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How Housing Discrimination Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryan over there, and this
0:16
Speaker 1: is stuff you should know. Um the man oh man addition,
0:25
Speaker 1: do you know what I love about this topic is
0:29
Speaker 1: that it's not just a bunch of like ranting about
0:33
Speaker 1: how we think things are and how people think things are.
0:37
Speaker 1: It's like so studied and statistic heavy that you can
0:42
Speaker 1: talk about how things are and then say, and here's
0:45
Speaker 1: the proof exactly, here's a lot of data to back
0:47
Speaker 1: it up. It's really great. I love it when they
0:49
Speaker 1: dovetail like this. Yeah. I get the impression, though, UM
0:52
Speaker 1: that you when you're talking about the studying race and
0:56
Speaker 1: especially in America like you are, you have to back
1:00
Speaker 1: it up with data like people are like, oh, yeah,
1:02
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know about that. But um, I
1:05
Speaker 1: want to give a shout out to actually to um
1:08
Speaker 1: uh scholars both sell sociologists of race. UM Professor Villnabashi
1:13
Speaker 1: Treatler from UC Santa Barbara and Professor Tricia Rose of
1:18
Speaker 1: Brown University both are experts on this stuff and they
1:22
Speaker 1: helped me out big time with this and some other
1:24
Speaker 1: research on on racism I've done, um and they Dr
1:28
Speaker 1: Bashi Treatler said, hey, make sure you mentioned this hashtag
1:32
Speaker 1: we have going called site hashtag. Sorry, and I'm making
1:35
Speaker 1: the hashtag symbol like justin Timberlake hashtag site black women
1:40
Speaker 1: ce I t e black women. UM, and that leads
1:43
Speaker 1: you to all sorts of good often overlooked research by
1:47
Speaker 1: black scholars. Um, who are women that don't always get
1:51
Speaker 1: a lot of credit. So I'm glad you told me
1:53
Speaker 1: about that one. I wanted to tell everybody else. So
1:55
Speaker 1: when you, uh, that was a stutter when he said
1:58
Speaker 1: so so sociologists, you didn't mean they were just mediocre sociologists. No,
2:04
Speaker 1: I was. I was sociologist. I could see how that
2:08
Speaker 1: would be confusing. I was doing my impression of Phil
2:10
Speaker 1: Collins saying sociologist so so studio. Yeah, well that's the
2:16
Speaker 1: last joke we're gonna tell you. Oh yeah, probably. I
2:20
Speaker 1: was warned by Dr Bashi Treatler not to do our
2:22
Speaker 1: usual stick when we're talking about race stuff, and I
2:25
Speaker 1: was like, well, I mean, we we can handle ourselves.
2:27
Speaker 1: She said. I I listened to your stuff. I listened
2:30
Speaker 1: to the Braws episode just trust me on this. It's like,
2:34
Speaker 1: all right, So then that means the housing discrimination episode
2:38
Speaker 1: officially starts. Now, that's right. So that's what we're talking about, dude.
2:42
Speaker 1: Housing discrimination and um uh in the United States, and
2:46
Speaker 1: there is a very long history of housing discrimination. And
2:50
Speaker 1: you might say, like, well, that really sucks. That sucks
2:52
Speaker 1: that people have trouble buying a home or maybe they
2:56
Speaker 1: get less favorable terms on their loans just because of
2:59
Speaker 1: their race, and that does suck. That's absolutely true. But
3:02
Speaker 1: it's even worse than that because in the United States,
3:05
Speaker 1: one of the biggest ways of growing wealth intergenerationally, like
3:11
Speaker 1: over the course of generations within a single family is
3:14
Speaker 1: through a house. Yeah, I mean it's sometimes people don't
3:19
Speaker 1: have a ton of money to invest in the stock market.
3:21
Speaker 1: Some people think the stock market is not something to trust.
3:24
Speaker 1: But one thing that has always been fairly reliable in
3:27
Speaker 1: this country, you know, say, for a few moments in history,
3:31
Speaker 1: is real estate and the idea that if you scrap
3:35
Speaker 1: up and save enough money for a down payment for
3:38
Speaker 1: a home, that house will eventually be worth quite a
3:42
Speaker 1: bit more years later, and you can sell it and
3:47
Speaker 1: use that extra windfall of cash to invest in the
3:50
Speaker 1: stock market or to pass down to your kids so
3:53
Speaker 1: they can then get in the housing market sooner than
3:56
Speaker 1: they might have and then it just becomes a cycle
3:58
Speaker 1: where it just builds wealth. Yeah, Like the average family
4:02
Speaker 1: in America has most of their net worth tied up
4:06
Speaker 1: in their house, and then you know, when it comes
4:08
Speaker 1: time to sell it and the house is paid off,
4:09
Speaker 1: that's a lot of money. And then when you kick
4:12
Speaker 1: the bucket, your kids get that money and maybe they
4:14
Speaker 1: get a better house, and it just keeps growing and growing.
4:17
Speaker 1: So if you put up barriers to housing, you're actually
4:20
Speaker 1: putting up barriers to passing along intergenerational wealth. And as
4:24
Speaker 1: a big, big problem in America. UM Still today, I
4:28
Speaker 1: saw a study from I think Brookings that found that,
4:34
Speaker 1: um the median. Yeah, brooking study said that the median
4:41
Speaker 1: net worth of a white family in America is a
4:44
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy one thousand dollars. The median net worth
4:48
Speaker 1: of a black family in America is seventeen thousand, one
4:51
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars, about a ten of what the
4:55
Speaker 1: median is for white people. And that is largely because
4:58
Speaker 1: of housing discriminate in the history of housing discrimination in
5:01
Speaker 1: this country. Yeah, and as far as history goes, you know,
5:05
Speaker 1: it started with literal racist laws where they said, if
5:10
Speaker 1: you're a black person or a black family, you cannot
5:12
Speaker 1: live here. Um. That went on for a while, and
5:16
Speaker 1: then those laws were sort of altered to the Jim
5:20
Speaker 1: Crows Separate but Equal era, where they said, you know what, Um,
5:24
Speaker 1: we'll say things are better, but it's really the same
5:27
Speaker 1: effect in the end. And then they got rid of
5:30
Speaker 1: those laws and said, all right, now we've really passed
5:33
Speaker 1: the meaningful legislation, and now we can just racially discriminate
5:37
Speaker 1: on the down low and very creative ways. Yeah, that's
5:40
Speaker 1: basically the pattern that it's followed. Um. And what kind
5:45
Speaker 1: of stuck out to meet Chuck is is that before
5:48
Speaker 1: about nine hundred, before like the rise of like industrialization
5:53
Speaker 1: to a really legitimate degree in the United States, like,
5:56
Speaker 1: there wasn't not nearly as much segregation as we saw
6:00
Speaker 1: starting around nineteen especially in the North, because if you
6:05
Speaker 1: had a trade or a craft in the North and
6:07
Speaker 1: you were an African American, there's a really good chance
6:09
Speaker 1: that you were going to be serving white people as
6:11
Speaker 1: well as black people, right and because you usually were
6:16
Speaker 1: very closely your home was tied close to your shop,
6:19
Speaker 1: you often lived above it if you were like a
6:21
Speaker 1: cobbler or something like that. Um, you made live next
6:25
Speaker 1: door to a white baker or something like that. So
6:28
Speaker 1: the there wasn't a lot of segregation until industrialization came
6:32
Speaker 1: along and there was a big call for labor, which
6:35
Speaker 1: drew a lot of African Americans, a lot of Black
6:38
Speaker 1: Americans out of the South up to the north. And
6:41
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, all of those people who were
6:44
Speaker 1: living in integrated neighborhoods, all those white people I should say,
6:46
Speaker 1: had had a problem with this influx of black migration
6:50
Speaker 1: from the South to the north, and they responded with
6:53
Speaker 1: a lot of really disgusting violence. Yeah. I mean, we've
6:57
Speaker 1: talked about some of these, um race incidents and race
7:01
Speaker 1: riots and race almost race wars really uh here and
7:05
Speaker 1: there on the show, and they're always hard to talk about.
7:08
Speaker 1: But that was just sort of the reality of things
7:10
Speaker 1: at the time. Um. In the nineteen thirties, the New
7:13
Speaker 1: Deal comes along, and this is when legislation starts to
7:17
Speaker 1: kind of kick in. When the government stepped in and said,
7:20
Speaker 1: you know what, we think we should make it easier
7:23
Speaker 1: for people to own homes. We really want to boost
7:26
Speaker 1: home ownership because that's a boon for the economy of
7:29
Speaker 1: the country. And we're going to create the home Owners
7:32
Speaker 1: Loan Corporation, which is going to help people refinance their mortgages.
7:38
Speaker 1: But we need some criteria here to sort of establish
7:41
Speaker 1: a uniform way of like how to how to dole
7:45
Speaker 1: out this assistance. And they reckoned, let's let's look at
7:49
Speaker 1: every population of forty or more and let's create a
7:52
Speaker 1: color coded map that's based on riskiness of these loans.
7:57
Speaker 1: And they said, you know, they talked to real estate brokers,
7:59
Speaker 1: they talk to bankers, and they said, help us out,
8:02
Speaker 1: help us draw these boundaries, and they came up with
8:04
Speaker 1: a one, two, three, four color graded system. Right, yeah,
8:07
Speaker 1: that's right. Because again this was like long before credit
8:10
Speaker 1: scores were developed, so you couldn't really look at you know,
8:14
Speaker 1: if somebody came into your bank to ask for a loan,
8:16
Speaker 1: you couldn't be like, well, you're your your credit scores this,
8:19
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna look at that start. I don't
8:21
Speaker 1: know we should do an episode on if we haven't already.
8:24
Speaker 1: I don't think for sure. Um, but yeah, so the
8:26
Speaker 1: four color codes they had were also um delineated by
8:29
Speaker 1: grades Grade A, B, C, and D. Grade A was
8:32
Speaker 1: the most desirable neighborhood. They were usually homogeneous, meaning white. Um,
8:37
Speaker 1: there were um lots of professionals living in there. Grade
8:41
Speaker 1: B was maybe a step down, but still largely homogeneous,
8:44
Speaker 1: if not totally homogeneous, and they were considered still desirable.
8:48
Speaker 1: And then it started to get into the lower grades
8:50
Speaker 1: grades C and D, and C was um, I think
8:55
Speaker 1: colored yellow on the map, right, Yeah, the first two
8:59
Speaker 1: were green and blue, and then Grade C was rated
9:01
Speaker 1: as declining and colored yellow and that sort of. In fact,
9:05
Speaker 1: I think it even said infiltration of a lower grade
9:09
Speaker 1: population in the document, which you don't have to be
9:13
Speaker 1: a genius to figure out what they were saying there.
9:15
Speaker 1: It means people of color were moving in. And then
9:18
Speaker 1: finally you end up with the color red Grade D,
9:21
Speaker 1: which is least desirable. Um, very densely populated areas almost
9:28
Speaker 1: always communities of color. Right. So um, the h O
9:32
Speaker 1: l C created these maps, and then um, along came
9:36
Speaker 1: the Federal Housing Authority and they said, well, we need
9:39
Speaker 1: similar maps because we're not we're not here to help
9:41
Speaker 1: stem the tide of foreclosures. We're actually here to generate
9:45
Speaker 1: new home ownership among Americans. Um, but we still have
9:48
Speaker 1: the same issue. We got to figure out who's credit
9:50
Speaker 1: worthy and who's not. So we're going to base it
9:52
Speaker 1: on where the people live. And they basically made identical
9:55
Speaker 1: maps to the h O l C maps, and so
9:58
Speaker 1: they probably used them. Right, there's a lot of debate.
10:02
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's found the smoking gun yet. But
10:05
Speaker 1: if you take an h O l C map in
10:07
Speaker 1: an f h A map and you put them over
10:09
Speaker 1: one another, they're basically the same thing. And I I
10:13
Speaker 1: it's kind of all. It's up for the debate still.
10:16
Speaker 1: But the the the upshot was that because of these maps, Um,
10:22
Speaker 1: if you lived in one of these red and often
10:24
Speaker 1: yellow communities, they wouldn't lend to you, for um, for
10:29
Speaker 1: a new mortgage or even a second mortgage to say,
10:32
Speaker 1: remodel your home. And they also wouldn't assist you with
10:35
Speaker 1: refinancing your existing mortgage, which means you're subject to foreclosure.
10:39
Speaker 1: And if you were in a red or yellow community,
10:43
Speaker 1: you were probably um black or a person of color
10:47
Speaker 1: or some other ethnic minority. And UM, that means that
10:50
Speaker 1: they were shut out of this enormous housing boom that
10:54
Speaker 1: generated a tremendous amount of prosperity immediately after the New
10:58
Speaker 1: Deal in World War Two. As we'll see, so African
11:01
Speaker 1: Americans were left out of or on the fringes of
11:04
Speaker 1: the New Deal anyway. And this is where we get
11:07
Speaker 1: to shout out Francis Perkins. Perkins again, which is it's
11:10
Speaker 1: fun to now that we know so much about her,
11:12
Speaker 1: to continually shout her out. But she did a lot
11:15
Speaker 1: of work arguing in favor of inclusion for black people
11:18
Speaker 1: in the New Deal. Um, I guess you know, sometimes successfully,
11:22
Speaker 1: sometimes not. But at the end of the day, the
11:25
Speaker 1: f h A imposed these rules through the New Deal. Uh.
11:29
Speaker 1: Their maps were just like the UH the h O
11:32
Speaker 1: l C. And the process of excluding these groups because
11:36
Speaker 1: they were colored red was called redlining. That is that
11:40
Speaker 1: like the where that whole term comes from. That's exactly
11:42
Speaker 1: where it comes from. So now today, any any time
11:45
Speaker 1: you're discriminated against, whether it's buying insurance or anything like that, um,
11:49
Speaker 1: based on your race or say your community. Um, it's
11:53
Speaker 1: called redlining now. But that's where it grew out of
11:55
Speaker 1: those h O l C maps and f A J maps. UM.
11:59
Speaker 1: And I mean they would use terms and like their
12:01
Speaker 1: their handbooks that like these communities had quote undesirable racial
12:05
Speaker 1: or nationality groups in them, so you couldn't you couldn't
12:08
Speaker 1: lend them any money or whatever. Um. And it was
12:11
Speaker 1: I mean like this is still like a really big
12:14
Speaker 1: problem today. Yeah, I mean back then basically and still today.
12:18
Speaker 1: In many cases, that leaves you with a couple of
12:21
Speaker 1: options as a person of color. You can rent uh
12:24
Speaker 1: forever um often times back then and still now from
12:28
Speaker 1: a white landlord who doesn't live anywhere near that community,
12:31
Speaker 1: not always, but usually, or just pay for the home
12:35
Speaker 1: in cash, which is a stretch for anybody. Uh, it's
12:38
Speaker 1: it's tough to do unless you're like wealthy. And there
12:40
Speaker 1: were there were, I have to say there were black
12:42
Speaker 1: owned banks. But there was nine black own banks in
12:45
Speaker 1: the entire United States in the thirties. So that is
12:48
Speaker 1: a place where you could turn to if you're lucky
12:50
Speaker 1: enough to have one in your area. But that that
12:53
Speaker 1: was not a solution to the general population for Black Americans. Yeah,
12:58
Speaker 1: and like you said, also affected their ability to get
13:01
Speaker 1: second mortgages, to do home improvements or to like expand
13:05
Speaker 1: on their house and upgrade it, remodel it. So that
13:09
Speaker 1: means that the properties are gonna deteriorate and decline over
13:13
Speaker 1: the years, and it's just it's part of that systemic
13:16
Speaker 1: racist cycle that is just prevalent. Yeah, because still today, eventually,
13:21
Speaker 1: over time people from the outside looking in say, look,
13:26
Speaker 1: black people can't even take care of their communities. Look
13:28
Speaker 1: at look at how their houses are. Um, just as
13:30
Speaker 1: a result of this. That is definitely like the definition
13:33
Speaker 1: of systemic racism for sure. It's just by the way
13:36
Speaker 1: into the structures. If you hear dogs barking, My dogs
13:41
Speaker 1: are upstairs and they're just very excited about this topic. Yeah,
13:44
Speaker 1: and I don't know what's going on there, but they're
13:46
Speaker 1: not going to shut up. So let's say we press on.
13:48
Speaker 1: We'll press on. Should we take a break, then press on.
13:51
Speaker 1: We're going to press on like some lee nails right
13:53
Speaker 1: after a break. How about that? All right, it sounds good.
14:19
Speaker 1: All right, we're back and look, these things look amazing
14:21
Speaker 1: on me. Yeah, they're very nice. There's a little bit
14:24
Speaker 1: of cuticle showing. I didn't put them right up against it,
14:27
Speaker 1: but it's still it's passable. Well, I think if you
14:31
Speaker 1: paint them just right, that's not so noticeable. Right, fill ins,
14:34
Speaker 1: that's what I need. I need to get some fill ins.
14:37
Speaker 1: So back to the topic at hand, joking is over. Um,
14:43
Speaker 1: so here's the deal. There's, like you said, a lot
14:45
Speaker 1: of debate whether or not or I don't think we
14:48
Speaker 1: said this part, whether or not the lenders actually use
14:50
Speaker 1: these maps because these were government maps from government programs.
14:54
Speaker 1: It's not like they said, here, banks have these and
14:57
Speaker 1: use these. Uh. If you look at the statistics, it
15:01
Speaker 1: seems like they probably got their hands on some of
15:03
Speaker 1: these maps. It does. And also, don't forget the government
15:06
Speaker 1: figured out, you know, how to draw these maps for
15:09
Speaker 1: every city over forty people from the lenders, from the banks,
15:13
Speaker 1: from the Yeah, so they knew this anyway, but now
15:16
Speaker 1: the government has basically said it is okay to do this, um.
15:20
Speaker 1: And so so yeah, if you if you look at
15:23
Speaker 1: the outcome of this redlining, these red line maps, um,
15:28
Speaker 1: it's it's really hard to say, no, this didn't happen
15:32
Speaker 1: like this definitely didn't make it out of government hands
15:34
Speaker 1: like forts here just great, let's trade off. Between ninety
15:40
Speaker 1: four and nineteen sixty two, over of all the federally
15:45
Speaker 1: backed mortgages that were issued in the United States went
15:49
Speaker 1: to white buyers. Between four and nineteen sixty two, that's right,
15:56
Speaker 1: because of this black ownership since then and can tinuing
16:00
Speaker 1: today is lagged behind white homeownership in America, and seventeen
16:04
Speaker 1: just a few short years ago, of black Americans own
16:08
Speaker 1: their homes versus seventy of white Americans. And then the
16:13
Speaker 1: other problem with redlining a community is you basically put
16:16
Speaker 1: a pox on it. It's cursed, because that means that
16:19
Speaker 1: those houses are not going to get any kind of
16:21
Speaker 1: attention UM, and so they're going to continue to deteriorate.
16:24
Speaker 1: And if you live in this community, as far as
16:26
Speaker 1: a banker is concerned, you are a huge credit risk. Right,
16:30
Speaker 1: And so still today UM sev of the neighborhoods that
16:35
Speaker 1: were originally redlined in those maps are our redline UM
16:40
Speaker 1: low income communities today, And which is I mean, that's
16:44
Speaker 1: pretty surprising. And I also saw that UM study found
16:49
Speaker 1: that homes and red line neighborhoods we're still worth less
16:53
Speaker 1: than half of those in green neighborhoods. Yeah, and here's
16:57
Speaker 1: the one. I marked these as stats with an exclamation point,
17:01
Speaker 1: just that's how excited I get. But the ones that
17:04
Speaker 1: I'm really floored by, I don't even write anything except
17:07
Speaker 1: for three exclamation points. I've got three exclamation points by
17:10
Speaker 1: that of back federally back mortgages. For sure, that is
17:14
Speaker 1: definitely one. Um here's mine. If if you might say, well,
17:18
Speaker 1: what about variables man and education level and income level
17:22
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, Like you gotta factor all that in.
17:25
Speaker 1: That's a whole other side conversation as far as systemic
17:28
Speaker 1: racism and being able to go to good schools and
17:30
Speaker 1: afford a good education and get a good job and
17:33
Speaker 1: all that. So just park that to the side. But
17:36
Speaker 1: if you control for all those variables, college educated black
17:40
Speaker 1: Americans are still less likely to own their home than
17:43
Speaker 1: white Americans without a high school diploma. Yeah, That's That's
17:48
Speaker 1: what really gets you is when they they're like, well,
17:51
Speaker 1: let us just control for all these factors and only
17:54
Speaker 1: variable that remains is the race of the people applying
17:59
Speaker 1: for a owner owning a home, and it's still the case.
18:02
Speaker 1: That's when it's like, well this is indisputable. Actually yeah,
18:06
Speaker 1: and you know you can put a price on this.
18:08
Speaker 1: Red Fen did a study um just last year in
18:11
Speaker 1: twenty that black American families missed out on the opportunity
18:15
Speaker 1: to accumulate an average of two hundred and twelve thousand
18:18
Speaker 1: dollars of you know what, we're talking about that intergenerational
18:22
Speaker 1: wealth per household over the last forty years, just over
18:26
Speaker 1: the last forty years. I mean we're talking about stuff
18:28
Speaker 1: that started, I mean back in the days of slavery,
18:30
Speaker 1: but really started to take off in the nineteen thirties
18:32
Speaker 1: with the New Deal. And this is just since nineteen
18:35
Speaker 1: eighty they've lost out on that amount of money per household.
18:38
Speaker 1: That's nuts and still today, Chuck, here's another one that
18:41
Speaker 1: gets me. Black American is five times likelier to own
18:45
Speaker 1: a home in a red line neighborhood than a white
18:47
Speaker 1: American is. So this is still an issue today. Um.
18:52
Speaker 1: So redlining these maps just set off this enormous amount
18:56
Speaker 1: of um discrimination and I guess is all you can say.
19:01
Speaker 1: And then all of the horrible effects that come out
19:03
Speaker 1: of that that level of discrimination. But they weren't the
19:06
Speaker 1: only things that set it off. Um. The g I
19:08
Speaker 1: Bill really kind of came in and said, well, hold on,
19:11
Speaker 1: hold my beer, I want to mess things up to
19:15
Speaker 1: what does hold my beer mean? It means that like
19:17
Speaker 1: there's some dude just kind of sitting there with like
19:19
Speaker 1: his shirt, um just barely covering his gut drinking a beer,
19:23
Speaker 1: watching somebody do something stupid and he says, hold my beer,
19:26
Speaker 1: and then he doesn't stupid. That's right. Yeah, I thought
19:30
Speaker 1: that's what it meant. But you know me, I'm a
19:31
Speaker 1: I'm an old man with a shirt barely covering his gut.
19:35
Speaker 1: So I wasn't quite short. You should spend more time
19:38
Speaker 1: on Urban Dictionary. It should. I don't drink much beer anymore, though,
19:42
Speaker 1: although I do love it. What's your favorite? I mean,
19:46
Speaker 1: you know I love Tropicalia here out of Athens, Georgia.
19:49
Speaker 1: The creature comfort. I still never had one. Well, you
19:52
Speaker 1: should come over. I have a cagorator now on my deck.
19:54
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm serving it up. But I don't
19:58
Speaker 1: know why I got it. I got it for friends
19:59
Speaker 1: because I don't drink. It's on a beer. And then
20:01
Speaker 1: the pandemic happened, and now I've just got a half
20:04
Speaker 1: keg of beer sitting ship. All right. So yeah, the
20:09
Speaker 1: g I Bill um this, you know, in theory, the
20:13
Speaker 1: g I Bill is a great thing, and it has
20:14
Speaker 1: done a lot of good. But in this case, it
20:17
Speaker 1: did block access to home ownership among black Americans because,
20:22
Speaker 1: uh they would come home from World War Two. The
20:25
Speaker 1: g I Bill was passed. Banks are handing out mortgages
20:28
Speaker 1: to veterans and they were actually allowed to discriminate based
20:31
Speaker 1: on race. Yes, it's shocking. Yeah, well it's like whenever
20:35
Speaker 1: you see that kind of thing, you're like, this doesn't
20:37
Speaker 1: jibe with what I understand. Just look to the Dixiecrats,
20:40
Speaker 1: the segregationists of the South, who were a very powerful
20:43
Speaker 1: voting block and during the Jim Crow era, and they
20:48
Speaker 1: were like to appease them and get them to vote
20:52
Speaker 1: for something like a New Deal program or to not
20:54
Speaker 1: do everything they could to block it. You had to say, okay,
20:57
Speaker 1: well we'll make sure that that blacks are excluded them
21:00
Speaker 1: this that that that Black Americans won't have access to
21:03
Speaker 1: this amazing program. And they'd be like, okay, cool, let's
21:06
Speaker 1: let's do it. That's that's that's where a lot of
21:08
Speaker 1: that came from. And I mean, it's easy to blame
21:11
Speaker 1: the Dixie Krats, but you can also be like, well,
21:14
Speaker 1: you know, how hard did you try to go around
21:16
Speaker 1: the Dixie Kratz too. I mean it was allowed to happen, yes, yeah,
21:19
Speaker 1: by everybody, despite Francis perkins best efforts. Yeah, here's the
21:25
Speaker 1: stat For instance, in Mississippi in Uh, they build out
21:29
Speaker 1: told out more than three thousand v A backed home
21:32
Speaker 1: loans that year. Uh, and two of them were two
21:37
Speaker 1: black veterans. Uh. Pretty startling. I don't even know the
21:40
Speaker 1: percentage on that point nine eight. Oh yeah, there's got
21:44
Speaker 1: to be a repeating something in there somewhere. Uh. And
21:47
Speaker 1: you know this is a big deal because when World
21:49
Speaker 1: War Two ended, they wanted a housing boom. There was
21:53
Speaker 1: a lot of the supplies that would have gone to
21:55
Speaker 1: home construction during the war went to the war effort.
21:58
Speaker 1: So the f h A said, you know what, we
22:00
Speaker 1: we need a housing boom here. We're going to guarantee
22:02
Speaker 1: construction loans to you like big construction companies out there.
22:08
Speaker 1: And that's when the suburbs popped up for the first time,
22:11
Speaker 1: and that changed everything forever. Yeah. I mean, like they
22:15
Speaker 1: they the birth of the suburbs were like a deliberate
22:18
Speaker 1: program created by the federal government to to basically get
22:22
Speaker 1: more people buying houses, to start that intergenerational wealth and
22:26
Speaker 1: to create a middle class or to expand the middle
22:30
Speaker 1: class dramatically. And they were able to do that partially
22:33
Speaker 1: through just like when the f h came along and said, hey,
22:37
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to back these people's loans as
22:39
Speaker 1: long as they're not in a red line neighborhood. That
22:41
Speaker 1: says to the lenders, well, then you know that means
22:44
Speaker 1: even if this person defaults, the government will buy the
22:46
Speaker 1: loan from me. I'm gonna get paid back no matter what.
22:49
Speaker 1: They did the same thing to these construction companies to
22:51
Speaker 1: which created this huge housing boom. But there's a caveat
22:54
Speaker 1: to it. Just like with the v A loans that
22:57
Speaker 1: said you can discriminate based on race for loans, even
23:01
Speaker 1: though this is really important, Chuck. Even though the government
23:05
Speaker 1: the v A would back the loan of a black
23:08
Speaker 1: veteran just like they would back the loan of a
23:10
Speaker 1: white veteran and you would be repaid no matter what,
23:13
Speaker 1: you were still allowed to discriminate based on race. The
23:16
Speaker 1: f h A, supposedly with the birth of the suburbs,
23:19
Speaker 1: said we're going to guarantee your construction loans, so you
23:22
Speaker 1: can build suburbs, but you can't sell two black Americans.
23:26
Speaker 1: That's another one that I don't think there's a smoking
23:29
Speaker 1: gun that I saw, so I don't know if that means,
23:32
Speaker 1: like get the word out, like you can't sell the
23:35
Speaker 1: black people or else we're not going to back these loans,
23:37
Speaker 1: or if it was stated policy, that haven't been able
23:40
Speaker 1: to turn up. But it's pretty well understood that the
23:43
Speaker 1: f h A discriminated against black people basically moving to
23:48
Speaker 1: the suburbs by not backing construction loans like that. Well. Yeah,
23:53
Speaker 1: and there were neighborhood covenants in place that said that
23:56
Speaker 1: black people cannot own homes in these neighborhoods they were
24:00
Speaker 1: there were clauses that said you cannot resell your home
24:02
Speaker 1: if you go to move, you can't sell it to
24:04
Speaker 1: a black family. Yeah, dude, if you want to be startled,
24:06
Speaker 1: go search that um on Google Images. There's like pictures
24:10
Speaker 1: of these clauses and deeds that say you can't sell
24:14
Speaker 1: to anybody who's not white, or even specifically, you can't
24:16
Speaker 1: sell anybody who's black. It's really jarring. Yeah, and it's um,
24:21
Speaker 1: I mean, it was sort of expressly understood that the
24:23
Speaker 1: suburbs were being created for a reason, and that's to
24:26
Speaker 1: get white people out of the city to a place
24:30
Speaker 1: where they could live among themselves. And it's it's something
24:33
Speaker 1: that's still going on. I mean, during the uh most
24:36
Speaker 1: recent presidential election campaign, Donald Trump started playing praying on
24:42
Speaker 1: these fears again. He was saying things like, literally, suburban
24:45
Speaker 1: housewives of America, Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your
24:49
Speaker 1: American dream. People living their suburban lifestyle dream will no
24:54
Speaker 1: longer be bothered of fine or financially hurt by having
24:57
Speaker 1: low income housing built in your neighborhood. And the these
25:00
Speaker 1: are literal quotes, and it's just he's trying to to
25:04
Speaker 1: garner a certain kind of vote, to be sure. But
25:07
Speaker 1: you know, we'll get to other stuff. I mean, Trump
25:09
Speaker 1: has a long history and his and his family with
25:11
Speaker 1: he and his father of housing discrimination. But the end
25:15
Speaker 1: result of all this is white people. You know, people
25:19
Speaker 1: call it white flight. They left the cities, moved to
25:22
Speaker 1: the suburbs. People that were in the city still, these
25:25
Speaker 1: African American families in these yellow and red line communities,
25:29
Speaker 1: we're sort of stuck there. So the government steps in
25:32
Speaker 1: to build affordable housing, which at first were racially integrated.
25:36
Speaker 1: There were black people and white people, but then even
25:40
Speaker 1: the lower income white people, uh fled for the suburbs. Yeah,
25:44
Speaker 1: because wages rose. Yeah, and they left cities in an
25:47
Speaker 1: urban communities almost entirely black. Um. Yeah. So proportionately speaking,
25:52
Speaker 1: there was a tremendous drain of white people from the cities.
25:57
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was different on a city to city based.
26:00
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I know it was. There's
26:02
Speaker 1: not a you can't put a whole blanket of history
26:04
Speaker 1: over every square inch of the United States, so different
26:07
Speaker 1: cities had different experiences. But proportionately speaking, black people have
26:12
Speaker 1: always made up a smaller amount of the American population overall.
26:17
Speaker 1: But then if you look at the you know, percentage
26:20
Speaker 1: of black people, say in a city in nine I
26:23
Speaker 1: think is when it peaked. For Atlanta in particular, Um,
26:27
Speaker 1: it's like say black or something that's a way larger
26:31
Speaker 1: proportion or disproportionate amount of black people living in the
26:34
Speaker 1: city than say, um, in the suburbs. And then conversely, Chuck,
26:38
Speaker 1: when you look at the suburbs and the statistics about
26:41
Speaker 1: race or demography in the suburbs, then it really kind
26:44
Speaker 1: of all comes home. Yeah, and you know they're living
26:48
Speaker 1: in the suburbs. They decide, you know, we still need
26:50
Speaker 1: to go into the city sometimes, so we need interstates
26:53
Speaker 1: to get us there because we like going to concerts
26:56
Speaker 1: occasionally or seeing a professional sports team play, right, and
27:01
Speaker 1: so they built these interstates, Uh, they kind of barreled
27:04
Speaker 1: through black neighborhoods built them there they often became a
27:07
Speaker 1: dividing line. UH. And you know, these communities were set
27:11
Speaker 1: up to fail. They had less frequent garbage pickup, they
27:14
Speaker 1: had inadequate funding to keep up this public housing that
27:17
Speaker 1: they built, UM, lower access to basic utilities, and they
27:22
Speaker 1: were just in no position to to succeed basically. Now.
27:25
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to remember what episode we talked about
27:28
Speaker 1: prow I Go Housing UM project in in St. Louis.
27:32
Speaker 1: I think it was the Environmental Psychology episode, if I'm
27:35
Speaker 1: not mistaken, But that was a really good example of
27:38
Speaker 1: this of how people pointed to that people from the
27:40
Speaker 1: outside and we're like, look, you can't like black people
27:43
Speaker 1: can't take care of anything. Look at the degraded state
27:46
Speaker 1: that this housing project is in. And it's, like you said,
27:49
Speaker 1: like they were set up to fail through all through
27:51
Speaker 1: like a lack of attention, a lack of funding, UM,
27:54
Speaker 1: just a lack of basically everything UM. And it's it's
27:59
Speaker 1: that kind of seem to keep perpetuating these um uh biases.
28:07
Speaker 1: For example, and this is a big one that we'll
28:09
Speaker 1: talk about later, that white people think if black people
28:11
Speaker 1: move into an area, their housing values are going to
28:14
Speaker 1: go down because of stuff like that. Yeah, I mean,
28:18
Speaker 1: that's sort of the I guess you'd call it the
28:21
Speaker 1: dog whistle that everyone leans on there like, hey, we
28:24
Speaker 1: you know, we don't mind. Uh, we're not bigoted at all.
28:27
Speaker 1: We just want to keep our housing values up. That's right.
28:30
Speaker 1: That that so that one and then the the um
28:35
Speaker 1: the myth that black people are just inherently um uncredit
28:39
Speaker 1: worthy or not credit worthy are the two things that
28:42
Speaker 1: seem to be used the most as cover for, like
28:45
Speaker 1: you said, post civil rights are segregation in the United States,
28:51
Speaker 1: the dog whistle, like you said, yeah, I mean, and
28:54
Speaker 1: now is when we can talk a little bit about
28:56
Speaker 1: um gentrification, because I mean, the way housing has worked
29:01
Speaker 1: in this country is really fascinating and really gross in
29:03
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, but just interesting to look at
29:06
Speaker 1: from a bird's eye point of view. The way people
29:09
Speaker 1: move around and what eventually happened with the cities is that, uh,
29:16
Speaker 1: you know, call them what you want, yuppies or dinks.
29:21
Speaker 1: There's a lot of name for upwardly mobile white people.
29:24
Speaker 1: They're like, Hey, I want to move into the city,
29:26
Speaker 1: I want to be closer to to the concerts. Although
29:31
Speaker 1: this is going to be controversial, I'm gonna get a
29:32
Speaker 1: lot of cred for this, but one of the most
29:35
Speaker 1: annoying trends of the last like fifteen years is building
29:37
Speaker 1: all these concert venues out in the suburbs. It's so annoying.
29:42
Speaker 1: And I know they want their concert venues out there
29:44
Speaker 1: so they don't have to come into the city, but
29:45
Speaker 1: I hate it when I one of my bands plays,
29:49
Speaker 1: you know, thirty miles out into the suburbs. I won't go. Yeah,
29:54
Speaker 1: it's kind of a pain. Although we did go out.
29:56
Speaker 1: It's a huge Motley Crewe thanks to that was Nita Strauss. No,
30:02
Speaker 1: that's true, So that was that was worth the trip
30:04
Speaker 1: because it was Miley Crue and Alice Cooper. I just think,
30:08
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think all sports stadiums and all
30:10
Speaker 1: concerts and you should be in the city. I'm with you.
30:12
Speaker 1: That's definitely traditional into the city for a big day out.
30:16
Speaker 1: You know, when they start moving museums way out in
30:18
Speaker 1: the exurbs and I'm done. Um. But the same thing.
30:23
Speaker 1: You could make the same case. When they built the
30:25
Speaker 1: highways and everything, they just kind of built them through
30:27
Speaker 1: black communities. That's what they did with with the stadiums
30:30
Speaker 1: and all that as well too. Well, no, that's true.
30:33
Speaker 1: You know, think about Braves. They just plunked Braves Stadium
30:37
Speaker 1: ted Turner out just right in the middle of Mechanicsville,
30:41
Speaker 1: which is a historically black community, and said, everybody moves
30:45
Speaker 1: move aside, and don't harass all the white people who
30:48
Speaker 1: come down to see the game on you know, same day.
30:52
Speaker 1: We should do I mean, I love sports, but we
30:53
Speaker 1: should do a There's such a problematic side to pro
30:56
Speaker 1: sports from that too. Um, these billionaire owners is using
31:01
Speaker 1: city money to build new stadiums when their other stadium
31:04
Speaker 1: is just like ten years old or whatever. That is
31:06
Speaker 1: definitely problematic. It's crazy, what a crazy amount of waste
31:09
Speaker 1: that produces a loan just that alone. Yeah, um, alright,
31:14
Speaker 1: so where was I? All right? Uh, white dinks are
31:18
Speaker 1: moving into the neighborhoods again in the city because they
31:22
Speaker 1: want good Thai food, and uh, these neighborhoods become a
31:28
Speaker 1: little more attractive the more white people move into, other
31:31
Speaker 1: white people to move in, and they start moving in
31:34
Speaker 1: and increasing numbers, and the houses are generally renovated or
31:38
Speaker 1: improved over time or sometimes they might bulldoze you know,
31:42
Speaker 1: a pretty decent house with good bones just to build
31:45
Speaker 1: you know, the biggest house possible on their postage stamp
31:48
Speaker 1: of a lot. It's crazy how close they build these
31:51
Speaker 1: mammoth houses together. I'm sure it happens everywhere. Atlanta's got
31:55
Speaker 1: a real problem with it. But what happens is, you know,
31:59
Speaker 1: home user going to increase, that's gonna raise taxes on
32:02
Speaker 1: the other homes around them. A lot of time, those
32:05
Speaker 1: other homes are owned by UM, longtime lower income residents,
32:10
Speaker 1: most times people of color, it becomes unsustainable. UM. We
32:15
Speaker 1: have a great, great program here in my neighborhood and
32:17
Speaker 1: east like called Neighbor in Need. That is UH Emily
32:21
Speaker 1: and I have four main charities that we work with
32:23
Speaker 1: and give to every year, and Neighbor in Need is
32:26
Speaker 1: one of them because we like to stay really locally focused.
32:29
Speaker 1: But Neighbor in Need basically addresses this head on and
32:33
Speaker 1: they you know, raise a lot of money and they
32:35
Speaker 1: use that money to take care of these people. UM,
32:38
Speaker 1: if they hear about a neighbor that's like, you know,
32:42
Speaker 1: in need, like an older African American couple who's been
32:44
Speaker 1: here for forty years, they're having to pay way too
32:47
Speaker 1: much in property taxes so they can't afford a roof
32:49
Speaker 1: on their house. They'll go put a roof on their house,
32:52
Speaker 1: or they'll pay their power bill, um whatever. I mean.
32:56
Speaker 1: It's a really really great grassroots organization, so UM very
33:00
Speaker 1: happy to be working with them and uh, you know,
33:03
Speaker 1: trying to fight the sort of ills of gentrification overall. Yeah,
33:06
Speaker 1: that's neat because it also draws the community together to
33:09
Speaker 1: help the longest term residents of that community rather than
33:14
Speaker 1: that whole everybody's on their own kind of thing, which
33:17
Speaker 1: I'm sure most people who move into a community like
33:20
Speaker 1: you know that is gentrifying probably would want to do.
33:22
Speaker 1: They just don't know how to do it, or they
33:24
Speaker 1: don't know how to contact anybody. People don't just usually
33:27
Speaker 1: go over to their neighbor's house and knock on the
33:29
Speaker 1: door and introduce themselves anymore. So that's cool. Yeah, and
33:33
Speaker 1: you know this is uh sometimes they are able to
33:36
Speaker 1: sell their house for a pretty good you know, the
33:39
Speaker 1: housing value does increase, so they're able to get more
33:42
Speaker 1: money than they might have before, which can be a
33:45
Speaker 1: nice windfall. But I've also seen firsthand, literally with my neighbors, UM,
33:50
Speaker 1: these sort of predatory home builders that come in there,
33:54
Speaker 1: and while they think it's probably decent money compared to
33:57
Speaker 1: what they thought they could get, it's still a lower
34:00
Speaker 1: than what they would offer a white family. But even
34:03
Speaker 1: if they were treated fairly and they walked away with
34:06
Speaker 1: the big windfall from the sale, um and you know,
34:09
Speaker 1: had a lot of money to retire on, that community
34:13
Speaker 1: was still fractured. You know, the people who are having
34:16
Speaker 1: to move and their neighbors who already had to move
34:19
Speaker 1: may have lived there for generations or even you know,
34:22
Speaker 1: just their whole lives and they formed a community. And
34:25
Speaker 1: it's not like that whole community just moves elsewhere together.
34:28
Speaker 1: They all go to different communities, often towards the end
34:31
Speaker 1: of their life, and it leads to alienation, isolation. Um.
34:34
Speaker 1: It's a that I mean, that's a real problem. Even
34:37
Speaker 1: even if they are being paid well for the the
34:40
Speaker 1: houses they're they're being bought out of because they don't
34:43
Speaker 1: necessarily want to move, but they just can't afford the
34:45
Speaker 1: taxes anymore. Um. So there's there's that's a big issue
34:50
Speaker 1: with gentrification. It's tough to get around sounds like that
34:52
Speaker 1: neighborhood group that you're talking about what's the name again
34:57
Speaker 1: that they that they've they've figured out a way or
35:00
Speaker 1: round it. Do you know what there needs to be
35:02
Speaker 1: dude is uh and this is chuck twenty two stuff. Okay.
35:08
Speaker 1: I think if you live in a house long enough,
35:11
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have to pay property tax anymore. Yeah, I
35:14
Speaker 1: think there are I mean, I have to be a lot.
35:16
Speaker 1: Maybe it's like twenty years or something, but that would
35:18
Speaker 1: solve a lot of this problem. There is zero reason
35:21
Speaker 1: why some elderly African American couple that's been in a
35:25
Speaker 1: home for forty years needs to be paying taxes at
35:28
Speaker 1: all on that house, much less these jacked up rates. Yeah. No,
35:31
Speaker 1: I think that's that's totally true. Um. Yeah, I think
35:35
Speaker 1: there's a if it's not law, there's a proposal in
35:38
Speaker 1: Georgia to do that once you're sixty five or something
35:40
Speaker 1: like that. Maybe. I mean, I'm ad about property tax anyway,
35:44
Speaker 1: just because it's I don't know, we pay so much
35:47
Speaker 1: in taxes. Then you finally scrape up enough to buy
35:50
Speaker 1: a place that's your own, and the government's then like, well,
35:53
Speaker 1: if you're going to have to pay tax on that,
35:55
Speaker 1: do right? You know, I know, it's seems unfair. Also,
35:58
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have to pay full price for coffee anywhere
36:01
Speaker 1: once you reach sixty five or old agreed, especially after
36:05
Speaker 1: three pm. Uh, All right, well, should we take a
36:08
Speaker 1: break and then talk about the Fair Housing Act, which
36:11
Speaker 1: solved everything. It totally did. It's all great now, alright,
36:15
Speaker 1: we'll be right back up to this. Alright, spoiler, So
36:41
Speaker 1: we ruined things. They passed the Fair Housing Act, and
36:44
Speaker 1: racism has been solved in America. That's right. Ninety eight
36:48
Speaker 1: And we talked about the Fair Housing Act a little bit, UM,
36:52
Speaker 1: and you know, it's a good thing they passed it.
36:54
Speaker 1: It did banned discrimination in housing practices officially, but it
37:00
Speaker 1: just led to a little trickier way to get around
37:03
Speaker 1: stuff by UM doing it on the download. Yeah, and
37:06
Speaker 1: that is that is for if you're studying systemic racisicism
37:10
Speaker 1: in the United States. The passing of like the Voting
37:13
Speaker 1: Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act UH,
37:17
Speaker 1: and some other legislation UM during the sixties really changed
37:23
Speaker 1: things in that no longer was the government in the
37:27
Speaker 1: business of enforcing discrimination and segregation UM. And also now
37:33
Speaker 1: you had recourse in the courts if you were discriminated
37:36
Speaker 1: against UM. But it didn't just a race racism in
37:39
Speaker 1: the United States that that task of enforcing basically white
37:45
Speaker 1: supremacy and racial discrimination and segregation and all the stuff
37:48
Speaker 1: that comes along with it fell to um lesser institutions
37:52
Speaker 1: in everyday people who carried out. And when you're talking
37:55
Speaker 1: about something like housing discrimination, UM, the people who now
38:00
Speaker 1: are best able to continue enforcing segregation and discrimination in
38:06
Speaker 1: the United States are people like lenders and real estate
38:10
Speaker 1: agents and even people who are deciding where to buy
38:14
Speaker 1: a house. Um. Everyday americans buying the house UM often
38:19
Speaker 1: make choices that they don't necessarily think our racist, and
38:23
Speaker 1: they might they probably don't think that they're racist, but
38:26
Speaker 1: they're still they're housing choices often reflect um inadvertent or
38:32
Speaker 1: otherwise racial choices or choices along racial lines. Yeah, and
38:38
Speaker 1: this you know this next bit, we're we're sort of
38:41
Speaker 1: busting on real estate professionals a little bit. I have
38:45
Speaker 1: very good friends that are real estate agents. They're great
38:48
Speaker 1: people for the most part. We don't mean to just
38:51
Speaker 1: paint everything with the big broadbrush, but the industry does
38:54
Speaker 1: have a history of it, for sure. Yeah, and we
38:56
Speaker 1: have to talk about it. So there was one in
39:00
Speaker 1: the in the eighties, there was one practice called block
39:02
Speaker 1: busting god um not having anything to do with video stores,
39:07
Speaker 1: I know it was the eighties, but um literally busting
39:09
Speaker 1: up a block. When a real estate agent would work
39:14
Speaker 1: or sort of act as a speculator and say, either, hey,
39:19
Speaker 1: you know what you know, there are some black families
39:21
Speaker 1: that are moving into the area. You may want to
39:24
Speaker 1: think about selling just to protect your home values before
39:27
Speaker 1: they fall. Or they might sell to a black family
39:30
Speaker 1: and introduce them to the area so they could then
39:32
Speaker 1: turn around, um, buy these houses from the white residents
39:37
Speaker 1: and then sell them to the black residents or you know,
39:41
Speaker 1: hopefully black residents, but at a big mark up. Yeah,
39:45
Speaker 1: which has insult to injury, Like they created a basically
39:48
Speaker 1: white flight from an area just from the rumor of
39:51
Speaker 1: black people moving in, and then they move black people
39:53
Speaker 1: in and sell them sell to them at wildly inflated rates,
39:57
Speaker 1: which is crazy. And I read one story to Chuck
40:00
Speaker 1: of one of these real estate agents that was doing blockbusting.
40:03
Speaker 1: They would have a black dad with the stroller walk
40:07
Speaker 1: around the neighborhood, um like he had moved in or
40:10
Speaker 1: was thinking of moving in or whatever, and apparently just
40:13
Speaker 1: that was enough to get people to start to sell.
40:15
Speaker 1: And again you're like, you know, this is this is
40:18
Speaker 1: terrible that real estate agents are doing it. But the
40:21
Speaker 1: fact that it was effective really says a lot about
40:23
Speaker 1: every day you know, white homeowners too. And also again
40:27
Speaker 1: like it it doesn't mean like that these white homeowners
40:29
Speaker 1: hate black people like they were worried about their property values,
40:34
Speaker 1: because it's such an embedded myth in America that when
40:37
Speaker 1: a black family moves into a neighborhood, they're so bad
40:40
Speaker 1: at taking care of their their house and their home
40:43
Speaker 1: values that it's going to drag the home values down
40:46
Speaker 1: in throughout the entire neighborhood. And so everybody needed to
40:49
Speaker 1: get out before that happened. That's that's again, that's the
40:53
Speaker 1: definition of systemic racism. Yeah, and you know this has
40:58
Speaker 1: been busted up to a large degree officially, but up
41:01
Speaker 1: until nineteen fifty, the official policy of the National Association
41:06
Speaker 1: of Real Estate Boards UM said a realtor should never
41:09
Speaker 1: be instrumental and introducing into a neighborhood members of any
41:13
Speaker 1: race or nationality whose presence will clearly be detrimental to
41:16
Speaker 1: property values in that neighborhood. That was like literal policy
41:20
Speaker 1: up until nineteen fifty, and then there was a study
41:23
Speaker 1: in two thousand six by the National Fair Housing Alliance
41:27
Speaker 1: that said, and this is something else called steering, which
41:30
Speaker 1: is not blockbusting, but it's like, hey, like we want
41:34
Speaker 1: to show you houses over here in this neighborhood because
41:37
Speaker 1: we think it's a better fit for you. Uh. And
41:40
Speaker 1: you know here the financial instruments available to get mortgages
41:43
Speaker 1: for you and maybe not just for everybody. And black
41:47
Speaker 1: people historically have not given the full picture. They're maybe
41:50
Speaker 1: not shown white neighborhoods. Uh. And the study found that
41:53
Speaker 1: steering occurred sent of the time when researchers posed as
41:58
Speaker 1: buyers and we're shown homes like these sort of undercover operations. Yeah,
42:02
Speaker 1: and steering occurs, um not just you know, if you're
42:07
Speaker 1: if you're a black home buyer, you're not just going
42:09
Speaker 1: to be shown a black neighborhoods. If you're a white
42:11
Speaker 1: home buyer, they're probably not going to take you to
42:13
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods either. So through this process of racial steering,
42:18
Speaker 1: this is basically enforcing patterns of segregation still in the
42:22
Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, there was another study by Brookings. They
42:28
Speaker 1: found that black owned homes are undervalued by an average
42:31
Speaker 1: of forty thou dollars. And this is one that's controlled
42:35
Speaker 1: by all the factors like home quality and amenities and everything. Exclamation, Yeah,
42:41
Speaker 1: it's forty eight grand literally because it is a home
42:43
Speaker 1: owned by a black individual. When they control for amenities
42:47
Speaker 1: where the home is the size of the house, everything
42:50
Speaker 1: else about the house. If you compare apples to apples,
42:53
Speaker 1: and it's the same house owned by a white person
42:55
Speaker 1: and the other house that's exactly the same home by
42:58
Speaker 1: a black person, the black person's house is going to
43:00
Speaker 1: be forty thousand dollars less in value just because it's
43:05
Speaker 1: owned by a black person. And that's that's just basically
43:09
Speaker 1: that whole idea of um that black people drag home
43:14
Speaker 1: values down becoming a self fulfilling prophecy, and um that
43:18
Speaker 1: those same home values are all of that undervaluing that
43:22
Speaker 1: same Brooking study found amounts to a loss of about
43:27
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty six billion dollars for Black Americans. Yeah,
43:32
Speaker 1: for wealth they were not able to achieve. And uh,
43:36
Speaker 1: you know, we talked a lot about the Great Recession
43:38
Speaker 1: in the mortgage crisis kind of when it was going
43:40
Speaker 1: on and shortly thereafter, Um, Black Americans back then were
43:44
Speaker 1: likelier to receive subprime mortgages. These were the loans that
43:47
Speaker 1: were really expensive to repay. They had higher fees, they
43:50
Speaker 1: had higher interest rates, um they also had mechanisms built
43:54
Speaker 1: in if you were a black loan owner that made
43:57
Speaker 1: it easier for the lender to seize their collateral with
44:00
Speaker 1: usually meant their house and so like, it makes sense
44:04
Speaker 1: that if you are taking a greater risk lending to
44:07
Speaker 1: somebody as the bank, you should be able to get
44:10
Speaker 1: more money for it, right, But the problem is is
44:13
Speaker 1: like subprime mortgages were doled out to black homeowners or
44:17
Speaker 1: black home buyers at way higher rates than they were
44:20
Speaker 1: to white home buyers. And that's a problem in and
44:23
Speaker 1: of itself if the if the rates are less favorable
44:26
Speaker 1: and it's easier for the bank to repossess the house.
44:28
Speaker 1: But especially it proved to be a big problem during
44:32
Speaker 1: the mortgage crisis when that bubble bursts, because if you
44:36
Speaker 1: were a low income Black American, you were probably denied
44:41
Speaker 1: a mortgage of any kind. But even if you were
44:44
Speaker 1: a middle to high income black home buyer, you probably
44:49
Speaker 1: got a subprime mortgage compared to say, a white buyer
44:52
Speaker 1: with the same criteria that you had to offer. UM.
44:56
Speaker 1: So that meant that when those foreclosures happened because the
44:59
Speaker 1: bubble bursts, Black Americans, especially UM, wealthier Black Americans, were
45:04
Speaker 1: disproportionately impacted, so that that subprime mortgage debacle erased way
45:09
Speaker 1: more Black intergenerational wealth than it did for white people. Yeah,
45:15
Speaker 1: I have my last three exclamation points. Stat during the
45:20
Speaker 1: subprime mortgage crisis, there was a study that found black
45:24
Speaker 1: and Latino families, because you know we've mentioned people of
45:27
Speaker 1: color a few times, is not just solely African American
45:31
Speaker 1: families affected? Um, And the study found that black and
45:34
Speaker 1: Latino families making two hundred thousand dollars a year or more,
45:39
Speaker 1: we're still more likely to receive a subprime loan than
45:41
Speaker 1: white families making less than thirty thousand dollars a year.
45:45
Speaker 1: That nuts, and six point two percent of white people
45:48
Speaker 1: with a credit score of six sixty or higher received
45:52
Speaker 1: a subprime mortgage compared to twenty one point four percent
45:55
Speaker 1: of black borrowers with that same credit score. So, Chuck, UM,
46:00
Speaker 1: there's a big problem with all this. And it's kind
46:02
Speaker 1: of like you said at the beginning, like when you're
46:05
Speaker 1: talking about race and especially discrimination by race. Um, people
46:09
Speaker 1: tend to be like, especially white people tend to be like, well,
46:12
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. I mean, there's a lot
46:14
Speaker 1: of other factors involved, Like it could be anything. So
46:17
Speaker 1: you really have to kind of prove that this is
46:19
Speaker 1: a thing. And ever since the federal government got out
46:22
Speaker 1: of discriminating on paper, um, it's gotten a lot harder
46:26
Speaker 1: to track. So back in the seventies, the Department of
46:30
Speaker 1: Housing and Urban Development, they have an office of Research
46:33
Speaker 1: and Policy. They came up with the way of testing
46:36
Speaker 1: this to control for as many variables as possible and
46:39
Speaker 1: just see if it's just race that is being discriminated against.
46:43
Speaker 1: And it's called paired testing. It's actually pretty clever from
46:46
Speaker 1: what I understand. Yeah, that's when you get to equally
46:50
Speaker 1: qualified candidates to apply for homeown or to go to
46:54
Speaker 1: a real estate agent and like look at apartments or
46:57
Speaker 1: houses or whatever. Uh. They are trained to basically be
47:01
Speaker 1: as identical as they can be to one another, to
47:04
Speaker 1: respond to the questions in the same way, have the
47:06
Speaker 1: same credit history, same job status, same income level, and
47:09
Speaker 1: basically sort of be duplicates of one another except for
47:13
Speaker 1: their skin color. Uh, they're not working together so they
47:16
Speaker 1: don't even know, um, like there's no bias there even
47:20
Speaker 1: because they're not like paired together, right, They're not like,
47:22
Speaker 1: oh they got too, I'm gonna try this with them.
47:24
Speaker 1: Like they don't. They don't meet one another, they don't
47:26
Speaker 1: interact with one another. They're just doing their thing and
47:28
Speaker 1: they're just trained to do it exactly the same way.
47:31
Speaker 1: The only distinction between them is their their race. Right.
47:36
Speaker 1: And so the Urban Institute, which is a think tank,
47:40
Speaker 1: UM study this and they came up with kind of
47:42
Speaker 1: four big points from this paired testing UH exercise, which
47:47
Speaker 1: is UH. They found about discrimination and housing vouchers that
47:52
Speaker 1: are intended to let low income renters choose from a
47:54
Speaker 1: bigger pool a rental housing uh than the realtors even showed. UM,
47:59
Speaker 1: there were fewer homes and apartments available to minorities like
48:03
Speaker 1: we were, like I kind of mentioned earlier, like just
48:06
Speaker 1: a smaller like no, you know, we'll just look here. Yeah,
48:09
Speaker 1: the racial steering usually results in fewer, fewer places being shown. Um.
48:14
Speaker 1: They were steered again to primarily um, you know, neighborhoods
48:20
Speaker 1: of their own ethnicity, and then given less information overall.
48:24
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned about mortgage products, UM, different kinds of loans,
48:28
Speaker 1: different kinds of ways of structuring a loan, just not
48:31
Speaker 1: given that information at all. Right, Um, so the they
48:35
Speaker 1: also found this paired testing turns up very frequently that um,
48:39
Speaker 1: it's not just even people of colors, not just black Americans,
48:43
Speaker 1: but it's people of color in general. But um, it's
48:45
Speaker 1: not even just down to to racial discrimination. There's also
48:49
Speaker 1: a lot of discrimination against people who are differently abled.
48:53
Speaker 1: They actually sometimes fair worse than minorities when it comes
48:57
Speaker 1: to housing discrimination. Paired testing is has turned that up
49:01
Speaker 1: as well. So it's still the upshot of all this
49:04
Speaker 1: is that it's still a problem and there is like
49:07
Speaker 1: some silver lining to it. Um the I think. Uh.
49:11
Speaker 1: That same think tank, the Urban Institute, also turned up
49:14
Speaker 1: that there's been a general decline overall. It's not huge,
49:18
Speaker 1: but it's it's noteworthy. It's remarkable. Um of preference in
49:23
Speaker 1: favoritism toward white white buyers over buyers of of like
49:28
Speaker 1: minority buyers by about five percent between and two thousand.
49:33
Speaker 1: It went from about so And there does seem to
49:38
Speaker 1: be a general decline in racism or discrimination, I should say, uh,
49:44
Speaker 1: in the United States. So that's the good news, is
49:47
Speaker 1: that America seems to be getting less racist. The bad
49:50
Speaker 1: news is that America is still racist. Like, we still
49:53
Speaker 1: have a long way to go. It's, as the study
49:55
Speaker 1: put the studies findings confirm a hard truth that America's
49:58
Speaker 1: long journey to end housing discrimination remains unfinished. Um. And
50:02
Speaker 1: so there's still a long way to go. And I
50:04
Speaker 1: think it's really important for everybody to realize that there's
50:07
Speaker 1: a long history of discriminating against people of color, but
50:11
Speaker 1: also very specifically Black Americans, and that it's still going
50:14
Speaker 1: on today. And even though it's in a slightly lesser form,
50:18
Speaker 1: it's very important if it's going on at all, that
50:21
Speaker 1: we we erase it. That's right, agreed, You got anything else?
50:27
Speaker 1: Nothing else? All right, Chuck, Well then that's housing discrimination.
50:30
Speaker 1: And since I said all right, Chuck, it's time for
50:33
Speaker 1: a listener mail. Well instead of reading a specific listener mail.
50:39
Speaker 1: And because this episode is a little heavy, we thought
50:41
Speaker 1: we'd have a little fun. Um. We got maybe more
50:45
Speaker 1: emails than we have for any other episode in our
50:48
Speaker 1: history down literally about Neco wavers Um. A lot of
50:54
Speaker 1: support for the Neco for people, and a lot of
50:57
Speaker 1: condemnation for yucking yums without giving having tried them. You
51:01
Speaker 1: were all correct. We honor you all, and we're gonna
51:04
Speaker 1: Josh got some sent them to me. We're gonna try
51:06
Speaker 1: some necka wafers on the air. Listen there. I just
51:11
Speaker 1: realized I think I made a grave mistake by not
51:13
Speaker 1: having any water in the basement. Yeah, I just realized
51:15
Speaker 1: this as well. Do you have a pipe to tap into?
51:19
Speaker 1: I think we should eat the same color. Oh really? Okay,
51:22
Speaker 1: all right, so we can kind of go, you know,
51:24
Speaker 1: nose to nose. I'm never open one these before. Okay, exactly, already,
51:29
Speaker 1: so nasty. You know, everybody was right about yucking people's
51:34
Speaker 1: yams in general, but also because we hadn't tried them.
51:37
Speaker 1: So that's why we're doing this. I mean, they're just
51:38
Speaker 1: falling apart when I opened the package. So to strike one,
51:42
Speaker 1: I've got a mess on my table. What color are
51:44
Speaker 1: we gonna do? I mean it's hard to tell. This
51:48
Speaker 1: looks sort of like a very pale yellow. That's the
51:51
Speaker 1: only whole one in my hand. Pale yellow. I don't
51:53
Speaker 1: even have that. I got white. I've got orange it
51:57
Speaker 1: maybe maybe it is white, Okay, I'll call it. Wait wait, wait, wait,
52:01
Speaker 1: I might have a palio when I do, I do it. Okay,
52:05
Speaker 1: apology to the people of Mesophonia, but here we go.
52:09
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's just like it's like a flatter um,
52:18
Speaker 1: bigger candy heart. The conversation hart, it's not bam like okay,
52:24
Speaker 1: very hard, the crunches. I think what probably gets people.
52:29
Speaker 1: I mean, the taste isn't bad, but it's not great. No,
52:33
Speaker 1: they're not great, But I mean, who's crazy for conversation hearts,
52:36
Speaker 1: sickos and weirdos? You know, the same goes for me. Well,
52:40
Speaker 1: what's the verdict? Would you ever buy and eat Neca
52:43
Speaker 1: wafers after this? I will tell you what. I will
52:46
Speaker 1: probably eat the rest of these. And I like sugar.
52:51
Speaker 1: I like as atter fact, I'm gonna do one of
52:54
Speaker 1: the gray ones real quick. What about you? Uh no, no,
52:59
Speaker 1: that is not my up my alley. But I'm gonna
53:02
Speaker 1: try one of those chocolates because those where I think
53:04
Speaker 1: recommended steer clear, the dark gray ones, the liquorice ones.
53:07
Speaker 1: They're awful. It tastes Oh no, it is slightly different. Yeah,
53:16
Speaker 1: I get a little hint up cocoa. I've come around
53:17
Speaker 1: a little bit to the liquorice ones. At the end Wow,
53:20
Speaker 1: I'm turning into an eco weirdo. Actually, the chocolate aren't bad.
53:23
Speaker 1: What about pink? Try pink? Well, that's um, this is
53:28
Speaker 1: winter green. I think people are so disgusted right now. Yeah,
53:32
Speaker 1: this is all right. We're literally the last two people
53:34
Speaker 1: listening to this. Man, I think we should wrap this. Okay. Well, um,
53:38
Speaker 1: if you want to tell us that we shouldn't yuck
53:40
Speaker 1: everybody's jump, especially about something we haven't tried, we need
53:44
Speaker 1: to hear that whenever we do that. It's totally true
53:46
Speaker 1: and totally right. Thank you everybody who wrote him. You
53:49
Speaker 1: can get in touch with us at Stuff podcast at
53:52
Speaker 1: I heart radio dot calm Stuff. You should know it
53:59
Speaker 1: is pretty action of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
54:02
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
54:05
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H