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| used for the purpose of redevelopment and Urban renewal. Property can be sized without the consent of the owner as long as the property will be used for public or civic use or economic development. This tactic was used to recreate the second ghetto where eminent domain was being used at a faster rate than urban renewal was being completed. This caused overcrowding and deterioration of the available housing for Blacks. The use of eminent domain was perfected by Chicago and New York as a way to make changes in the city. However, the changes turned out to be displacing for people and often times, the land was turned over to a private developer. |
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Eminent domain allows the government to force you to sell land for the public good (and often turns over the land to private developers). This often means displacing poor people.
The University of Chicago, seeking to do something about the number of buildings falling into black ownership rather than disrepair, sought to qualify a large part of Hyde Park for a redevelopment project, which would require eminent domain (Hirsch 147-148). The chairman of the board of trustees commissioned a report by the Metropolitan Housing and Planning Councils Conservation Committee (over 1/3 of its members lived in Hyde Park or were university graduates) (149-150). The report called for legislation that slum prevention was a public purpose for which the city could exercise the right of eminent domain” (150), and these proposals served as the basis for the Urban Community Conservation Act of 1953, which gave the municipality authority to evoke eminent domain for the purpose of slum prevention. Also, the Neighborhood Redevelopment Act made it so that the consent of 60% of the owners of the area was needed before eminent domain could be used (151), but this was easy to achieve as the university owned half of the area of the property (and may have gerrymandered the area to include white homeowners just outside of it) (159-160). |
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| Robert Moses also expanded the authority of eminent domain greatly. He used the precedent of the conservation law of 1884, section 59, which gave legislators the right to “appropriate” land by walking on it and declaring it the government’s, a stipulation that existed to prevent the lumbermen from ruining forests, and one that had never been intended for use in the city (Caro 174). Moses expanded general powers that “broadened the commission’s authority” to include parkways, bridges, and other parts of the city. In the case of the Taylor estate, Moses was sewed for breaking Section 59 of the Conservation Law, that land can only be appropriated if the property has been negotiated for with the property owners first (he didn’t), and for breaking the stipulation that land can’t be bought that the government does not have the money to pay for it (the commission only had $225,000 to start with, the property costed more than that amount, and Moses had used a substantial fraction of the 225k already) (186). |
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| The Homestead Act of 1862 |
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| The law we are really interested in is the Southern Homestead Act of 1866, which was supposed to distribute land to freed black slaves, but did not do so nearly enough according to Oliver and Shapiro. The failure of the Southern Homestead Act of 1866 to give black freedmen and sharecroppers title to their own land. was an early but important failure of the reconstruction, and had dire consequences for blacks' ability to accumulate wealth and property. The Homestead Act of 1862 was never intended to include blacks. |
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| The Homestead Act of 1862 (cont.) |
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*Newly freed slaves first chance to own land after the Reconstruction
*At the end of slavery, blacks emerged with little or no material assets and the burden of over 200 years of racial and legal prejudice and oppression
*Provided a legal basis and mechanism to promote black land ownership; however, the act ultimately failed to turn blacks into a landowning class
*The act did not disqualify former Confederates from applying for land, and in the end over three-quarters of applicants were white
*Black applicants still had to face prejudice and discrimination in the forms of discriminatory court charges and decisions, illegal fees, and land speculators- all of which prevented many from land ownership |
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| integration maintenance (Rosenfeld) |
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| if you look up Integration Maintenance in the index of Massey and Denton's book, you will find some page references, and that is a good place to start. Basically, integration maintenance is a plan whereby the percentage of minority residents is capped at a certain low level to try to ensure the willingness of white residents to remain, and thereby to give integration more stability. The problem is that racial quotas in housing are generally illegal, so integration maintenance rests on a shaky foundation, and often fails. See also Arnold Hirsch's book, and note the Thomas Schelling explanation for why integration is an inherently unstable state. |
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- The FHA of 1968 was largely unenforceable, and under Reagan the number of cases prosecuted dropped immensely
- The two cases which the Reagan administration did apply the act to were not ones that broadened and extended the application of fair housing policy, but aimed at undermining integration maintenance programs in Hew York housing areas and Chicago’s Atrium Village
- Integration maintenance programs were implemented by well-meaning managers in order to create and integrated residential setting within an otherwise racially segregated and highly discriminatory housing market, and though they were arguably against the mandates in the FHA of 1968 they were consistent with its spirit
- Integration maintenance was essentially a quota system designed to keep a the percentage of minorities in a neighborhood present but low enough so that whites didn’t move out, thus creating and maintaining integrated neighborhoods instead of promoting white flight and racial turnover |
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Massey and Denton write about linguistic and cultural isolation from residential segregation.
-Linguistic gap between white and black America
- Linguists say ebonics has its own rules. Standard English difficult for inner city kids. Kids in the schools that are bilingual do better.
-Many black Americans have so little exposure to whites that they don’t speak same language anymore- Drift apart between two cultures that should know each other better by now
- since 1996 it has been largely used to refer to African American Vernacular English (distinctively nonstandard Black United States English), asserting its independence from standard English
according to Massey & Denton
- should look at ebonics as diff form of English w/ diff rules. It’s still legitimate
- indicates the drift apart between black & white English
- kids don’t do as well in school -> cycle of poverty -> little direct exposure to whites -> now they speak a “diff language” |
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| Thomas Schelling and his explanation for segregation |
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Definition
- Personal preferences of Whites and Blacks each to live with 'their own kind'.
- This theory includes the idea that Whites are more resistant to integration than Blacks are, and hence Whites flee from integrated neighborhoods as the number of Black residents rises
- Integration is not a stable outcome -> will only lead to REsegregation
- B/W differences in racial preferences & interpersonal variability in racial attitudes build a perpetuating dynamic into neighborhood change that leads to rapid turnover & inevitable re-segregation
- Discussed in relation to Massey & Denton -> said that if it weren’t for all white housing that was made available through HOLC, red-lining, realtors, speculation -> PEOPLE COULDN’T ACT ON PREFERENCES in 1st place |
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| Thomas Schelling and his explanation for segregation (my version) |
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| The problem with applying Schelling’s model to account for racial segregation in housing is that there are institutional forces at work, not just personal preferences. Moreover, these institutional forces created the circumstances in which whites could act on their preferences. |
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| 1975 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act |
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| This was a law that obligated banks to release details about lending practices, including race, gender, and income. These must be shown alongside loan acceptance and rejection rates. The idea was that this data would give leverage against lenders that discriminated. Massey and Oliver hit on this as the ‘smoking gun’ of persistent discrimination. |
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| law of imperfect selection |
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Definition
| Any objective rule that defines eligibility for a social transfer program will irrationally exclude some persons. |
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| law of imperfect selection (cont.) |
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Definition
| It is incredibly difficult to define eligibility for programs that provide monetary benefits. Murray says that some people who are genuinely needy are excluded because they do not meet the abstract eligibility criteria. The result is that expanded criteria are often used, letting even the non-needy into the program. This in turn causes government programs to bloat. |
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| Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 |
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Definition
| Reformed welfare and instituted work requirements. After 24 months, one might be removed from eligibility. An end to welfare as we knew it, signed into effect by Clinton. 2 years consecutive, and 5 years lifetime. States could make additional restrictions. States had different rules. A lot of social scientists thought welfare reform would leave to hunger and starvation, and it didn’t seem to. The idea is that people would move to work, and maybe work would be more fulfilling, and people would be happier…for a while it seemed to be the case. |
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-The income tax is progressive—in theory.
-The more you make the higher the RATE, not just the more you pay, the higher the RATE
-Is the income tax as progressive in actuality?
-No because of all the deductions, disproportionate benefits
-The income tax code is full of interesting loopholes and exceptions
-A lot of ways in which the tax code is not as progressive as it seems
-The big allowable deductions have to do with home ownership
-Big deduction for mortgage interest
-Big deduction for property tax
-From Oliver and Shipiro’s perspective, the income tax is not progressive enough
-They think a wealth text would be fairer
-Oliver and Shipiro make an argument for the relevance of history…all of the inequalities of the past are with us every day through inequalities in inherited wealth
-The highest marginal tax rate was 91% (for people who were making a lot of money)
-When Reagan took office, it was 69 (by the end it was 38.5). Now its 35 |
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| Home Owner’s Loan Corporation |
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Definition
- Passed in a bill by President Roosevelt
- Intended to refinance tens of thousands of mortgages in danger of default or foreclosure
- Introduced government-sanctioned, standardized appraisals of the fitness of particular properties and communities for both individual and groups loans, in effect creating a “formal and uniform system of appraisal” which included evaluation of the racial composition or potential racial composition of a community
- Communities that were changing racially or were already black were deemed undesirable and placed in the lowest category, “redlining”
This essentially made residential segregation institutionalized
- The categories assigned to neighborhoods by the HOLC were used by the FHA (federal housing authority) loan officer as the basis for awarding loans or not
- The FHA was similar to the HOLC, meant to increase employment by aiding the construction industry
- Promoted home ownership, but maintained residential segregation in several ways
- They were biased towards the financing of single-family homes over multifamily projects, which generally meant housing outside the central city (suburbs)
- Biased towards new purchases/homes rather than repair of existing homes, which made people move out of the city rather than improve their existing properties
- Continued the use of the HOLCs rating system, which devalued older, black, inner city communities and made it difficult for residents of those areas to get loans. |
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Term
| gentrification - proponents |
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Definition
| Proponents of gentrification focus on the benefits of urban renewal, such as renewed investment in physically deteriorating locales, improved access to lending capital for low-income mortgage seekers as their property values increase, increased rates of lending to minority and first-time home purchasers to invest in the now-appreciating area and improved physical conditions for renters. Often initiated by private capital, gentrification has been linked to reductions in crime rates, increased property values, increased tolerance of sexual minorities, and renewed community activism. |
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- Critics of gentrification often cite the human cost to the neighborhood's lower-income residents when debating the topic. They expound that the increases in rent often spark the dispersal of communities whose members find that housing in the area is no longer affordable (shown in Anderson’s Streetwise in the Village areas that are gentrified can no longer afford rent)
- Additionally, the increase in property taxes may sometimes force or give incentive for homeowners to sell their homes and seek refuge in less expensive neighborhoods (also as shown by the residents in the Village areas bordering Northton, Streetwise).
- While those who view gentrification as a positive phenomenon praise its effect on neighborhood's crime rates, those with different paradigms believe that the crime has not truly been reduced, but merely shifted to different lower-income neighborhoods. |
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| Narrow Geographic Horizons |
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| Poor blacks have extremely narrow geographic horizons. Spatial isolation leads to social isolation Examples: many people living in chicago’s south side never left their neighborhood or report having no friendships with people who weren’t black. Racial isolation “is at once real, in that movement outside the neighborhood is limited, and psychological, in that residents feel cut off from the rest of the city”. Residents of hyper segregated neighborhoods live within a very circumscribed limited social world. They rarely travel outside the black enclave, and most have few friends outside the ghetto. Lack of connection to the rest of society decreases networks and chances for jobs., especially jobs that white society provides, thus guaranteeing economic isolation as well. Blacks have a clear disadvantage and leaves a dependent black community where work experience and legitimate employment are weak. |
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