Housing Segregation
Columbia, Maryland is Becoming More Racially Segregated
The planned communities of Columbia and Reston, Virginia, were case studies in a new era of housing desegregation in the 1960s. The planned community of Columbia was built by James Rouse, who stated that “Like any real city of 100,000, Columbia will be economically diverse, poly-cultural, multi-faith, and inter-racial.” Columbia had no racial covenants and there was no racial steering of buyers. The city developed affordable housing for a mix of incomes.
The Black population of Howard County increased rapidly from 1970 to 1980, with much of this in Columbia. In 1980, Columbia had low levels of segregation and an evenly distributed Black/White population on a neighborhood level. These measures gradually worsened. Three common measures of segregation at the community level all showed that the evenness of distribution of the Black population and the exposure of Black and White groups to one another both declined, while Black isolation from Whites increased.
By 2020, Howard County was 21.4% Black and Columbia 28.1% Black. While there has been an increase in diversity in the County and Columbia, there has also been increasing segregation. White population has declined in Columbia similar to Maryland. In all, there has been a decline of nearly 15,000 White residents in Columbia over two decades. Currently, 76.5% of White residents own a home compared with 52% of Blacks. Blacks therefore are more likely to live in multi-family rental buildings, which cluster their population in areas with higher proportions of apartments.
The newer villages in Columbia have not been developed in the original spirit of economic and racial integration. The older Columbia villages of Harper’s Choice, Owen Brown, Wilde Lake, Oakland Mills, and Long Reach were developed with greater concentrations of affordable housing. Dorsey Search and River Hill were not developed until the 1990s and have few multifamily units, almost no affordable housing, and its schools are less than 10% Black.
The newish Dorsey Search and River Hill have only 22% and 9% renter households respectively, have much higher household incomes, and are relatively poor in Black/White integration and economic equity. Dorseys Search and River Hill have Black populations below 10% compared to the 20% to 35% African American population in most other villages. The older Town Center and Wilde Lake have 76% and 57% renter households.
Only a small percentage of Columbia's housing stock is affordable when compared to the overall Baltimore metro. While the first villages built in Columbia broke barriers, those in recent decades have failed to sustain the mix of rentals, townhomes, and single-family homes that made Columbia a pocket of remarkable integration in a society still deeply struggling with racial inequality.
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Read the February 1, 2023 NCRC article.
