Understanding Housing Discrimination and Red Lining
Check out this video from Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and director of the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project, for an overview of the history and legacy of redlining:
Find Books
The Color of Law by Location: Mugar Library - Library Service Desk ; E185.61 .R8185 2018Publication Date: 2018How federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation.
The Fight for Fair Housing by Location: Available OnlineISBN: 9781134822805Publication Date: 2017Leading fair housing activists and scholars tell the stories that led to the passage of the Fair Housing Act, its consequences, and the implications of the act going forward.
Know Your Price : Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2020Perry argues for shifting away from simplified notions of equality and moving toward maximizing equity.
Moving Toward Integration by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2018Analysis of American housing segregation, why racial segregation has been resilient, how public policy can align with demographic trends to achieve broad housing integration.
The One-Way Street of Integration by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2018The One-Way Street of Integration examines two contrasting housing policy approaches to achieving racial justice.
Perspectives on Fair Housing by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2020Meaningful government intervention continues to be required in order to achieve a housing market in which a person's background does not arbitrarily restrict access.
Sundown Towns by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2005A sweeping analysis of American residential patterns demonstrating that strict racial exclusion was the norm in 20th c. America.
People Before Highways by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2018In 1948, inspired by changes to federal law, Massachusetts government officials started hatching a plan to build multiple highways circling and cutting through the heart of Boston.
Find Articles
The following articles are a selection of resources available through BU Libraries:
- "The Rising of Systemic Racism and Redlining in the United States of America" by Edward Brian Flournoy (2021). Available here.
- "Historical neighbourhood redlining and contemporary environmental racism" by Issam Motairek et. al (2023). Available here.
- Fractures Within Fair Housing: The Battle for the Memory and Legacy of the Long Fair Housing Movement" (2023). Available here.
- "Social service workers' knowledge of and attitudes toward fair housing laws" by Jennifer Roark et. al (2017). Available here.
Find Data
Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America: Contains more than 150 interactive maps and thousands of "area descriptions" from Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC). These materials afford an extraordinary view of the contours of wealth and racial inequality in Depression-era American cities and insights into discriminatory policies and practices that so profoundly shaped cities that we feel their legacy to this day.
Diversity and Disparities: Census information compiled at the portal describes the racial-ethnic diversity of U.S. states, metropolitan and micropolitan areas, counties, and places (e.g., cities, suburbs, small towns) for the 1980-2010 period. This information can be accessed in three ways. A summary measure of diversity (the entropy index), pan-ethnic group counts and proportions, and simple compositional graphics are available on a case-by-case basis via pull-down menus.
Tenants’ Rights and Affordable Housing Movements: Key issues were, and remain: the passage and maintenance of rent control legislation; creating a legal and regulatory structure for tenants’ rights vs. landlords (notably building maintenance and services, and protection against harassment and eviction); and the building of both public housing projects and limited equity cooperative housing projects for low and moderate income New Yorkers.
