Urban Renewal: Displacement and Inequality
Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America is an interactive dashboard that showcases accurate redlining maps used by mortgage lenders and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the 1930s, while providing rich historical context on how these types of policies impacted various communities. The following passage is from Mapping Inequality and describes the historical context of what was happening in Des Moines during this time.
“Housing discrimination was not specific to America’s largest cities. Real estate professionals in mid-sized cities with small minority populations also practiced discriminatory housing patterns. In Des Moines, Iowa, the state’s most populous city, discriminatory residential patterns predated redlining, shaped urban renewal initiatives after the 1930s, and defined urban life for years to come.
Local real estate agents compressed African Americans into four districts that surrounded the city’s downtown area—the Walker Street District (located just east of the Des Moines River near University Avenue), the Center Street area (formerly known as Calamity Creek, this area was just northwest of downtown Des Moines near Keosauqua Way), the Southeast Bottoms (located near S.E. 14th Street and Maury Street), and the Cherry Street area (just west of downtown).
Center Street became the epicenter of Black economic life in Des Moines. Black-owned businesses dotted Center Street between 12th and 17th Streets, including one of the first drug stores in Iowa owned and operated by a Black pharmacist. By 1917, the area was home to 56 African American businesses and a thriving nightlife strip.
Yet, Des Moines was an “open town” in name only—African Americans not only lived in deeply segregated enclaves near the downtown area, but African American enclaves were often prone to frequent flooding from the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers. Even Center Street had been built upon a former creek.
When federal officials sent surveys to local lending agencies and banks in Des Moines, one report openly stated that Whites sought to keep “the infiltration of the colored population” constricted and that “it might be possible to confine these negroes to more definite areas.” Officials gave “D” ratings and red distinctions to Des Moines’ four Black districts. Officials redlined virtually all of central Des Moines, including the Eastside’s Walker district and the Southeast Bottoms.
Only one neighborhood remained green in these areas—the Chautauqua Park neighborhood, which maintained restrictive covenants barring Jews and African Americans from owning property. Chautauqua was surrounded by a sea of red and yellow areas on the city’s north side. Characterized by its curved and narrow roadways, lack of sidewalks, and Tudor-style homes, the area has only recently been populated by African Americans and other minorities.” (Mapping Inequality: Redlining in the New Deal America)
Discriminatory Urban Policies
“Discriminatory urban policies in Des Moines outlived redlining – the construction of the I-235 freeway and urban renewal (often referred to as “Negro Removal”) exacerbated racially restrictive housing patterns.
Nothing proved more detrimental to Black communities after redlining than freeway construction. In fact, the closeness of Black communities to downtowns meant that freeway systems, which planners designed to transport White suburbanites quickly into and out of downtowns, cut through many Black enclaves.” (Mapping Inequality: Redlining in the New Deal America)
“The Iowa Highway Commission briefly considered alternate routes but paved the John MacVicar freeway, now I-235, directly over Center Street. The project, which was completed in 1968, not only displaced nearly 1,300 Black families, but it also decimated the heart of the Black economy in Des Moines.” (Mapping Inequality: Redlining in the New Deal America)
UnEvict IA Video: Walking in Place – 1434 Walker Street
“Many African Americans failed to receive fair market value for their homes (which had been devalued during the process of redlining). A good number found themselves in low-income housing in Des Moines Oak Ridge and River Hills areas—two urban renewal projects that policymakers built in neighborhoods decimated by I-235.” (Mapping Inequality: Redlining in the New Deal America)
“Many African Americans in Des Moines continue to associate contemporary racial discrimination with the racist residential patterns of the twentieth century. Des Moines remains a relatively segregated city. Des Moines’ highest concentration of low-income residents reside in formerly redlined neighborhoods and they still experience the effects of it to this day. In Des Moines, 69% of the Black population are renters compared to 33% of the general population. In addition, Black community members are denied home loans in the Greater Des Moines area at a rate 2.2 times higher than the general population.” (Mapping Inequality: Redlining in the New Deal America)
Equitable Housing Solutions
Place-based approaches are initiatives that aim to improve the quality of life and access to opportunity/resources for people living within a certain community. Often these efforts are directed towards people with lower-incomes that have experienced disinvestment such as communities within metropolitan or rural areas. (Urban Institute)
Place-Based Approaches:
- Improve resources in existing lower-income neighborhoods including housing and school quality, available medical care, financial services, public libraries, transportation options, better retail, and access to healthy food and air.
- Public Down Payment Assistance
- The NFC Neighborhood Reinvest Down Payment Assistance Loan Program provides down payment assistance loans to borrowers in NFC lending areas in Des Moines, West Des Moines, Windsor Heights, Urbandale and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
- Example: Neighborhood Reinvest
- Home-Buying Education and Counseling
- Example: Home Inc. Are You Ready to Become a Homeowner?
- Home buyers, both first-time and repeat, who participate in education and counseling are less likely to default than those who do not. By increasing the likelihood that homeowners will sustain home ownership, these programs also contribute to neighborhood stability.
- Savings Support Plans
- Some nonprofit organizations administer a federal initiative that helps low-income families build assets for home purchases, education, or starting businesses. It matches up to four dollars for every dollar the applicant saves. Participants also get financial counseling and help to secure appropriate mortgages.
- Another federal program helps families with home buying if they receive government rental assistance. Recipients normally contribute 30% of their incomes toward rent. If their earnings rise, they pay more toward rent and need less subsidy. For participants in the savings program, public housing agencies keep the subsidy unchanged but deposit the foregone reduction in a savings account that the families can use for a down payment. Most local authorities resist doing this -they have their hands full administering their basic program – but a city’s housing official may not appreciate the great benefits, both to households and to their communities, of increased homeownership.
(Just Action by Richard Rothstein and Leah Rothstein)
Mobility Approaches:
- Opening exclusive neighborhoods to diverse residents through zoning reform, subsidies for home buyers, inclusion of housing that’s affordable to middle-and lower-income families and prohibition of discrimination against renters who get housing subsidies.
- Inclusionary Zoning: zoning codes dictate the housing types that cities and suburbs allow. Often they permit only single-family homes on large lots and forbid less-expensive duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, and apartments.
- Just-Cause Evictions: Prohibits landlords from removing tenants except for just cause: nonpayment of rent, illegal activity, property damage, or sustained failure to follow reasonable rules regarding late-night noise, trash disposal, or use of common facilities like laundry rooms. (pg. 107)
- Tenants’ Right to Counsel:
- Eviction Diversion Help Desks: Iowa Legal Aid currently operates six Eviction Help Desks throughout the state. These help desks are all at or near the courts where eviction hearings take place. Attorneys are on site any time that eviction hearings are taking place in those counties. Iowa Legal Aid also sometimes provides assistance with evictions in Iowa’s other 93 counties, but only if you contact us before the eviction hearing.
- Prevent Security Deposit Abuse: One way to minimize disputes over whether landlords accurately assess damages is to place security deposits in a third-party-administered fund, operated perhaps by a community foundation. A small portion of the interest earned may be enough to cover administrative cost.
(Just Action by Richard Rothstein and Leah Rothstein)
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