Race, Place and Social Equity

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Race, Place and Social Equity

• Presentation to Geography 240 Urban Economic
  Geography
• Jason Reece, AICP
• Senior Researcher
• Reece.35_at_osu.edu
• The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race
  Ethnicity
• The Ohio State University
• January 16th 2008

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Discussion Points

• Access to Opportunity Matters
• Race, poverty, place and inequity
• Understanding our urban form
• Housing Our Link to Opportunity
• Reflecting on the 40th Anniversary of the Fair
  Housing Act
• Have we achieved fair housing?
• New and future challenges

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Opportunity MattersRace, Poverty, Place and
Inequity
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Neighborhoods and Access to Opportunity

• Five decades of research indicate that your
  environment has a profound impact on your access
  to opportunity and likelihood of success
• Impoverished Blacks and Latinos are far more
  likely to live in neighborhoods of concentrated
  poverty
• These high poverty environments create deplorable
  living conditions and are a manifestation of
  living isolated from opportunity

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The Cumulative Impacts of Spatial, Racial and
Opportunity Segregation
Segregation impacts a number of life-opportunities
Impacts on Health
School Segregation
Impacts on Educational Achievement
Exposure to crime arrest
Transportation limitations and other inequitable
public services
Job segregation
Neighborhood Segregation
Racial stigma, other psychological impacts
Impacts on community power and individual assets
Adapted from figure by Barbara Reskin at
http//faculty.washington.edu/reskin/
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Housing location determines access to schools.
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jobs
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neighborhood amenities
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How Were These Communities Created?

• Housing policies, discrimination, land use policy
  and patterns of regional investment and
  disinvestment converge to produce continued
  racial segregation in our society
• Producing a racial isolation in neighborhoods
  that are lacking the essential opportunities to
  advance in our society (fueling racial
  disparities)

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Policies Enforcing InequityHistorical
Government Role

• If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is
  necessary that properties shall continue to be
  occupied by the same social and racial classes.
  A change in social or racial occupancy generally
  contributes to instability and a decline in
  values.
• Excerpt from the 1947 FHA underwriting manual

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Historical Contemporary Racial Dynamics in
Housing

• Public and private practices supported the
  creation and maintenance of segregated
  neighborhoods
• FHA lending restrictions disallowed integrated
  neighborhoods, which restricted equity-building
  in suburbs largely to whites
• Privately maintained racially restrictive
  covenants
• Mid-century Urban Renewal replaced poor
  neighborhoods with commercial development or
  housing for whites poor people of color moved to
  high-density, high-rise public housing utilized
  eminent domain
• Highway building facilitated moves from city to
  suburb and movement between suburbs gas/auto
  subsidies
• New infrastructure prioritized over existing
  repair and updates

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The Wailing Wall in Detroit
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The Rise of SuburbiaBut not accessible to
everyone
In the suburb-shaping years (1930-1960), less
than one-percent of all African Americans were
able to obtain a mortgage.
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Urban Renewal in Boston
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Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis
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Cabrini Green in Chicago
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Land Use and Inequity

• What is sprawl?
• Uncoordinated, disjointed, low density and
  inefficient development/land use policy
• Sprawl is not natural but a reflection of poor
  and outdated policy
• A disorganized movement of the states investment
  from existing communities to a few select
  communities
• The favored quarter
• A government subsidized/supported redistribution
  of Ohios wealth and resources

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Segregation, Inequity Sprawl

• Sprawl actively works to disconnect marginalized
  communities from opportunity
• Pushing limited resources away from existing
  communities
• Segregating people from opportunity
• Space is how race plays out in American
  society-and the key to solving inequities in
  housing, transportation, education, and health
  careSprawl is the new face of Jim Crow. -- john
  powell
• This is not a natural phenomena or just the free
  market in action, it is a result of policy

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Policies Enforcing Inequity Contemporary
Government Role

• The exclusion and segregation produced by sprawl
  is not natural or neutral it results from
  government policies, such as
• Zoning laws prevent affordable housing in many
  growth areas
• Housing policies concentrate subsidized housing
• Municipalities subsidize the relocation of
  businesses out of the city
• Transportation and infrastructure spending
  favoring highways, metropolitan expansion and
  urban sprawl
• Court decisions prevent metropolitan school
  desegregation
• School funding is tied to property taxes
• These factors support racial/social segregation
  and isolation from opportunity

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Who Lives in Concentrated Poverty Neighborhoods?

• Over 3.1 million African Americans lived in
  Concentrated Poverty Neighborhoods in 2000,
  Blacks and Latinos represent nearly 3 out of 4
  residents in these neighborhoods
• Nearly 1 out of 10 Blacks lived in a concentrated
  poverty neighborhood in 1999, compared to 1 out
  of 100 Whites
• Whites only make 30 of people living in high
  poverty neighborhoods, although they represent
  55 of the total population living in poverty

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Segregation from Opportunity Neighborhood Poverty

• In all three of Ohios largest metropolitan
  areas, African Americans live in neighborhoods
  with 2 to 3 times the poverty rate experienced in
  White Neighborhoods

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Housing Our Link to Communities of
OpportunityLocation, Location, Location
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Housing Location, Location, Location

• Housing location determines (some examples)
• The appreciation you can expect to see in your
  home value
• The quality of schools your children will attend
• Your exposure to crime, violence and public
  safety risk
• Your access to employment, transit and job
  networks
• Where you live is more important than what you
  live in

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Housing and Wealth

• Housing is critical to building assets and wealth
  in the US
• Racial disparities in wealth are far more
  pronounced than disparities in income
• Wealth and assets are what we use to buy
  opportunity and it allows us to take risk which
  also creates new wealth

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Home Ownership Wealth

• Home Equity
• Home equity is often the largest component of the
  average American familys wealth
• It accounts for 75 of the assets held by the
  median household in the U.S.
• It has been critical in the growth of the middle
  class throughout the U.S. following World War II
• Unequal Access to Home Equity
• A legacy of historical discrimination in lending
  and access to home ownership, the cost of living
  in segregated communities and discontinued
  discrimination in the housing market have
  prevented families of color from accessing the
  wealth potential of home equity

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The Racial Wealth Gap
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Housing and Education
Produces Dysfunctional Schools
Housing Discrimination
Segregation
50 years after the Brown Decision, Americas
schools have re-segregated into affluent white
districts and poor under-funded African American
and Hispanic districts
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Economic Segregation and Racial Segregation in
Public Schools Southwest Ohio High Poverty
Schools (Red and Yellow) are Concentrated in
African American Neighborhoods (Areas in Gray)
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Segregation by Race and Class in Cincinnati
Schools
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Cycle of School Segregation
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Sprawl and Disinvestment in Urban Communities

• Decades of suburban flight have drained low
  income inner city neighborhoods of people,
  business and investment
• High vacancy rates and poor investment harms the
  quality of life for inner city residents and
  limits the resources (tax base) for low income
  communities

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Sprawl, Inequity and Economic Opportunity

• Jobs have moved away from the labor pool in many
  metropolitan areas, making connecting job-seekers
  with jobs a challenge (compounded by poor public
  transportation)
• In 2000, more than 40 of Cincinnatis jobs have
  moved more than 10 miles from downtown
• Public investment disproportionately favors
  highways over public transportation public
  transportation can not access most suburban job
  sites
• Nearly 60 of Cincinnatis black population is
  physically segregated from jobs
• The eighth highest rate in the nation among the
  largest 100 metropolitan areas

Source Brookings Institute
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Reflecting on the 40th Anniversary of the Fair
Housing ActHave we Achieved Fair Housing?
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The Significance of the Fair Housing Act

• Signed into law by President Johnson on April
  11th 1968
• Direct result of the tremendous efforts of Dr.
  Martin Luther King in opening up segregated
  communities (Bill passage tied directly to Dr.
  Kings assassination on April 4th)
• Places significant limitations on housing
  discrimination in the private market
• Places burden on the government to affirmatively
  further fair housing
• A critical provision in cases challenging the
  actions of public housing authorities

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Fair Housing Integration
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Racial Disparity in Households Impacted by
Housing Problems Hamilton County 2000
Source US Dept. of Housing Urban Development
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Barriers to Fair HousingThe Web of Housing
Challenges
Housing Challenges
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Impacts on Housing Opportunity

• Sprawl, subsidized housing policy and
  exclusionary zoning reduce access to the housing
  market for low income residents (especially
  people of color)
• Suburban zoning regulations artificially drive up
  the cost of housing and do not allow enough
  rental housing
• New housing is unaffordable to low income
  residents and most people of color
• Subsidized housing policy is still concentrating
  most public subsidized affordable housing
• Disinvestment in the inner city reduces the asset
  value (wealth) of homeowners in inner city
  neighborhoods

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Growing Affordability Problems (in Many Markets)

• The nation has a growing affordability problem
• Appreciation in coastal markets and lagging
  incomes in other markets are contributing to this
  trend
• Even for markets like Columbus
• Columbus is now the 3rd least affordable housing
  market in the Midwest

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Exclusionary Land Use Policy
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Racial Steering and Discrimination

• Recent studies by researchers and the federal
  government (HUD) found that racial steering,
  discrimination and exclusion are still prevalent
  in the housing market
• Creating barriers to housing access outside of
  cost impediment
• Orfield and Luce (2005) Iceland, Sharpe and
  Steinmetz (2005) Dawkins (2004) Pendall (2000)
  HUD HDS (2000) Galster (1998) Schill and Wachter
  (1995) Massey, Gross and Shibuya (1994) HUD HDS
  (1989)

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Racial Steering in Detroit
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New Threats The Sub-Prime and Foreclosure
Challenge

• The result of the sub-prime foreclosure crisis
  in the US may significantly erode fair housing
  gains and further isolate inner city
  neighborhoods
• 2 million foreclosures expected in the next two
  years
• Nationwide, nearly 55 of all high cost loans
  went to African American borrowers
• Experts estimate that the loss in home equity to
  African American and Latino homeowners will
  exceed a quarter of trillion dollars
• Why, direct asset loss (foreclosure) and loss in
  home value due to the geographic concentration of
  foreclosures in minority neighborhoods

Source United for a Fair Economy
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Predatory Lending and Race Example (Cleveland)
Maps Produced and adapted from Charles Bromley,
SAGES Presidential Fellow, Case Western University
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Predatory Lending, Foreclosure and Race Example
(Cleveland)
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Examples of Policies that Promote Racial and
Regional Equity (1)

• Housing Initiatives
• Inclusionary zoning, opportunity based housing,
  workforce housing
• Growth Control Initiatives
• Growth management (that preserves affordable
  housing in areas of opportunity)
• Tax Sharing Initiatives
• Tax base sharing, income tax strategies
• Public Infrastructure Initiatives
• Reinvestment in existing communities
• Removing subsidies associated with sprawl

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Examples of Smart Growth or Regionalism that
Promote Racial and Regional Equity (2)

• Transportation Initiatives
• Equitable transportation spending, expanding
  public transit investments
• Public Education Initiatives
• Regionalized school districts, economic
  integration, magnet schools, school mobility,
  targeting highly qualified teachers, day long
  year long schooling
• Inner City Redevelopment
• Land bank programs, increasing homeownership,
  minority and small business development,
  leveraging public investments to attract private
  investment, investing in people (work force
  development)

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An Example of Equitable Policy Reform

• Thompson V. HUD

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Conditions in Baltimore

• Subsidized housing opportunities in Baltimore are
  generally clustered in the regions predominately
  African American neighborhoods

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Proposed remedy identifies Communities of
Opportunity

• Used 14 indicators of neighborhood opportunity to
  designate high and low opportunity neighborhoods
  in the region
• Neighborhood Quality/Health
• Poverty, Crime, Vacancy, Property Values,
  Population Trends
• Economic Opportunity
• Proximity to Jobs and Job Changes, Public Transit
• Educational Opportunity
• School Poverty, School Test Scores, Teacher
  Qualifications

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