Suburban Housing Inequality Today
[P]eople of color are more likely than white households to be extremely low-income renters and that people of color disproportionately struggle to pay rent compared to white households. In fact, 20% of Black households are extremely low-income renters as compared to just 6% of white households. A large part of this is persistent discrimination in the job market where, even as people of color climb the corporate ladder, they still make less than equally qualified whites. Lower wages, along with historical discrimination that prevented them from owning homes and building wealth, means that people of color are more likely to rent and are also more likely to struggle affording that rent. When people struggle to afford rent, they face greater risks of instability, eviction, and even homelessness, which research links to an array of negative life outcomes such as food insecurity, poor health, lower academic achievement, and lower economic mobility .
Living in suburban developments requires economic stability beyond being able to afford a home. In the suburbs, there is often the challenge of wider geographical distance, which historically was the basis for the formation of America’s highway systems. Combined with a common lack of public transportation in smaller towns, a personal vehicle becomes an added necessity, and an enormous household expense, which is unattainable for families of color who face lower economic status.
Residents of very low-income neighborhoods must also manage with the struggles arising from food deserts—regions where residents do not have easy access to affordable groceries, particularly fresh produce and other nutrient-dense foods. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an organization which provides aid to children in families across the U.S., food deserts “[create] extra, everyday hurdles that can make it harder for kids, families and communities to grow healthy and strong. ” In a study conducted at Johns Hopkins University and published in the National Library of Medicine, public health experts found that “poor predominantly black neighborhoods face a double jeopardy, with the most limited access to quality food,” which correlates to higher levels of obesity among the nonwhite population in the U.S.
The FHA was responsible for providing private mortgage loans to families, but through the act of “redlining,” named so for the act of physically boxing in with red pen specific communities on maps, Black families were refused these beneficial loans, and today, homes owned by minority individuals are more often lowballed in value and appreciate much more slowly than white-owned households.
Race and Housing in 20th century United States
Although the practice of redlining has long since been banned, the legacy of this has had lasting effects on these formerly ‘boxed-in’ communities, limiting access to educational and extracurricular opportunities, employment opportunities, and even healthy food. According to the Primary Care Development Corporation:
In 1938, the Homeowner’s Loan Corporation created so called “residential security maps” to guide entities toward practicing “responsible lending.” Neighborhoods deemed “hazardous” for lending were outlined in red—a process we know today as redlining. These maps were used as the basis to systematically deny mortgages and services to residents of redlined neighborhoods, regardless of individual creditworthiness. Predominately Black, urban neighborhoods were redlined in NYC. Despite being banned in the Fair Housing Act of 1968, decades of disinvestment have contributed to long-lasting effects for residents of formerly redlined communities.
The practice of redlining has persisted because it’s been masked under less explicit practices, under the guise of legality. It has been shown that Black individuals are much more likely to be denied mortgages by loan service providers .
Reveal News provides a study conducted from The Center For Investigative Reporting through the analysis of records of the Mortgage Disclosure Act
In addition, Redlining has had lasting healthcare effects on communities of color, particularly Black families, that still persist today. “These practices include unfair housing and lending discrimination, [resulting] in neighborhoods experiencing adverse effects due to poverty, including higher rates of uninsurance and obesity. ” These continuing inequalities are exacerbated by the continued racial imbalance between urban and suburban communities.
According to the Urban Institute, “A middle-income Black family is more likely to live in a poorly resourced neighborhood with a high poverty rate than a low-income white family. And although households of all races and ethnicities increasingly say they prefer integration, discrimination against people of color in housing and lending persists and the effects of past racist public policies continue to be felt. ” These statistics endure through implicitly discriminatory policies in zoning, subsidized housing programs, inconsistent reinforcement of the policies outlined in the Fair Housing Act, and outright implicit bias among realtors and housing agency professionals, and “[a]lthough discrimination in housing and lending persists, merely prohibiting individual acts of discrimination cannot reverse entrenched patterns of residential segregation. The poverty and lack of resources also contributes to the large amounts of crime oftentimes associated with these neighborhoods, which increase closer to urban and metropolitan areas. This in turn increases over-policing, which has been shown to have overwhelmingly negative consequences for these communities with unbelievably disparate levels of incarceration between whites and people of color.
Through a long, strong history of racist and discriminatory policies, suburbia has historically been and still remains a challenge at best and entirely inaccessible at worst for people and families of color. From its very establishment, with explicit exclusionary practices to enduring biases, middle-class suburban developments remain overwhelmingly white, with consequences for people of color ranging from environmental, financial, political, and educational disparities. To begin to remedy these disproportions, there must be deliberate and consistent re-evaluation of personal bias, enforcement of anti-discriminatory policies, and the development and implementation of new ones that not only can help decrease the racial gap in economics but also increase integration of suburban communities. Academics, professionals, and organizations such as The Brookings Institution have provided alternative solutions to these issues that pervade American society, outlining new policies that can narrow the wealth gap and improve the lives of people of color in America.
“Rethinking homeownership incentives to improve household financial security and shrink the racial wealth gap”
American suburbs today represent almost a century of systemic inequality in housing. However, through systematic changes in policy and thoughtful shifts in thinking about the history and current state of homeownership in the U.S., suburban exclusion and discrimination can begin to be eliminated.