Segregation in Urban Planning

Final Essay UPPP4
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course name & number
Professor
Due date
Segregation in Urban Planning
The belief that there is no racism or economic inequality in the United States is a misconception. There exists a wide gap in the distribution of resources through home ownership, business ownership, savings, and investments, traced back fifty years ago through the legal segregation of blacks and whites fueled by homeownership policies during the New Deal era. Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Administration employed redlining practices, which labeled different areas with different colors based on the race of their inhabitants. While the two organizations were instrumental in reviving the housing industry, their discriminatory home ownership policies through redlining brought about urban segregation.Redlining was an illegal and racially discriminatory practice that systematically denied some citizens housing services such as mortgages and insurance loans based on their locations and ethnicity. The practice, which gained significant ground in the 1930s during the New Deal era, saw Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Administration systematically utilize government maps to grade where each ethnic group lived. Green and blue neighborhoods were considered ‘best’ and ‘still desirable,’ mainly inhabited by white people. Yellow areas were considered ‘definitely declining,’ while red neighborhoods, inhabited mainly by black people, were marked as ‘hazardous’ and thus undesirable living (Kumar, Lecture 4). Additionally, despite the 1967 Fair Housing Act creating a homeownership program for low-income earners through interest-rate subsidies and mortgage insurance, many lenders utilized zoning maps to determine who to offer loans and mortgages. For instance, government loan programs would provide loans to low-income whites but reject middle or upper-income earners who were African Americans. The argument was their neighborhoods were color-coded red, making them risky areas, thus unworthy of loans (Kumar, lecture 4).
Redlining resulted in urban segregation by denying black people finance mortgages. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board encouraged financial institutions to consider the conditions of the applicant’s neighborhood before offering a loan. As a result, potential black homeowners living in areas categorized as hazardous were denied access to mortgage loans. Thus, it made it difficult for them to own homes in different areas, isolating them in specific neighborhoods with poor housing conditions without access to all necessities. Additionally, it resulted in urban segregation through exploitative mortgage loans. Lending institutions that were willing to offer loans to black people offered overpriced mortgages with no equity (Taylor, 2019, p. 70-78). Consequently, black people ...