Racial Bias in American Housing, From Founding Policies to Predatory Algorithms

Notes

Leah Rothstein co-wrote Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law. Written with her father, Richard Rothstein, the book acts as a follow-up to his 2017 work, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Together, they analyze how housing and community development policies impact the ways people relate to their communities and to each other.

Leah is a community and labor organizer, with experience consulting on housing, police accountability, environmental justice, education, and worker health and safety issues. She has consulted on financial and policy topics for affordable housing developers, cities, counties, and redevelopment agencies; and has directed research on community corrections policies, practices, and populations, to help promote a rehabilitative approach. Stay up to date on their work and how you can get involved by subscribing to their Substack.

In this episode, Leah discusses how bias infiltrated American housing policies and shaped segregation throughout the country. More specifically, we discuss how:

• American housing deeds allowed stipulations that excluded eligible homebuyers based on their race; and that in addition to discriminatory policies against African Americans, some deeds stated that houses should not be “occupied by any person or persons not of the white or Caucasian race or by any Mexican, Filipino or Hindu” (Just Action, 32)
• Discriminatory housing algorithms can be racist without “knowing” one’s race since this information can be deduced using one’s name and zip code 
• Predatory corporations like Kodak, Fannie Mae, Baltimore Sun, and others influenced the segregation of neighborhoods through various tactics
• African American home buyers experienced (and continue to experience) racial discrimination in the housing process (i.e., via appraisals, assessments, property listings, credit scores, mortgage loans, taxes, [homeowner’s] insurance, etc.)
• Exclusionary Crime-Free Ordinances allow for the eviction of tenants based on any contact with law enforcement (including suspected criminal activity, as well as a connection to someone else with criminal activity)
• Houses were exploitatively sold to African Americans on contract, rather than mortgage

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