Hi all, I don't _think_ it's been mentioned yet that redlining was a big part of the FHA initiatives after WWII. FHA loans essentially lifted a lot of white people into the middle class, but left most people of color out in the cold, rather like the GI Bill. (It has been argued that the main way that large numbers of people build wealth in a given period is as a result of government "bonanzas", whether in the shape of the Homestead Act, the GI Bill, or government-supported investment opportunities, all of which have, so far, been geared toward white people and, latterly, middle class people.) Additionally, the FHA programs of the period were biased towards new construction in the suburbs--that is, the FHA ranked neighborhoods based on factors like age of buildings as well as by race and ethnicity. FHA loans were much less available for rehabbing old buildings in the city or building on more expensive land there--it was much harder to qualify for a loan to fix up a city house than to get a loan to build one in the suburbs.
Why? Fifties suburbanization, lack of understanding of the awfulness of car culture, powerful road-building lobbies, belief that cities were hotbeds of sedition and free love, racist dislike of the larger populations of people of color who had moved to cities to work in war industries, and the fact that the cities had really been decaying since the start of the Depression and were rather grim to look at. (and certainly other factors) There are a couple of terrific, pop books on these topics: Crabgrass Frontier (whose author I forget) and The Geography of Nowhere, by Somebody Kunstler. To jump forward a couple of decades, in the seventies there was pretty definitely an internal HUD policy of letting the inner cities deteriorate on the theory that they were too hard to fix and anyway the middle classes (read white people) would eventually gentrify the areas at no cost to the feds. There was actually a memo to this effect which was supressed but leaked out eventually. I will now return to lurking, hoping that this above has not been too redundant. Best, Jane Franklin __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
