Redlining Affects Us Today
By: Hailey Akey
Redlining in Newark, from OpportunityAtlas
It is generally known and accepted that where you live has an impact on your health. However, it is less understood that historical policies, although perhaps repealed, leave social, economic, and environmental legacies that live on beyond their lifetime.
Redlining can be traced to the Great Depression in the 1930s when the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) made redlining maps color-coded by the associated risk of supplying a mortgage — the riskiest areas marked in red. These areas were communities with a higher proportion of African-American and immigrant populations. As a result, residents of redlined areas were unable to obtain mortgages, concentrating poverty in communities of color for generations. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 sought to remedy the harm caused by redlining by banning discrimination concerning housing on characteristics like race and national origin, but it is clear the effects endure.
Redlining is a prime example of structural racism, defined as the combination of ways in which societies foster discrimination through mutually reinforcing systems. Redlining entrenched racist attitudes in federal policy and these policies set a standard that private lenders followed. Environmental racism also plays a role. A form of structural racism, it involves disproportionately burdening communities of color with health hazards associated with toxic waste, airborne particulate matter, and other pollutants.Oil and gas wells are disproportionately located in or near previously redlined communities, which increases exposure to numerous pollutants. These areas are also far less likely to have access to parks, trees, and green spaces, the presence of which has a myriad of health benefits. The lack of green space is associated with urban heat islands (hotter temperatures) and poorer air quality, to name a few examples.
Those who live in historically redlined communities face a host of health problems. On a basic level, the lack of funds to invest in these homes meant many of them contained mold, lead paint, and asbestos. Residents have shorter life spans (in some places as much as 20 or 30 years shorter than other neighborhoods in the same city), and higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, asthma, obesity, kidney disease, maternal mortality, and adverse birth outcomes. Additionally, there are systematic hospital closures across historically redlined communities, completely removing access to care in certain areas. The emergence of COVID-19 in 2020 exemplified how disadvantaged those in previously redlined areas truly are. The burdens of this recent public health crisis were by no means shared equally, with low-income and minority communities especially vulnerable. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition found statistical significance between greater redlining and pre-existing conditions for increased risks of morbidity in COVID-19 patients.
The effects of redlining affect people all over the country, from San Francisco to Milwaukee, and they will continue to do so if action isn’t taken to restore health equity. Sufficiently stated by Xing Gao, a doctoral candidate in UC Berkeley's Public Health program, “...future policymaking [has] to center equity and justice when it comes to housing.”
View 1930s HOLC and 2020s Health Data mapped for 140 cities.
