Tapping the Ethnic Housing Market

These practices help maintain the status quo, helping low-income families remain poor. Moreover, it requires these low-income families to depend on government assistance, such as low-income housing and welfare. The reliance on assistance programs groups the poorest people in the same housing projects and communities, overwhelming schools with low-income students. Not only do these real estate practices concentrate the poorest in an area together, they also drive the often whiter, more affluent families out. The majority of poor feel they have no opportunity to transcend class restrictions, and the property taxes that fund our schools do not alleviate their stress. Further, homogeneous collections of poor means that school populations are rarely as diverse as we believe.

For the past fifty years the shift from meeting the housing needs of the poor through government projects-based housing to a more individual approach, has been slowly implemented. Housing vouchers now enable underprivileged populations to move from high-poverty, segregated neighborhoods to more un-segregated, low-poverty neighborhoods. Low-poverty neighborhoods have less crime, better opportunities for employment, and more diverse schooling options. Some housing advocates however, contend that housing assistance is unnecessary and is an income subsidy that should be combined with other social safety nets (Clark, W. 2008).

The racial undertones of Detroit have been extremely problematic to Detroit’s real estate market for well over 50 years. These social disruptions continue to have an effect on the current residents of Detroit. During the middle of the nineteenth century, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) introduced real estate tactics such as redlining, which is the practice of flagging minority dense neighborhoods for the purposes of denying approval of mortgages or inflating the price of the homes. Redlining had a profound social and economic effect on all residents of Detroit. The white majority began abandoning and selling their homes in fear that the value of the home would plummet, leading to a great financial loss when minorities moved in the area. This idea is known as white flight, and is the primary reason that Detroit has one of the highest African American populations in the country. However, through revitalization and gentrification of the Midtown/Downtown area, Detroit is slowly becoming more diverse. Throughout history, racial politics of the mid-to-late twentieth century affected Detroit 's real estate market by excluding minorities from the real estate market. Although adding stadiums, high end retail, small shops, and restaurants is economically valuable to the city of Detroit, this is conflicting and potentially problematic for the original residents of the area because the prices of these new establishments are often much higher than the residents can afford.

Access to resources has been historically constrained in the U.S. on the basis of ethnicity, race and most recently class. This differential access to resources is a result of overt structural forces that create barriers to employment, housing, education and neighborhood investment. The political policy of “redlining” is a great example of how public policy can affect access to resources. This policy selectively avoided giving mortgages to individuals living in predominantly Black

Despite increased diversity across the country, America’s neighborhoods remain highly segregated along racial and ethnic lines. Residential segregation, particularly between African-Americans and whites, persists in metropolitan areas where minorities make up a large share of the population. This paper will examine residential segregation imposed upon African-Americans and the enormous costs it bears. Furthermore, the role of government will be discussed as having an important role in carrying out efforts towards residential desegregation. By developing an understanding of residential segregation and its destructive effects, parallels may be drawn between efforts aimed at combating

What I learned this week which I found most interesting is the evolving situation of housing segregation in this country. If I would have been asked why our country is still so segregated I would say that this situation is due to the fact that we had Jim Crow laws in effect only 60 years ago and many communities have just not changed that much since then. What I wouldn’t have guessed is the widespread extent to which the races intentionally segregate themselves. Less than 50% of both blacks and whites say they want to live in a community of people who look like them. However when people actually choose their home 74% of whites end up in white communities and 66% of blacks end up living in black communities. (Chang, Alvin) Whether it is basic

Wilson (2011) research proves that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), contributed to the early decay of inner city neighborhoods by withholding mortgage capital and making it difficult for these areas to retain or attract families who were able to purchase their own homes. As the federal government created this program it excluded certain inner city neighborhoods. This exclusion created “redlining” which assessed primarily on racial composition. People who wanted to get out of public housing and purchase a home in a redlined neighborhood were denied proper mortgages, even if they had sufficient funds. Wilson (2011) says that such restrictions such redlining restricted many opportunities for building or even maintaining quality housing in the inner city, which in many ways set the stage for urban blight that many Americans now associate with black neighborhoods. Policies like this one were created to make blacks stay in the inner city

Lipsitz uses practices of the housing market to illustrate how the diverse practices provide the privilege to white people in the current institutional arrangements. The capital resides in suburban houses has proven many white families’ economic mobility, although few white Americans recognize that segregation has historically been the guarantee of suburban real estate values. Housing policy and real estate practices, banking and finance, education, tax codes and subsidies, the behavior of the courts, and the norms of urban policing are all heavily inflected by a racialist logic or tend toward racialized consequences. Lipsitz delineates the weaknesses embedded in civil rights laws, the racial dimensions of economic restructuring and deindustrialization, and the effects of environmental racism, job discrimination and school segregation. Lipsitz describes the centrality of whiteness to American culture, and explains how the whites have used identity politics to forward their collective interests at the expense of racialized groups, including African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos.

In “The Complexities and Processes of Racial Housing discrimination” by Vincent J. Roscigno, Diana L. Karafin, and Griff tester, the main concept of racial disparity and inequality among neighborhoods is discussed, and how those inequalities became to be. They first highlight the wide range of potentially exclusionary practices, through qualitative and quantitative data comprised of over 750 verified housing discrimination cases (Roscigno, p. 162). Citing the U.S. Census, it is found that Blacks, compared to Hispanics and Asians, continue to experience high levels of residential segregation. This is done through discriminatory practices, whether they be by exclusionary or non-exclusionary methods. Even after the passing of the Fair Housing Act in 1988, discrimination against Blacks and Hispanics decreased somewhat, though African Americans still appeared to take part in racial steering, and Hispanics continued to have limitations in regards to opportunities and access to rental units (Roscigno, p. 163).

Race is commonly associated with poverty. It was found that "black and Hispanic family income has been approximately 60 percent of white median family income. Interestingly it was also discovered that their net worth was approximately one-tenth that of whites"(Squires and Kubrin , 51 ). Race can play a pivotal role in getting home loans and locations of neighborhoods in which you buy a home. Segregation still plays a major role in poverty.

It was a way to constraint African Americans to areas that were far away from those with status, class, and power. Segregation led to discrimination in economic opportunities, housing, and education. The black culture has suffered from the barriers that were placed through segregation. However, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 tried to limit some of the discrimination associated with segregation. It was discovered that even a “rising economic status had little or no effect on the level of segregation that blacks experience” (Massey and Denton 87). The authors imply that “black segregation would remain a universal high” (Massey and Denton 88). The problem with the continuing causes in Segregation is that even though the Fair Housing act was placed, many realtors still discriminate against blacks “through a series of ruses, lies, and deceptions, makes it hard for them to learn about, inspect, rent, or purchase homes in white neighborhoods” (Massey and Denton 97). Segregation and discrimination have a cumulative effect over time. Massey and Denton argued that the “act of discrimination may be small and subtle, together they have a powerful cumulative effect in lowering the probability of black entry into white neighborhood” (98). William Julius Wilson had

Chinatown, Olvera Street, and Compton all contributed to culturally diversity and the expansion of Los Angeles. Although Los Angeles has become rich in cultures, its evolution did not go without racial tensions and segregation. With the arrival of blacks from the south, white-Los Angeles did always recognize the minority community. Angelenos did not always embrace diversity with pride, but perhaps the sad part is not the fact that racial segregation took place, but the fact that it was not created by just the individual, but also by the organization. Federal programs like the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Homeowner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) divided up Los Angeles into a complex socio-economic racial-class system. The influences of the local level influenced the federal level and revolutionized the finance industry. (Avila, lecture 2/5/02) These federal organizations blatantly labeled minorities as derogatory, uneducated, second-class citizens that brought down property value in “white” neighborhoods. Latinos and Black were often labeled as a “minority problem” and even as a “disease” on official HOLC documents. The HOLC implemented strict government guidelines and kept maps of white neighborhoods confidential. It also devised a formal and uniform style of appraising homes by breaking neighborhoods into race classifications by letter. As Waldie states, “The Montana Land Company made it clear that lots were

This inequality in the political system that claims to be the fairest and most democratic in the world is unsettling in itself. However, the other inequalities still seen in US society are even more staggering. In 1968, when the Fair Housing Act put in place federal law to prevent racial discrimination in the buying and selling of houses, it was a stepping stone to a more integrated society. However, in 2005, the Federal Reserve Board conducted a survey that researched 5.3million mortgage applications, in 19 cities, from 9,300 financial institutions. Their conclusion was that African-Americans were 2:1 more likely to be turned down for a mortgage than whites, which is an overwhelming statistic.

(African American, Hispanic and African) House are both poorer and more likely to be renters than white households” Howard Karger and David Stoez(2013).

The class and racial diversity determines the rental income and profitability for AMH. Simply put, the redlining and racism in real estate is well-documented to show that the disparities and prejudice still occur in the housing market (Madrigal, 2014). To actively practice corporate social responsibilities, AMH should be more transparent in its effort to strive toward racial, social, and economic justice in competitive housing market. For example, the competition in the leasing market may limit the affordable option for low-income tenants. AMH can diversify the portfolio to specifically cater toward these marginalized populations of color, low-income, and disabilities even if the number of this portfolio is small. The existence and acknowledgement