The Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Redlining of Boyle Heights
To determine how their mortgages should be valued, HOLC investigators surveyed American cities and issued Residential Security. They ranked neighborhoods on a scale, with the highest value neighborhoods designated blue and the lowest designated red.
In their survey of Boyle Heights, the HOLC noted that the area was "literally honeycombed with diverse and subversive racial elements."
Boyle Heights' "red" ranking came with serious consequences. For one, the "red" assessment signaled "riskiness," making it much more difficult for those interesting in purchasing a home in the neighborhood to obtain financing from mortgage-lenders.
Effectively reduced the value of existing properties
Boyle Heights also became a target for urban renewal programs. Agencies at the local, state, and national level began seizing land in the neighborhood to dedicate it to more "public" purposes. -- Five freeways were constructed in and around the neighborhood between 1943 and 1960, the first of which, the Interstate 10 cut directly through Brooklyn Avenue, cleaving the neighborhood into two. East Los Angeles Interchange - snarling mess - In 1942, construction was completed on Aliso Village, one of the nation's first integrated public housing projects, with two additional housing projects - Pico Gardens and Estrada Courts - completed by 1950.
Between the housing projects and the freeways, the construction resulted in the removal of almost 3,000 dwellings in the area and the displacement of some 10,000 residents. And the neighborhood's remaining homeowners saw the values of their properties decline.
The HOLC's redlining of Boyle Heights thereby encouraged a phenomenon that scholars often refer to as "white flight" - when more affluent white residents left
By 1955, Boyle Heights' Jewish population had declined by 72% and many of the neighborhood's Jewish institutions had relocated to more affluent neighborhoods west of downtown, particularly the Beverly-Fairfax and Pico-Robertson .
George Sanchez, "'What's Good for Boyle Heights is Good for Jews': Creating Multiculturalism on the Eastside" :633-634.
