The Durable Inequality of Redlining: The Lingering Association Between Home Owners' Loan Corporation Neighborhood Ratings and School Segregation

• In Event: 43.017 - Drawing Boundaries and Networks in the Era of Segregation

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between the early twentieth-century practice of redlining in housing markets and contemporary school demographics in Denver and Oakland. Utilizing ArcGIS we matched the redlining maps of both cities that were created by the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the 1930s to school-level demographic data from 1990, 2000, and 2010. Preliminary results indicate that in both cities, the average percentage of White students was consistently higher in the neighborhood schools in top-graded neighborhoods, and substantially lower in the neighborhood schools in the lowest graded neighborhoods. These findings suggest that redlining practices from the 1930s are associated with contemporary school demographics.

Authors

• Jeanne M. Powers, Arizona State University

• Lydia Ross, Arizona State University