real estate

After Studying Housing Discrimination, This Historian is Fighting it in Court

Nathan Connolly and Shani Mott saw their home appraisal increase by a quarter million after they removed visual evidence that their family, which is Black, occupied the residence. 

When the Public University is a Corporate Landlord

by Charmaine Chua, Desiree Fields and David Stein

During negotiations with graduate student workers, UCLA administrators claimed that increasing stipends would effectively subsidize local landlords through higher rents and squeeze the poor in the Los Angeles housing market. The reality is that the university is an investor in a huge real estate trust that is hiking rents itself. 

Moving To Louisville Brought Me Face to Face with the Racist History of Home Prices

by Jemar Tisby

Neither historical patterns nor contemporary socioeconomic differences can explain why Black Louisvilleans' homes are valued so much lower than whites'. 

Southwest Florida's Overdevelopment Made Ian Worse

by Zeke Baker

Massive hydrological projects undertaken to make Southwest Florida's wetlands into developable agricultural land and then high-priced real estate removed the key buffers for coastal floods. Storms like Ian are a rebuke to the idea that humanity and commerce can bend nature to their will. 

How "Sales Comps" Built Racism Into the Housing Market

by Elizabeth Korver-Glenn

The recent ordeal of a Johns Hopkins historian whose house was appraised for more money when he removed pictures of himself and his Black family points to a key finding: the use of sales comparisons to appraise homes enshrines racism in the market. 

High Crimes and Lingering Consequences: How Land Sale Contracts Looted Black Wealth and Gutted Chicago Communities

by Tiff Beatty

Chicago artist Tonika Lewis Johnson is creating public installations documenting properties where Black residents were subjected to predatory contract home sales, and connecting the past to the present struggles of the city's south and west sides.

Your House Makes More Money than You Do

Rising real estate values are bringing more wealth to Americans than wages and salaries are. This is a big problem for economic equality.

Biden's Push for Infrastructure Can't Leave Black Communities Behind

by N.D.B. Connolly

When infrastructure programs drive growth politics, entrenched interests in banking, real estate and planning can profit from preserving and expanding racial inequality. 

"Not For Sale" Dramatizes the Costs of Opposing Segregation in 1960s Suburbia

Barbara Teed's play dramatizes her own family's history, which was shaped by a racist backlash to her father's advocacy for fair housing.

The Invention of America's Most Dangerous Idea

by Gene Slater

How did a right-wing conception of "freedom" rooted in the individual's absolute property rights supersede an idea of freedom based in social equality? Blame the real estate industry. 

How to Ensure a New Redlining Initiative Succeeds

by Robert Henderson and Rebecca Marchiel

Ensuring equity in mortgage lending requires understanding why the Community Reinvestment Act failed to achieve the same goal decades ago, through a better awareness of the ongoing problems in mortgage lending. 

Unenforceable Racial Covenants are Still Part of Property Deeds Across America

"I'd be surprised to find any city that did not have restrictive covenants," said LaDale Winling, a historian and expert on housing discrimination who teaches at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

How Academia Laid the Groundwork for Redlining

by Todd Michney and LaDale Winling

Richard T. Ely and his student Ernest McKinley Fisher pushed the National Association of Real Estate Boards to adopt "the unsupported hypothesis that Black people's very presence inexorably lowered property values," tying the private real estate industry to racial segregation. 

When the Real Estate Industry Led the Fight to Defend Segregation

California's battle over fair housing legislation in the 1960s shows a key development of modern conservatism: raising property rights to an absolute and brooking no infringement on it, particularly for the sake of racial equality, argues Gene Slater, author of a new book on fair housing. 

Los Angeles Pioneered American Racial Segregation

by Gene Slater

The real estate industry acted as a cartel to limit the free market in housing to preserve racial homogeneity, claiming it was necessary to protect property values. This form of housing segregation was tested in the booming market of 1920s California and spread nationwide. 

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Ties the History of Housing Discrimination to Reparations

John Oliver breaks down the long history of housing discrimination in the U.S., the damage it’s done, and, crucially, what we can do about it.

The Surfside Disaster is Our Generation's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Moment

by Hannah Lebovits

The deadly collapse of the Surfside condo building near Miami should be a call for Jewish Americans to protest for reform in the way that Jewish immigrant workers did after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. 

The Housing Market is Booming but Remains Deeply Unequal

by LaDale Winling

The standards and practices of real estate appraisal were developed in the context of white supremacy in the 1920s and since then have worked to make home ownership a path toward building wealth that has favored white Americans. 

Your Home’s Value Is Based on Racism

by Dorothy A. Brown

The real estate market isn't "free" – it is shaped by the preferences of white buyers who prefer much less racial integration than black buyers do. Consequently, the market is a machine for expanding racial inequality through home equity. 

A Mansion Sale Built on the Myth of a Notorious Cow

The Chicago Fire of 1871 has been the wellspring of plenty of myths. A real estate listing for a southside mansion is just the latest. Historians Carl Smith and Ann Durkin Keating comment.