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Influences on Segregation

Current trends in racial and income based residential segregation in the Unites States are attributed to several factors, including:

• Exclusionary zoning practices
  
• Location of Public Housing
• Discriminatory home-ownership practices
  
• Attitudes and preferences towards housing location
  

These factors impact both racial and income segregation differently.

Exclusionary Zoning

Exclusionary zoning influences both racial and income-based segregation patterns.

Incidences of exclusionary zoning practices that separated households by race appeared as early as the 1870s and 1880s when municipalities in California adopted anti-Chinese policies. For example, an 1884 San Francisco ordinance regulated the operation of laundries, which were a source of employment and gathering places for Chinese immigrants. The ordinance withstood several legal challenges before the U.S Supreme Court eventually struck it down because of its anti-Chinese motivations.
A decade later, the Supreme Court passage of Plessy v. Ferguson established "separate but equal" zoning ordinances that specified exclusively black, white and mixed districts and legally established segregation in housing opportunities. Many large and mid-sized cities in the South and mid-South adopted racial zonings between 1910 and 1915. In 1917the Supreme Court ruled that racial zoning was illegal but many local governments continued to enforce racial segregation with alternative land use designations.

Though these actions occurred nearly a century ago, they continue to influence settlement patterns today.

SOMETHING ON DENSITY REQUIREMENTS

Public Housing

See main article Public Housing

The location of public housing developments influences both racial and income-based segregation patterns. Racial segregation in public housing programs occurs when high concentrations of a certain minority group occupy one specific public housing development. Income segregation occurs when high concentrations of public housing are located in one specific income area.

Racial Segregation

Public housing has historically been segregated by federal and local policies. Local jurisdictions determined whether to incorporate public housing into their locality, and most had control over where low income housing sites were built. In many areas, the white majority would not allow public housing to be built in “their” neighborhoods unless it was reserved for poor whites. Black elected officials recognized the need for housing for their constituents, but felt that it would be politically unpopular to advocate for inclusionary housing.

Of the 49 public housing units constructed before World War II, 43 projects supported by the Public Works Administration and 236 of 261 projects supported by the U.S. Housing Authority were segregated because they only admitted tenants of a particular race. Anti-discrimination laws passed after led to a reduction in racial segregation for a short period of time, but as income-ineligible tenants were removed from public housing, the proportion of black residents increased. The remaining low-income white tenants were often elderly, and after 1956, moved to projects reserved specifically for seniors. Family public housing units then became dominated by racial minorities.

Three of the more infamous highly minority concentrated public housing projects in America were Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis and Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago.

Income Segregation

Determining if a disproportionate level of public housing exists in low-income areas is hard because defining low, moderate and high income areas, and locating projects in these areas is difficult. Researchers do assume that public housing exists in lower income areas because a higher density of projects built between 1932 and 1963 were primarily located in slum areas and vacant industrial sites. This trend continued between 1964 and 1992, when a high density of projects were located in old core cities of metropolitan areas that were considered low income.

Homeownership

Redlining

See main article redlining

In 1933 the federally created Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) created maps that coded areas as credit-worthy based on the race of their occupants and the age of the housing stock. These maps, adopted by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in 1944, established and sanctioned “redlining”. Residents in predominately minority neighborhoods were unable to obtain long-term mortgages on their homes because banks would not authorize loans for the redlined areas. Unlike their white counterparts, many minorities were not able to receive financing to purchase the homes they lived in and did not have the means to move to more affluent areas where banks would authorize home loans.

Steering

See main article racial steering
“The United States Supreme Court defines steering as a ‘practice by which real estate brokers and agents preserve and encourage patterns of racial segregation in available housing by steering members of racial and ethnic groups to buildings occupied primarily by members of such racial and ethnic groups and away from buildings and neighborhoods inhabited primarily by members of other races or groups.’” Essentially, the theory supporting steering is that real estate agents steer people of color toward neighborhoods that are disproportionately black and/or Hispanic, while white homebuyers are directed to primarily white neighborhoods, continually reinforcing segregation. In some studies, real estate agents present fewer and more inferior options to black homeseekers than they do to whites with the same characteristics.

Despite the Fair Housing Act, some scholars believe steering remains a common practice. Some scholars suggest that real estate agents interact with whites and minorities differently. For example, real estate agents will assume white homebuyer’s initial requests are an accurate reflection of their preferences, while they second guess a minority homebuyer’s request, and adjust it to their personal perceptions. Moreover, some real estate agents will acknowledge that their actions are prohibited. Some studies show real estate agents saying such things as:

• "‘This area has a questionable ethnic mix, I could lose my license for saying this!’"
  
• "‘[The area] is different from here; its multicultural.... I'm not allowed to steer you, but there are areas you wouldn't want to live in.’"

A recent study of housing discrimination using matched pairs of home seekers who differed only in race to inquire about housing show that for those seeking rental units, blacks received unfavorable treatment 21.6 percent of the time, Hispanics 25.7 percent of the time, and Asians 21.5 percent of the time. Moreover, blacks interested in purchasing a home experienced discrimination 17 percent of the time, Hispanics 19.7 percent of the time and Asians 20.4 percent of the time.

Some scholars challenge these conclusions and question what level of discrimination is necessary to make an impact of the housing market. They are also critical about the methods used to determine discrimination and suggest that paired testing assumes discrimination has occurred and that the affects of perceived discrimination are really only assumptions. Essentially, these critics believe that paired testing does not accurately reflect the conditions in which people are actually searching for housing.

Suburbanization

Due to the early discriminatory practices of mortgage lending, the black population remains less suburbanized than whites. Blacks, and to a lesser extent, other ethnic minorities remain isolated in urban environments with lesser access to transportation, jobs, health care and many of the amenities that are available to suburban residents. Thirty-nine percent of blacks live in the suburbs, compared to 58 percent of Asians, 49 percent of Hispanics and 71 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Further, post-World War II homebuilding in the suburbs benefitted whites, as housing prices tripled in the 1970’s, enabling white homeowners to increase the equity of their homes. Because of this, blacks face higher costs of entry to the housing market, and those that are able to seek housing in the suburbs tend to live in lower-income, less desirable areas just outside of the city limits.

Attitudes and Preferences

Theorists suggest that a people choices about location of housing based on the racial make-up of a specific neighborhood and that a result of these preferences is racial segregation.

Racial Preferences of Whites

“White flight” is one theory that suggests attitude and preferences towards a specific race are determinants of where a person chooses to live. The premise of this belief is that the increase in the population of blacks in a specific locality will cause whites to leave once the concentration of blacks reaches a certain level. The support for this hypothesis is largely anecdotal but analyses of surveys of white and black attitudes toward the racial make-up of neighborhoods confirm that whites are uncomfortable with even a small number of black neighbors.(CITE)

In spite of these statistics, over the last half century white Americans have expressed a greater willingness to live in neighborhoods with minorities. “From 1958 to 1997 Gallup polls found that the proportion of a national sample of whites who said they would move if a black moved next door fell from 44 to just 1 percent. Additionally, the proportion of white respondents who would move in the face of ‘great numbers’ of black dropped from 80 to 18 percent.”

Some scholars suggest concepts like white flight misrepresent the issue of housing prefernce by suggesting that a specific population enters an area, and another decides to leave it. “Empirical evidence shows that white flight does not cause racial transition in neighborhoods. Several preference studies and data from the American Housing Survey in 1980 and 1990 found both black and white households were less concerned about a neighborhood's racial mix - as long as a neighborhood remained stable, black and whites were willing to remain.”

AFFLUENT WHITES

Racial Preferences of Blacks

Residential preferences of blacks are categorized by social- psychological and socioeconomic-demographic characteristics.

The theory behind social psychological residential preference is that segregation is a result of blacks choosing to live around other blacks because of cultural similarities, maintaining a sense of racial pride, or a desire to avoid living near another group because of fear of racial hostility. Other theories suggest demographic and socioeconomic such as age, gender and social class background influence residential choice. Empirical evidence to explain these assumptions is generally limited.

One emprical study completed in 2002 analyzed survey data from a random sample of blacks from Atlanta, Boston, Detroit and Los Angeles. The results of this study found that the housing preferences of blacks are largely attributed to discrimination and white hostility, not a desire to live with a similar racial group. In essence, the study found that blacks choose specific residences because they are afraid of hostility from whites.

Critics of these theories suggest that the survey questions used in the research design for these studies imply that race is a greater factor in residential choice than access to schools, transportation, and jobs. They also suggest that surveys fail to consider the market influences on housing including availability and demand.

Consequences

Location of housing is a determinant of a person’s access to the job market, transportation, education, healthcare, and safety. Persons residing in neighborhoods with high concentrations of low income and minority households face higher mortality risks, poor health services, high rates of teenage pregnancy, and high crime rates. These neighborhoods also have higher rates of unemployment, and lack of access to job networks and transportation, which hinders households from fully accessing employment opportunities. The result of isolation and segregation of minority and the economically disadvantaged is increased racial and income inequality, which in turn reinforces segregation.

References

References