Faculty Research Lunch: "Redlined Yesterday and Redlined Today" by Professor Faber

Join us for an open discussion facilitated by Professor Faber on Redlining as part of the Faculty Research Lunch series for Urban Planning Students. Lunch will be fully catered and Professor Faber will then present on some recent research, the abstract of which can be found below. The cap for the event is 15 students, so make sure to register early! 

Redlined Yesterday and Redlined Today: The Home Owners Loan Corporation’s Long Shadow

The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), passed during the Great Depression, stabilized a mortgage market in which half of all debt was in default. While designed as short term relief, HOLC had a lasting effect on the mortgage market through institutionalizing the racist practice of denying mortgages to communities of color. Over subsequent decades, “redlining” funneled billions of dollars away from black neighborhoods and shaped segregation patterns and the racial wealth gap. Contemporary housing inequality is a result of this history of racialized exclusion. This paper combines newly-digitized archival data with data describing recent mortgage outcomes to investigate the intransigence of spatial inequality in housing finance. I show that borrowers in the early Twenty First Century were at a severe disadvantage when pursuing mortgages in neighborhoods redlined by HOLC appraisers in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Specifically, such applicants were more likely to be denied loans and receive subprime loans. Furthermore, foreclosures were more common in redlined areas during the Great Recession. This paper shows that the geographic patterns of vulnerability to exclusion and exploitation are remarkably stable and highlights the role of persistent institutional marginalization in replicating racial and spatial inequalities.

Make sure to RSVP below as the event has limited space and is filled on a first come first serve basis.