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As we all know from magisterial historians such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, while you might think that FDR was fairly busy fighting the Depression and WWII, what he was really most devoted to was drawing red lines around all the Tragic Dirt in America and forcing blacks to live on top of it, while whites got all the Magic Dirt.
It’s kind of like those magic eruv wires that ultra-Orthodox rabbis string around neighborhoods. For example, there’s an eruv wire entirely enclosing the Hollywood Hills neighborhood among the Ventura, Hollywood, Santa Monica, and San Diego freeways. (You may scoff, but property values within this wire perimeter are extremely high, by the way. Coincidence? I don’t think so.)
Except FDR’s redlining was evil. As we know now, FDR was a kind of sorcerer or witchdoctor casting spells across the country from his wheelchair.
In Slate, somebody tries to actually quantify the impact of redlining 80 years ago:
Redlining Has Taken a Huge Toll on Property Values. But Not Everywhere.
By HENRY GRABARAPRIL 25, 201812:17 PM
More than 80 years ago, the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation released its “Residential Security” maps, guides of American cities for lenders and brokers infamous for the color they used to condemn black neighborhoods to decades of disinvestment: red.
The four-tiered HOLC maps worked to both hamper black home-buying and quash its gains, setting in motion a racial disparity in home values that helps explain today’s racial wealth gap. Zillow has used that project to show how the correlation between home values and redlining endures, 50 years after the 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed the practice. Nationally, the median home value in redlined areas is $276,100, compared with $324,489 outside of them—a difference of nearly $50,000.
Okay … so home values in redlined districts is 15% less than elsewhere. Is 15% really a huge number considering how much weight the Conventional Wisdom has given redlining in this decade? Especially considering everything else going on that influences property values?
How much of this is actually due to redlining, rather than just correlated with it? Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, also working off of Mapping Inequality, estimated in August that although HOLC maps did sometimes describe conditions on the ground, they also determined what would happen. The team showed that redlining alone accounted for 15 to 30 percent of the gap in segregation and homeownership between redlined, or D-grade, areas and yellow, or C-grade, neighborhoods. (Other studies have shown similar long-term causation related to redlining.) But those researchers came away with another interesting finding: The effects of redlining have decreased since the passage of the Fair Housing Act, and differences in home values and homeownership have largely dissipated between D and C areas—and are now more pronounced between C and B areas (blue on the old HOLC maps).
What’s most striking about the Zillow data is how much variation there is between cities.
In other words, current home values are much more related to where blacks have chosen to live over the last 50 years than in the more distant past.
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No evidence
https://www.vdare.com/articles/the-hidden-clue
It’s kind of ironic that black homeownership rates have been 20% behind the white for about 70 years. The gap is impervious to wars, redlining, housing lawos, credit bubbles and credit tightening.
http://beta.accesstofinancialsecurity.org/sites/default/files/HomeownershipPaperBrief_JointCenter-1354525951.pdf
My legal immigrant wife: “No redline! Only Crime line!”
Trying to wrap my mind around the almost no difference between the St. Louis value for non-redline vs redline. My guess is that, since the redline maps were drawn in the FDR era, by percentage, St. Louis didn’t have that many blacks, yet, so there weren’t that many areas to redline. But over the years, as the Great Migration deposited more blacks in St. Louis, and as the black plight white flight cycle churned over and over, way more of the areas that weren’t in St. Louis’s redline in the FDR era would be redlined today if we still did redlining.
O/T
When the Third World/Bugmen labor force turns out to be not so pliable after all. CultMarx leads to OldMarx.
http://www.wweek.com/news/2018/04/23/southeast-portland-burgerville-employees-vote-to-become-the-nations-first-fast-food-union/
Look at Portland. It’s inverse. Given that Portland had virtually no negroes back in the day, what can this mean? Obviously it’s evidence of racism, because everything is.
I will here quote the redoubtable Michael Christopher Scott:
Portland, Seattle, Denver...
Hmmm..
#BlackCrimesMatter
Or if you prefer something less dramatic -- they've priced themselves out of the market. No one would voluntarily enter into any relationship with them.
These days large cities can't handle a sedan making a left turn. What happens if there's no food or water for a year? A lot cheaper than a neutron bomb and you get the same result. Empty buildings.
Wait, redlined areas in Minneapolis are worth more?
Sheesh. Is this the best they can do? This is just as lame as all the other cart-before-the-horse liberal so-called analysis.
This doesn’t even make sense. If black homeowners are really better than whites, then black-only neighborhoods should be more valuable, not less. Gains wouldn’t be “quashed”, they would be enhanced.
St. Louis is the least of it. Boston, Minneapolis, Denver and Portland actually have higher values in former redlined areas.
Guessing it is something to do with those towns’ hyper-whiteness. (“Hyper” here means a basic majority that is not declining too fast. That’s as hyper as it gets nowadays.)
I was watching a PBS bleating about redlining, they red lined based mostly on the condition of the buildings. And because trashed buildings tend to be cheaper to rent, that was where whatever underclass existed, lived. Which meant that was the negro area, if you had negros. No negros? Then it was white underclass. But the lefty obsession only is about the dark ones.....
It wasn't about figuring out the racial aspects of the neighborhood, it was a value appraisal of the real estate. After all, this was about the Fed gobt lending money, and they wanted it paid back.
If the buildings were in good condition, no redline. Regardless of what is living there....
FDR was busy giving comrade Stalin half of Europe. Cut him some slack.
ballsblocs and integrate the Commie neighborhoods, as the bloc-busters were all in Siberia by that point.“In other words, current home values are much more related to where blacks have chosen to live over the last 50 years than in the more distant past.”
Portland, Seattle, Denver…
Hmmm..
#BlackCrimesMatter
15%, shmifteen percent. Only quantity that matters is a democratic majority.
Lose that and count it all up: Zimbabwe, South Africa, privilege, privilege contracts, microaggressions, sensitivity re-education for an entire company because one manager insisting loiterers on your property buy something or leave, a narrative of promised but unpaid reparations, oh and red lining and Maoist silencing tactics.
Precedent and legal framework.
Imagine the party that can secure 44% of the vote on all other merits and coalitions – but has leadership with the imagination to reach for the stars and lock in a hard 60% by promising Land Reform and Economic Freedom.
That would explain his popularity with whites.
Good point. Talk about your redlining – that Red Iron Curtain that descended in 1947 sure brought property values down on the East Bloc side. There weren’t any Bloc-busters either to bust some
ballsblocs and integrate the Commie neighborhoods, as the bloc-busters were all in Siberia by that point.https://www.vdare.com/articles/the-hidden-clueReplies: @Mishra
Thanks for that Blast From Our Past. Peter Brimelow was cool before cool was cool. His 1993 (Forbes!) article actually gives me some hope, seeing that the full-court press was on so long ago and still, in 2018, banks are permitted to consider credit ratings before extending credit. You know that’s got to fall–it’s almost as bad as colleges considering test scores. Racist racist racist. Also–did I mention? Racist.
It’s like “Global Thermonuclear War” — the only winning move is to not play.
Or if you prefer something less dramatic — they’ve priced themselves out of the market. No one would voluntarily enter into any relationship with them.
These days large cities can’t handle a sedan making a left turn. What happens if there’s no food or water for a year? A lot cheaper than a neutron bomb and you get the same result. Empty buildings.
Well when Detroit was mostly White it had the highest property values in the World and the highest standards of living. It was a Real Life Richville with so much art and culture that it was called the Paris of the West. Now that its mostly black, you can buy a four bedroom house for a dollar and still lose money. It MUST be racism. Its not like blacks are intelligent creatures or have any free will or agency after all. They can be easily controlled by inanimate objects like guns or knives. In fact, if Wakanda actually existed, they might be ruled by an inanimate carbon rod. We all know how racist inanimate carbon rods can be don’t we?
So that includes the hyper expensive Birds and Persian Jewish Trousdale. Then again that is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle as it is for a rich man to enter heaven is an integral part of our Judeo Christian heritage.
https://www.wmagazine.com/story/persian-beverly-hills-2
Stalin’s armies held half of Europe in 1945. We helped them do it but I’d say it was mostly their own doing.
So blacks ENJOY lower housing costs than whites for identical houses. This is a problem?
Growing up I lived in a San Francisco Victorian on Clay St between Scott and Divisadero. Lower Pacific Heights. 3 blocks down was California St. that marked the edge of the Fillmore ghetto. An identical Victorian house could be had for almost nothing in the Fillmore. It wouldn’t be ‘restored’- yet it was there for the taking if you could handle the ‘vibrancy’ of the neighbors.
When the Reverend Jim Jones took 1500 or so Fillmore residents to Guyana and poisoned most of them he wiped out the Fillmore ghetto. The dead black ladies ‘owned’ those Fillmore Victorians and with their deaths their less devout male offspring who loitered on the streets and porches of the ghetto were cast to the wind ( or Oakland). White Yuppies bought and restored those Victorians.
The obsession with the ability of blacks to buy homes 80 years ago as a major explanation of the wealth gap seems like it should be fairly easy to knock down. After all, black households for several generations have been far more likely to consist of single mothers rather than married couples, which has to be a gigantic impediment to accumulating assets, there are differences in education, differences in consumer spending habits, and black Americans are more likely to put saving in low-yield instruments like savings accounts or CDs than put them into equities or real estate.
In many neighborhoods, homes appreciate very slowly, if at all, over decades, making home ownership more of a kind of forced savings plan than an investment – in fact owners in these areas are probably upside down when factoring in property taxes, maintenance costs, and interest of the term of a mortgage.
The redlining was in the ’30s before the war.
In many neighborhoods, homes appreciate very slowly, if at all, over decades, making home ownership more of a kind of forced savings plan than an investment - in fact owners in these areas are probably upside down when factoring in property taxes, maintenance costs, and interest of the term of a mortgage.Replies: @Mishra
All of your points are valid; however the inevitable response is that all of these bad habits are the result of white racism, as manifested in redlining among other things. The objection isn’t particularly reasonable, but you should be ready for it.
This kinda refutes the specious findings of the Boston Fed back in the 90s. The redlined areas of Boston are worth almost $100K more now.
Thanks for the map, Steve.
Now I have another reason to justify my life-long preference for Santa Monica, Brentwood, and Pacific Palisades over Beverly Hills and even Bel Air (where my dear aunt just turned 96).
My maternal Great Grandfather was born in West Philadelphia, as was his wife. They bought their first home there in 1912….it was 99% white , but by 1940 was 20% Black, by 1950 70% Black.
He refused to sell, his neighborhood was redlined , which caused the value of his 3 story Brownstone to fall. My Grandfather sold the home in 1960 for $9500 and bought a home in Upper Darby, the nearby suburbs for $15,000. Last year his home in the suburbs was sold for $185,000….the home in West Philly is now listed for $700,000 because white have moved back to Powelton Village. Two generations saw their property values destroyed as Blacks moved into their neighborhoods.
Not all those living in redlined areas were Black , many, like my Great Grandparents and Grandparents were whites who had lived in these cities for 100 years.
On my paternal side we see the same exact outcome…they were the first settlers in Pennsylvania, which was then called New Sweden. One of my ancestors was the Mayor of Chester in 1775 and a signer of the declaration…my Grandmother and Grandfather were born in Chester , as were their parents and Grandparents..The area became redlined and Chester became one of the worst cities in America by 1980.
Except for SL, the other cities didn’t have much of a negro area or areas. So the redlining must have been white trash, there weren’t enough minorities floating around to get a soul and value crushing concentration of them.
I was watching a PBS bleating about redlining, they red lined based mostly on the condition of the buildings. And because trashed buildings tend to be cheaper to rent, that was where whatever underclass existed, lived. Which meant that was the negro area, if you had negros. No negros? Then it was white underclass. But the lefty obsession only is about the dark ones…..
It wasn’t about figuring out the racial aspects of the neighborhood, it was a value appraisal of the real estate. After all, this was about the Fed gobt lending money, and they wanted it paid back.
If the buildings were in good condition, no redline. Regardless of what is living there….
Wow, you still remember that! I only found out about it in maybe 2010, book about the housing bubble and how that Fed had told the banks they could loan to sub-humans with room temp credit ratings if the SH took a consumer economics course at the local community college. Like 30 hours of class is going to negate a lifetime of making bad decisions. LOL
In mean time in Denver
Denver sees skyrocketing home values in formerly redlined neighborhoods, bucking national norm https://www.denverpost.com/2018/04/27/denver-sees-skyrocketing-home-values-in-formerly-redlined-neighborhoods-bucking-national-norm/
It’s gentrification of course, which is also White evil https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/us/denver-cafe-gentrification.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=FD39F419A34FB844A41E5E3FEE61BEC1&gwt=pay
either way White = Evil
Denver sees skyrocketing home values in formerly redlined neighborhoods, bucking national norm https://www.denverpost.com/2018/04/27/denver-sees-skyrocketing-home-values-in-formerly-redlined-neighborhoods-bucking-national-norm/
It's gentrification of course, which is also White evil https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/us/denver-cafe-gentrification.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=FD39F419A34FB844A41E5E3FEE61BEC1&gwt=pay
either way White = EvilReplies: @Anon
Lots of gentrification going on in the West Bank.
No doubt. I personally cannot imagine being part of a group whose leaders/advocates insist are uniquely incapable of overcoming life’s obstacles – and going along with that – but that’s undoubtedly my gigantic invisible knapsack of privilege.
Cable-ism.
How pious are people, really, when they think they can fool God with these silly legalistic tricks?
Always happy to see MCS acknowledged.
It will never stop. The more we do for them, the more they whine about how awful we are. The only positive outcome of the looming Asian-Latino takeover of the once-great republic is that the American blacks will finally be put in their place. Even the African immigrants won’t put up with their perpetual bitching.