Redlining

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A 1937 HOLC "residential security" map of Philadelphia, classifying various neighborhoods by estimated riskiness of mortgage loans.[1]

In the United States and Canada, redlining is the process of denying services to residents of specific neighborhoods or communities, usually neighborhoods with non-White people, either directly or by raising prices.[2][3] It is often seen as a modern day version of segregation.

The best known examples of redlining have involved denial of financial services such as banking or insurance.[4] In the United States in the middle of the twentieth century, banks considered it risky to give mortgages to people in neighborhoods where most people were in ethnic minority groups, so they made them pay more money or refused to give them mortgages at all. As a result, ethnic minorities accumulated less wealth than White people. Redlining has also occurred in when other services such as health care (see also Race and health) or even supermarkets[5] have been denied to residents.

References[change | change source]

  1. The HOLC maps are part of the records of the FHLBB (RG195) at the National Archives II Archived 2016-10-11 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. Gross, Terry. "A 'Forgotten History' Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America". NPR.org. Retrieved 2019-03-31.
  3. Harris, Richard; Forrester, Doris (2 July 2016). "The Suburban Origins of Redlining: A Canadian Case Study, 1935-54". Urban Studies. 40 (13): 2661–2686. doi:10.1080/0042098032000146830. S2CID 154651681.
  4. Zenou, Yves; Boccard, Nicolas (September 2000). "Racial Discrimination and Redlining in Cities". Journal of Urban Economics. 48 (2): 260–285. doi:10.1006/juec.1999.2166.
  5. Eisenhauer, Elizabeth (2001). "In poor health: Supermarket redlining and urban nutrition". GeoJournal. 53 (2): 125–133. doi:10.1023/A:1015772503007. S2CID 151164815.