Page 1 of 3
Victoria Satterfield
Date of event: 10/12/2020
Approved date for submission: 10/19/2020
Redlining and Me
The event I attended addressed the environmental injustice of redlining. “The History of Housing
Segregation Today: How the Legacy of Redlining Impacts Seattle’s Housing Crisis” was hosted at Town
Hall Seattle in honor of Affordable Housing Week. It included a 60-minute presentation by Richard
Rothstein, author of “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated
America,” and was followed by a 30-minute, turn-based panel discussion of prearranged questions and
answers. The panel was moderated by Seattle Foundation’s Michael Brown and included Colleen
Echohawk of Chief Seattle Club, Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda and Councilmember Claudia
Balducci. Due to the event’s format, audience members were denied from asking questions. However, the
format ensured each member of the panel had an equitable amount of uninterrupted speaking time. Out of
five speakers, two were men, three were women, and at least two were BIPOC.
Rothstein gave an overview of the history of public housing and explained the power dynamics
that drove people of color from desirable neighborhoods. I was surprised to learn that the public housing
program was not an assistance program in the sense that we think of it today. Instead, it was created for
the 75% of working-class families who could already afford a home. During the Great Depression, many
investors and contractors could no longer afford to continue building houses. The ensuing housing
shortage led the federal government to step in by establishing the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
in order to subsidize construction in an effort to solve the housing crisis. In doing so, they set out to create
segregation where it hadn’t previously existed.
We have a tendency to view the racial demographics of neighborhoods as the byproduct of de
facto segregation. But that simply isn’t the case. Many cities and towns in 1930s America were integrated
and thriving until the FHA came in, demolished them and established segregated housing in their place.
Separate developments were built for Blacks and Whites. Black neighborhoods were typically located in
urban areas while Whites were relocated to greener, more spacious suburbs. Developers seeking subsidies
from the government had to sign contracts stating they would never sell, nor allow the resale of, their
properties to people of color. Over time, the FHA shifted away from subsidizing single-family housing
and transitioned toward building “projects” for low-income families. The resulting concentration of our
nation’s most disadvantaged groups called for increasing subsidies, but these subsidies came at a great
cost. BIPOC neighborhoods fell into disrepair as the government claimed they could no longer afford to
maintain them. This established the basis of redlining, the practice of denying services to a geographic
area based on race. Banks, insurers and other agencies used the unsafe conditions in government-
neglected neighborhoods as an excuse to not serve these communities. The term gets its name from color-
coded geographical maps that were drawn to show risk-assessment figures at a glance. High-risk
neighborhoods, those which were the poorest and least desirable to live in, were usually highlighted in
red. Claiming these areas were too risky to invest in allowed institutions to deny mortgages, loans and
various services to people of color.
This was bad news for BIPOC residents who were becoming the victims of plummeting property
values, violence and environmental health risks in their increasingly dangerous and polluted
neighborhoods. BIPOC who could afford to flee their communities were blocked from escaping by the
racist homeownership policies of the surrounding suburbs. In the meantime, even poor Whites were able
to gain wealth through the equity in their homes. This was money that could be used for higher education,
emergency funds, subsidizing retirements and bequeathing down payments on new homes for their
children. By the time home ownership laws changed, marginalized communities, having been denied all
of these paths to financial advancement, were blocked from improving their living situations once again –
this time by the astronomical rise of suburban property values.
Reflecting on the legacy of redlining caused me (a privileged, white-passing, third generation
Latinx) to recognize the impact it’s had on my own life. When my grandparents moved from Puerto Rico
to New York, they lived in a heavily segregated neighborhood. My mother was born in 1953. Her
childhood was set against the volatile backdrop of the civil rights movement, beginning just a year after
she was born and lasting until she was fifteen. She used to tell me stories about sharing beds in a
crumbling, rat and roach-infested, two-bedroom apartment with her parents and six siblings. She often
Page 2 of 3
Victoria Satterfield
Date of event: 10/12/2020
Approved date for submission: 10/19/2020
recounted incidences of witnessing neighborhood violence and police brutality and shared about her
experiences of people yelling racial slurs at her as a child.
Diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure, cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder all run in my
family – echoes of previous generations living in unsafe and overly stressful conditions. But the influence
of redlining rippled out in less overt ways too. I keep thinking about the kinds of foods my mom would
serve me and my brothers and sisters when we were kids. Meals came mostly from boxes or cans. My
mother would bring bananas or an occasional bag of apples and oranges home from the store, but I can’t
recall ever seeing a single fresh vegetable as a child. I used to think it was just lazy parenting but now I
see that the reason we ate so poorly was because highly processed convenience foods were all my mother
knew. She was simply passing down the meals her mother made for her when access to quality grocery
stores was non-existent.
No one can deny that the food deserts created by redlining hurt marginalized communities by
forcing them to subsist on the unhealthiest possible version of a westernized diet. But I would add that
these food deserts also rob groups of their deep cultural ties to food and are just one of many aggressive
tactics employed to coerce people toward a White way of life. The conditions my mother was raised in
caused her to wrestle with varying degrees of internalized racism her whole life. The external pressures of
her childhood environment led my mother to view assimilation as the best option for survival. Growing
up, the only Spanish I ever heard in our home was the occasional string of curse words reserved for angry
outbursts. In her efforts to protect her children from the painful ostracization she had experienced, she
completely cut ties with her cultural heritage – a decision I can empathize with but despair over often
when it comes to my own identity and place in the world as a white-passing multi-racial person.
---
Before giving the floor to the panel, Rothstein proposed multiple solutions to remedy the
government’s chief role in segregation:
● Prioritize the construction of subsidized housing in White neighborhoods (currently it is only
prioritized in existing low-income neighborhoods)
● Create an Affirmative Action program for housing in which the government would buy up homes
in proportion to the Black population and resell them to Blacks for $100,000.
● Abolish zoning ordinances that prevent multi-family buildings from being built.
● Make concerted efforts to improve resources, prevent displacement from gentrification, open
opportunities for BIPOC in White neighborhoods and stabilize reintegration.
● Order developers, real estate agencies and banks that benefited from redlining to establish a fund
for reparations
Ultimately, though, Rothstein argued our most urgent need is for a New Civil Rights Movement.
Today, 75% of Seattle’s residential land is zoned exclusively for single-family housing. This policy,
coupled with our city’s high cost of housing, intentionally denies renters and low-income families access
to neighborhoods with safe housing, healthy food, and good schools. Explicitly in line with David
Pellow’s “pillar” of anti-statism, Rothstein demanded we find solutions that don’t further entrench
existing discriminatory policies, “We must name, own and call out the roots of segregation and the legacy
of racist covenants.” Therefore, we should not expect policy makers to independently solve these
problems for us. Rather, he says, it is the job of a New Civil Rights Movement to place enough pressure
on our government that it becomes impossible for policy makers not to act.
Another connection can be made to Pellow’s work via his “pillar” of indispensability. When one
of us is hurt, we all suffer. The lasting repercussions of redlining are no stranger to this logic. Often, the
terms “low-income housing” and “affordable housing” are used interchangeably. But they aren’t the same
thing. It’s important to distinguish that housing is no longer a problem which only hurts low-income
families and marginalized communities. The single-family zoning ordinances and high property values
Page 3 of 3
Victoria Satterfield
Date of event: 10/12/2020
Approved date for submission: 10/19/2020
leftover from the days of redlining continue to harm people. But whereas redlining systematically targeted
people for their race, its legacy has considerably broadened the scope of exclusion. A growing number of
working and middle-class families, both white and BIPOC alike, can’t afford to buy homes and there are
no subsidies to help them. If no efforts are made to disrupt the system, the class disparities caused by
large groups of people being blocked from attaining upward mobility will only continue to widen. If a
dual-income family headed by a nurse and a teacher can’t buy a home, who can? And what does this say
about who is worthy of owning a home and who is dispensable?
During the panel discussion, Colleen Echohawk addressed the specific ways redlining hurt our
region’s indigenous populations. She talked about Ordinance No. 5, a tragically ironic law which banned
Natives from entering Seattle, a city whose very name was inspired by Chief Sealth, leader of the
Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. She also explained the repercussions of the 1956 Urban Native
Relocation Act. Under this law, indigenous people were encouraged to relocate from their reservations to
assimilate in urban areas. The government promised financial assistance for moving costs, grants for basic
needs and tuition for vocational training. However, many of those who relocated never received any of
these benefits. This sparked a chain of poverty, joblessness and homelessness that persists for indigenous
communities to this day. Speaking on the current state of Seattle’s public housing, Echohawk pointed out
that all of our existing housing was built by white men. To counter this, her vision for the future includes
housing that reflects diverse cultural communities and non-traditional forms of ownership. “Why can’t we
build a longhouse?” she asked. I’ve been thinking about that question a lot. Implicit bias and
ethnocentrism are in every brick of our city’s foundational architecture. America prides itself on being a
great melting pot of cultures but where are these cultures represented among the towering skyscrapers
Downtown?
---
Throughout history, racist policies have attempted to categorize and divide us. The physical
barriers erected around some neighborhoods during the years of racial redlining were the literal
manifestations of powerful elites desiring to separate people into organized boxes. But not all of us can be
neatly classified. When I look in the mirror, I’m confronted with a reflection that matches the color of
those whose institutional power has had a direct hand in oppressing my family for generations. I feel like
I’m always straddling an invisible divide with one foot on either side of the wall. I wonder how many
others feel just as lost and resentful when there is nothing, not even the color of their skin, to connect
them to the legacy of their ancestors. I cannot deny the tremendous amounts of privilege my whiteness
affords me. And yet, I have felt the stings of white supremacy through the watchful stare strangers cast at
my mother as we walked through department stores. I’ve heard the sounds of racism from people using
the word “spic” in front of me, not knowing my mother was one of “those people.” And I have seen the
color of oppression in the shades of makeup that never quite matched the beautiful skin of my mother’s
face; a face that always looked so tired. The environmental injustice of racial segregation has taken so
much away from all of us. Its lasting impacts have muted the voices, vibrancy and vitality of marginalized
communities and, in doing so, continue to rob us of the richness of our potential as humans on a diverse
and fragile planet. I feel angry but also hopeful. As our country navigates a resurgence of civil unrest, I
have to believe it’s just a matter of time before institutions perpetuating exclusion and oppression face
their day of reckoning. When they do, tell them I said, “Hola.”
Works Cited:
Pellow, David. “Toward a Critical Environmental Justice Studies: Black Lives Matter as an
Environmental Justice Challenge” Du Bois Review, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 221-236. Hutchins Center for
African and African American Research, doi: 10.1017/S1742058x1600014X
Rothstein, Richard. “The History of Housing Segregation Today: How the Legacy of Redlining Impacts
Seattle’s Housing Crisis.” Pacifica Law Group, Seattle for Everyone, West Coast Poverty Center and
Whatcom Housing Alliance. 12 October 2020. Town Hall Seattle.