Why Greenline?

After the Civil War, General Sherman issues an order to redistribute land in the South to former slaves in an effort known as 40 Acres and a Mule. The order lasted less than a year before it was overturned by newly-elected president Andrew Johnson, a Southern sympathizer, and the land was given back to its Confederate owners.

The Federal protection of Blacks in the South ends which leads to a period of pronounced racial terror. These conditions led to large numbers of Blacks leaving the South, also known as the Great Migration, and paved the way for racially motivated segregation in housing.

Various cities throughout the country such as New York, Baltimore, Louisville, St. Louis and others, institute zoning ordinances related to housing density, to discreetly restrict people of color from living in white communities.

The Homeowners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) is created to help distressed homeowners by buying the mortgages from banks and refinancing them. This initiative led to the creation of a rating system that would later evolve into the industry standard practice of redlining, which systematically withholds credit from homebuyers in black neighborhoods.

Born from the HOLC, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is created to boost home ownership during The Great Depression. The FHA insured home mortgages, but, statistically only for houses well inside the boundaries of white neighborhoods. In addition, the FHA was biased toward loans for new suburban construction, and therefore perpetuated the growth of white suburbs.

Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) is created to make low-cost loans more accessible. However, only two percent of the $120 billion in new housing that was backed by the federal government between 1934 and 1962, was made available to nonwhites.

The GI Bill is introduced to provide services to veterans returning from the war. Among the benefits are low-interest home loans, however very few veterans of color were able to access these benefits. The Veterans Administration (VA) begins insuring home loans to veterans, but the discriminatory practices of the FHA permeate the program. As a result, Black veterans are excluded from realizing housing access and wealth-building of the post-war housing boom at a time when homeownership was arguably the most accessible.

The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act is passed which allocates $25 billion over 10 years for the construction of the Interstate Highway System. “This initiative accelerates and subsidizes suburbanization, disproportionately benefiting white middle-class families. It also leads to the demolition of what are deemed ‘blighted’ urban areas, displacing and further impoverishing communities of color.”

The Fair Housing Act is passed making it illegal to use race (among other protected classes) as a basis for refusing to sell, lease or otherwise transfer property. While the Act made such actions illegal, discrimation remained pervasive due to inconsistent enforcement, implicit bias and the lasting affects of centuries of housing inequity.

Bill Dedman wins a Pulitzer Prize for his series entitled, “The Color of Money”, in which he investigates mortgage discrimination by lenders and real estate agents. He discovers that “lenders nationwide reject Black loan applicants at twice the rate of Whites — and that high-income Blacks are rejected at the same rate as low-income Whites.” Additionally, “White middle-income neighborhoods get four times as many loans as middle-income Black areas.”

“The peak of the subprime mortgage crisis. An epidemic of irresponsible mortgage lending driven by the high demand for mortgage-backed securities by institutional investors leads to a severe nationwide recession and nearly 10 million Americans losing their homes. Latinos and Blacks experience nearly three times more foreclosures than Whites, and decades of progress in their rate of homeownership is wiped out.”

“The rate of Black homeownership reaches a 50-year low. The median Black family owns just two percent of the wealth of the median White family ($3,600 vs. $180,000).”