Did You Read This?
SEGREGATED, GENTRIFIED HOUSING REMAINS A PROBLEM IN 2022
Baltimore among top 20 "Extreme" Segregated Cities
ABC News has reported that "Despite 50 years of federal oversight under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, housing segregation continues in America’s largest cities and urban areas. A recent ABC News analysis of mortgage-lending data highlights a pattern of racial isolation that remains in place even after decades of failed initiatives."
ABC News’ top 20 “extreme” segregation list includes America’s largest metro areas, such as: Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; Springfield, Massachusetts; New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Baltimore, Maryland; Cincinnati, Ohio; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Providence, Rhode Island.
In addition to these cities, ABC News states, "unfair housing practices are ubiquitous across the States." In 2019, some 64.8% of the 347,000 white homebuyers who applied for mortgages in mostly non-white neighborhoods in the nation’s largest metro areas were approved for a loan. In contrast, only roughly 56% of the 715,000 non-white applicants got a loan in 2019 in those same majority non-white neighborhoods.
In many cities, gentrification affects not only housing but the very communal spaces we associate with our home. Gentrification is forcing more non-white residents out of urban neighborhoods, along with the Black-owned businesses, churches, and cultural touchpoints that we’ve known and loved for years.
According to U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chairperson of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs "We have never, as a nation, gone ‘all in’ on fair housing,” Brown told ABC News. “We’ve never, as a nation, tried to close that gap … that gap between black and white ownership.”
