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Redlining, Fair Housing, and Environmental Justice

As stated by Majora Carter, environmental justice is the idea that no community should be exposed to more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other. Environmental racism is the result of years of systemic racism in the U.S., including historical housing discrimination laws like redlining. Despite the EPA’s acknowledgment of environmental racism, the recent actions of the U.S. federal government have grown the disparities between whites and Blacks’ exposure to the dangerous effects of climate change, like air pollution and extreme heat. President Trump’s abolishment of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule is an example of this. 

To understand environmental racism and why it exists, we will start by understanding the history of redlining in urban areas. The Fair Housing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968) defines redlining as “the practice of denying a creditworthy applicant a loan for housing in a certain neighborhood even though the applicant may otherwise be eligible for the loan.” This is called redlining because of the practice of mortgage lenders to draw red lines on maps around neighborhoods where they did not make loans. I will be using Austin as an example for this post, and I encourage you to research the history of redlining in your local urban area. In 1957, the city of Austin released a new Industrial Development Plan that designated all property located on the eastern side of Austin (previously a legally segregated “n*gro district”) as “industrial,” despite the homes in the area. This racially-motivated zoning was a more modern version of segregation. Banks were recommended to not approve loans for homeowners in East Austin, designating this neighborhood as “hazardous.” Redlining led to the deterioration of property and kept people of color from moving out of the city as suburbs exploded. The zoning laws also allowed the polluting industries in people’s backyards to grow. Now, though the practice of redlining has been outlawed, the effects of the practice are still apparent in Austin and in cities across the country. Distribution of race and income still exists within the boundaries of the historical zoning laws. 


Historic Austin redlining map, from Mapping Inequality

The outline in blue represents(ish) the boundaries of the redlining map above. If you're having trouble reading the map, try using the Colorado River as a reference.

Black neighborhoods in urban areas like Austin, Houston, and Dallas are centralized within the city, while suburbs are mostly white. These demography patterns, which exist because of cities systematically keeping black communities in place, have serious implications when it comes to environmental justice. To keep this as concise as possible, I will only be focusing on the examples of urban air pollution and warming. 

  1. Particulate matter (PM) air pollution can be hard to understand because it is not defined by a single chemical like ozone or carbon dioxide. According to the EPA, PM is “a result of complex reactions of chemicals such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which are pollutants emitted from power plants, industries, and automobiles.” An easy way to understand it is as “soot” or “smog.” A report by the EPA in 2018 concluded that people of color are more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air with higher concentrations of PM.

  2. Urbanization that paves over vegetation and replaces open land with infrastructure leads to urban “heat islands.” According to the EPA, “the sun can heat dry, exposed urban surfaces, such as roofs and pavement, to temperatures 50–90°F hotter than the air, while shaded or moist surfaces—often in more rural surroundings—remain close to air temperatures.” 


Fine Particulate Matter PM2.5* in Austin at the time of writing. The good range is 0-50, and moderate is 50-100. https://www.wunderground.com/health/us/tx/austin/73301


Heat Hazard Risk in Austin. Dark red means a higher risk.

Both of these issues have severe health repercussions. PM can cause lung damage, asthma, and other respiratory problems, and extreme heat kills more people than hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes combined. The consolidation of these environmental concerns in Black communities is the direct result of historical redlining practices. Urban areas that were previously redlined have been found to have higher concentrations of PM and higher heat hazard risk. Black neighborhoods have been forced to bear the majority of the burdens of industrialization, while suburban white neighborhoods reap the benefits. 

Redlining has been outlawed, but housing segregation still exists in some form, and this is part of why environmental justice is still a concern. The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) provision of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was enacted in 2015 to address systemic racial bias in housing. AFFH required that local governments receiving Federal money for any housing or urban development proactively examine local housing patterns for racial bias and to develop a plan to address any measurable bias. President Trump announced on July 23 that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would be abolishing the Obama-era AFFH rule. Trump’s tweet about AFFH on June 30 stated that the rule has a “devastating impact” on suburban areas (read: white areas) but he fails to notice the actually devastating impact that abolishing AFFH has on the people of color living in urban areas. This decision will allow the systemic segregation of suburban areas to continue, similar to the discriminatory housing practices of the 20th century that originated many of the environmental racism problems we face today. Abolishing AFFH will exacerbate environmental disparities, like access to clean air and protection from heat, between white people and people of color. Neighborhoods of color are dealt the majority of the consequences of the current administration’s anti-environmental agenda, and not pushing for equity in housing allows environmental injustice to grow, forcing Black neighborhoods to literally take the heat with no relief.




Resources:

Redlining: 

Environmental Justice (General): 

Air Pollution:

Urban Heat:

AFFH:

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