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Race & Housing

Key Concepts & Frameworks

EJ Toppin

California Community Partnerships

June 10, 2021

AUTHORIAL SUPPORT

PRESENTER

DATE

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Traces of the Past Today

Concentrated wealth and poverty

Segregation
Access to opportunity�

Contemporary expressions of �racial exclusion

Resistance to building affordable housing, tenant protections
“Colorblind” exclusion
Ongoing discrimination

Gentrification and displacement

Housing unaffordability & instability
Racial resegregation�

Racial & spatial disparities

Lasting effects on physical & mental health, life expectancy
Educational attainment & upward economic mobility

Glossary (google doc): https://bit.ly/RHglossary

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Concentrated Wealth & Poverty

Segregation

The separation of groups of people from each other in various domains of life, with the purpose of controlling access to, or the distribution of, opportunities and communal resources, both public and private.�

Opportunity

The full set of pathways available to a person, by which they can access resources and develop their capabilities. However, these sets of pathways are not always readily accessible or attainable due to the different types of social, cultural, and economic barriers in our society. ��https://belonging.berkeley.edu/segregationinthebay ��

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Contemporary Expressions of Racial Exclusion

Zoning

The set of land use regulations local governments use to separate land into different sections, or zones, with specific rules governing the activities on the land within each zone.

Building form: density and height, property lot sizes, parking requirements
Segregated land uses: e.g. residential areas separated single family and multifamily zones, commercial, industrial �

Affordable Housing

Commonly used in reference to a specific type of housing: deed-restricted housing developments which are built using government funding that requires units to remain affordable to and reserved for households whose income is below a certain threshold.�

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Gentrification & Displacement

Gentrification

A process of neighborhood change that includes economic change in a historically disinvested neighborhood by means of real estate investment and new higher-income residents moving in - as well as demographic change - not only in terms of income level, but also in terms of changes in the education level or racial make-up of residents.

Displacement

The process by which a household is forced to move from its residence - or is prevented from moving into a neighborhood that was previously accessible to them because of conditions beyond their control.

�Source: Urban Displacement Project at UC Berkeley, https://www.urbandisplacement.org/

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Image by Evan Bissell, belonging.berkeley.edu/rootsraceplace

Of the San Francisco, San Jose, and the East Bay that are currently experiencing gentrification, the vast majority ― over 80 percent ― were rated as “hazardous” or “definitely declining” in HOLC (Home Owners’ Loan Corporation) redlining maps in the 1930s.

Redlining was a process in which the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), a federal agency, gave neighborhoods ratings to guide investment. This policy is so named for the red or “hazardous” neighborhoods that were deemed riskiest. These neighborhoods were predominantly home to communities of color, and this is no accident; the “hazardous” rating was in large part based on racial demographics. In other words, redlining was an explicitly discriminatory policy. Redlining made it hard for residents to get loans for homeownership or maintenance, and led to cycles of disinvestment.

Vicious cycle of disinvestment, reinforcing segregation, white flight, racial wealth gap >> profit opportunity

https://urbanstrategies.org/who-owns-your-neighborhood-the-role-of-investors-in-post-foreclosure-oakland/

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https://belonging.berkeley.edu/bay-area-zoning-maps

Zoning “tells us about the activities we can and should perform at home and the kinds of people we can and should live near… In governing our building practices, zoning solidifies in our minds what is normal and expected, decent, and desirable. It thus imposes a moral geography on our cities. The ubiquity of zoning makes it so commonplace as to be invisible, but in this invisibility lies power—the power to shape daily practices and the power to shape ideas and ideals.”

�Sonia Hirt, Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation

Contemporary Expressions of Racial Exclusion

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Source: MTC Vital Signs http://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/housing-permits#chart-2

“In 2017, fewer than one in five housing units in the Bay Area for which permits were issued could be classified as affordable housing – that is, housing affordable to very low- and low-income households.”

Contemporary Expressions of Racial Exclusion

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https://belonging.berkeley.edu/opening-door-rent-control

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Source: Urban Displacement Project at UC Berkeley, https://www.urbandisplacement.org/

The majority of low-income households of color live in neighborhoods that are gentrifying or are at risk of gentrification.
In the Bay Area, Black households are twice as likely as White households to live in neighborhoods that are at risk of gentrification.
Low-income White households are most likely to live in neighborhoods that exclude other households with low-incomes.� (PolicyLink, Bay Area Equity Atlas)

Exclusion vs. Gentrification:�“Neighborhoods are categorized as exclusionary when rents are so expensive that low-income people are excluded from moving in, which results in another form of displacement. We found that moderate and high-income neighborhoods lost 40% more low-income households than more inexpensive neighborhoods, suggesting that exclusion is more prevalent than gentrification.” (Urban Displacement Project)

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Racial & Spatial Disparities

Structural Racialization

the set of practices, cultural norms, and institutional arrangements that are reflective of, and help to create and maintain, racialized outcomes in society, with communities of color faring worse than others in most situations. This is racialization at the macro scale, but it also takes place at the micro scale.

More broadly, racialization is:

An ideological, historically specific, and dynamic process that...
...produces/constructs race by extending racial meaning to a relationship, social practice or group

Racial Disparities in health, life expectancy, educational attainment, income, wealth, and upward economic mobility are products of structural racialization that has taken place over several generations. ��These inequities have been built in to our cities and neighborhoods; where we live determines our access to opportunity and influences our life outcomes.

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Racial & Spatial Disparities

Health impacts of housing unaffordability, insecurity and displacement

Unhealthy tradeoffs: insufficient income to cover other basic needs on top of high rents, housing quality issues that expose residents to toxins and trigger chronic health conditions.
Mental health impacts: People experiencing housing insecurity are almost three times more likely to be in frequent mental distress than those who have secure housing.
Effects on children and families: Housing instability causes behavioral problems, educational delays, depression, low birth weights, and other health conditions such as asthma.

Children who move frequently had a one year academic delay, lower test scores, and a lower likelihood of finishing school, displaced children are far more likely to have frequent absences from school, and children in crowded housing have lower math and reading achievement and behavioral problems.

Source: Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII), barhii.org

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The difference between highest and lowest life expectancy for Bay Area ZIP Codes is over 13 years.

Source: MTC Vital Signs http://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/housing-permits#chart-2

Racial & Spatial Disparities

2013 Life Expectancy

Highest - 94516; 86.4 (Canyon, East Contra Costa) and 94563; 86.4 (Orinda)

Lowest - 94103; 73.5 (SOMA) and 94621; 74.3 (East Oakland)

Mental and physical health impacts of housing instability & displacement itself. �
For highly segregated Black and/or Latinx neighborhoods, household income is $27,000 less per year, on average, than in low-segregation neighborhoods, and home values are $131,000 less.
People residing in highly segregated Black/Latinx neighborhoods participate in the labor force at about the same level as residents of highly segregated white neighborhoods, but earn only 39 percent as much income.1
In fact, segregated white neighborhoods have more than double the household incomes ($123,701 v. $48,843) and home values ($899,765 v. $440,620) of highly segregated Black and/or Latinx neighborhoods.
Adults in highly segregated Black/Latinx neighborhoods are only 25 percent as likely to have bachelors' degrees as adults in segregated white neighborhoods. Similarly, only a third of fourth-graders tested as proficient in math and reading in highly segregated Black/Latinx neighborhoods, compared to 70 percent in white neighborhoods.
Life expectancy is more than five years greater in highly segregated white neighborhoods (84 years) than highly segregated Black/Latinx neighborhoods (79 years).

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the 5 Ps: Toward a Comprehensive Approach

Power

Preservation

Protection

Production

Placement

step 1:

stop the harm

start here

Adapted from BARHII, barhii.org

Rent control is a baseline protection, but it alone is not enough. A first step, really about anti-displacement, stopping the harm of housing instability.
But going back to the idea of targeted universalism, we need different solutions for different housing needs/problems - multiple crises that need to be addressed. As we saw yesterday, so many forces coming to bear on communities.
Conversation often centers around false dichotomies - part of our work is to change that; insist on all of them, and particularly the solutions that protect the most marginalized and ones that create pathways toward transformative change?
One framework that’s grounded our work is the 5 Ps. Will briefly go over them and provide a few examples of policy solutions that have been developed ― by no means all of the options, and there’s so much work still to do to design new approaches, because obviously, society hasn’t figured this out yet.