His-tory of Redlining and the Environmental Legacy Inherited

Dr. Benjamin Chavis, who coauthored the 1987 landmark report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, originally coined the term environmental racism as the intentional siting of polluting and waste facilities in communities primarily populated by African Americans, Latines, Indigenous people, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, migrant farmworkers, and low-income workers. This definition was then expanded by Dr. Robert D. Bullard, known as the father of environmental justice, as any policy, practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (where intended or unintended) individuals, groups, or communities based on race. Redlining is more than a tool used to prevent African Americans and other racial minorities from getting home loans and mortgages in more desirable white communities. Redlining has been used as a weapon to propagate systemic racism to keep minorities from building wealth and owning homes, as a form of housing segregation keeping minorities separate from majority white communities—in turn lessening the amount of reinvestment in these communities, and thus serving as a cyclical mechanism keeping certain communities underserved, overburdened, and impoverished. It is important to understand the vestige of redlining to see how we got here and determine a way out.

In the 1930s, in the wake of the Great Depression, the New Deal created the National Housing Act of 1934, which created the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). The FHA went on to introduce the 30-year mortgage and low-fixed interest rates, which helped lower-income people rebounding from the Great Depression afford homes. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) was created to help provide security that these new homeowners did not default on their mortgages. HOLC created residential security maps—the precursor of redlining. The map legend key for these security maps provided a color coding to delineate the areas for the cities. There was green, which meant “best, best area, best people” business people, blue for “good area, good people” for blue-collar families, yellow meant a “declining area” with working-class families, and red meant “hazardous, detrimental influences, foreign-people, low-class whites, and negroes.” People who lived in these redlined areas were not necessarily more likely to default on their mortgages, but redlining did make it difficult, if not impossible, to buy or refinance.

Redlining was used as a tool of racial separation and segregation to exclude certain people from certain neighborhoods, similar to restrictive racial covenants. In the early 1900s, before the New Deal, restrictive racial covenants were private contracts between individuals dictating to whom property would be sold. A covenant is a legally enforceable contract in a deed. A majority of these covenants were aimed at minorities, African Americans specifically, controlling where they might live. Restrictive racial covenants were created in response to the Great Migration during the 1910–1940s, with millions of African Americans leaving the South, fleeing oppression and racism for a more hopeful future sought in the West, North, and Midwest. The response of federal, state, and local governments was to contain minorities to their own communities. With redlining taking the place of restrictive covenants, in order to get a green designation, “the best,” with the residential security maps, a restrictive covenant had to be in place, which derived from the FHA Underwriting Manual. In 1948, in Shelley v. Kraemer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that restrictive covenants in real property deeds that prohibited the sale of property to non-Caucasians unconstitutionally violated the Equal Protection provision of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, and, in the aftermath of his death, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The Fair Housing Act made racially restrictive covenants illegal, encouraged equal housing opportunities for all people, and offered protections for future homeowners and renters. During the time that racially restrictive covenants and redlining were in place, landlords abandoned their properties, city services declined, crime increased, and property values dropped as whites were able to move to the brand new suburbs, a.k.a. “white flight,” while the inner-city redline communities declined. This happened so much that the federal government coined a phrase to redevelop these communities, known as urban renewal. Land redevelopment during the 1950–70s by the Housing and Urban Development Corporation to address urban decay was infamously called “Negro removal” by the late civil rights activist James Baldwin.

Almost 60 years have passed since the Fair Housing Act was adopted. Redlining negatively affects veterans, minorities, women, and ultimately anyone who lives in or near an area that was previously redlined. A 2022 national study conducted by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management explored how redlining related to present-day intraurban air pollution disparities in 202 U.S. cities. The researchers analyzed two air pollutants, nitrogen dioxide—associated with vehicular exhaust and industrial facilities—and tiny air particles, particulate matter (PM 2.5), a known cause of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and asthma.

The study showed that neighborhoods that were redlined have worse air quality compared to those that were graded either “best”—green or “good”—blue. Researchers found that race also affected the air quality experienced by the residents. Even within the same grade on a historical map, people of color experienced greater air pollution in 2010. White people experienced cleaner air pollution, and people of color experienced more air pollution, regardless of where they lived. Redlined communities experienced, on average, 50 percent more pollution than the green “best” communities, and, in some cities, more than double.

In a 2023 study published by the Journal of American Medical Association Network, evidence showed that among veterans who lived with cardiovascular disease, those living in historically redlined neighborhoods had a 13 percent higher risk of dying from any cause and a 14 percent higher risk of experiencing a major adverse cardiovascular event compared to those who lived in historically non-redlined communities. Focusing on veterans reduced possible bias from general population health care data, which excludes uninsured patients. Typically, veterans have access to health care through Veterans Affairs insurance, regardless of income or employment status.     

A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study conducted in 2022 found an association between the lack of tree cover “canopy, redlined communities, and depressive symptoms among women.” Redlined communities have fewer green spaces, so residents are unable to enjoy America’s promise of “an environment that is healthy, sustainable, climate-resilient, and free from harmful pollution and chemical exposure.” Their communities expose them to more health risks, such as strokes, the urban heat island effect, and even less bird diversity. A 2022 study showed associations between redlining and plant and HOLC grades assigned in the 1930s remained “significantly associated with the likelihood of a plant being sited upwind over more than seven decades later (between 2000 and 2019).”

Residents near power plants have numerous adverse health outcomes, including increased emergency room visits, asthma exacerbations, respiratory-related hospitalizations, preterm births, and reduced fertility. The study concludes that “racism as codified in historic red-lining maps in the United States appears to have contributed to disparities in proximity to fossil fuel-burning power plants over time and present-day emissions burdens.” Toxic air pollution was recently linked to low-weight and preterm births in a 2024 study published by the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, further illuminating how redlined communities exposed to industrial facilities can affect future generations.    

People who live in redlined neighborhoods today are more likely to experience shorter life spans—sometimes by as much as 20 or 30 years less than other neighborhoods in the same city. We often think of health as the result of individual choices. But health is also a result of a lack of choices baked into the fabric of American cities by racist policies made long ago. Some cities try to use this information to undo these wrongs.

In 2021, the City of Evanston, Illinois, was the first city in the United States to offer African Americans reparations for past housing discrimination. Evanston pledged $20 million to anyone 18 or older who was a resident between 1919 and 1969 (a year after the Fair Housing Act was adopted) or any descendant of a resident between that same period. The city issued an initial $25,000 toward housing to recipients for a down payment on a new home or repairs or maintenance upgrades. Approximately $3 million has been paid out so far. Judicial Watch brought a class action lawsuit against the City of Evanston, challenging race as an eligibility requirement for the program on Equal Protection grounds.

Communities in Los Angeles that were historically redlined and unequally exposed to industrial facilities have taken to community engagement and empowerment to address the harms. A coalition of seven community-based organizations advocating for environmental justice in Los Angeles, California, known as STAND-LA (Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling), leveraged its organizing and research capacity to empower residents about the public health effects of oil well sites. With the capacity-building campaign, which took over 10 years, the community engaged decision-makers in town hall meetings and took legal action in the form of lawsuits against the City of Los Angeles over racially discriminatory oil drilling permitting, which led the Los Angeles County and City to pass ordinances in early 2023 to phase out oil drilling. As some municipalities nationwide, such as Philadelphia, Denver, and Rochester, seek to analyze city budgets in the hope of restoring our country’s promise of providing an environment that is healthy and free from harmful pollution and chemical exposure, it will be important that these solutions are not based on the same justification of race used to subjugate and oppress these communities.

I encourage you to utilize the EPA’s environmental justice screening tool to see what your community’s exposure to environmental harms is and compare it to the University of Richmond: Mapping Inequality Tool or National Geographics Mapmaker: Redlining in the United States tool (access using Internet Explorer). To learn more about redlining, watch the PBS Special: Redlining Mapping Inequality in Dayton and Springfield.