramento for being an outlier in that trend in the past.

Mayor Fargo in the 2000s did great work in the effort to diversify the wealthier neighbourhoods and maintain the minority-prestige of other neighbourhoods. Oddly enough, Kevin Johnson has done the exact opposite and has gentrified historically minority communities in favour of business/tech friendly sections and large box stores in city regions.