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Abstract: Scholars have long argued that New Deal housing policies were partly responsible for segregation patterns we see today. The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and GI Bill vastly expanded homeownership opportunities, though almost completely excluded people and communities of color. Newly digitized versions of the infamous “redlining” maps drafted by HOLC appraisers in the late 1930s have motivated a wave of research exploring the long-term consequences of these segregationist policies for racial inequality. This paper leverages Census microdata to track how redlining shaped the racialization of housing in central cities and their suburbs during the middle of the Twentieth Century, thereby concretizing what former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development George Romney described as a black ghetto surrounded by a “white noose” of suburban affluence.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Hilary Term is convened by Nicholas Martindale. For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.