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Indybay Feature

Is Housing a Human Right?

by Keanu Thompson
With the current housing crisis in the Bay Area, there is a question of responsibility for those displaced by gentrification. Housing inequities can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century and the effects can be seen today.
Housing is a right for all.

A simple declarative statement has caused much debate throughout the history of the United States. The allusion that people have a choice in deciding where they get to live has been fabricated to continue housing discrimination against marginalized communities.

From de facto segregation in housing with neighborhoods actively excluding people of color from moving into predominantly white neighborhoods; to de jure segregation where the government endorsed real estate agents to actively segregate housing districts based on race. This racial segregation is called redlining in which systematic discrimination is imposed through denial of neighborhoods or housing communities through price raising or other various methods.

Businesses would be hesitant to move into redlined neighborhoods because of the low property cost. This would led to these redlined neighborhoods to be food deserts, where residents would have to travel beyond their neighborhood to get fresh food.

The effects of housing discrimination could be seen today with these same redlined communities being predominantly low income and people of color. With some people disenfranchised by housing policy, should the responsible be on the people to change it or the ones who created it?
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by Brookings Institution report
sm_brookings-blackhomeownership.jpg
The devaluation of assets in black neighborhoods
The case of residential property

Andre M. Perry, Jonathan Rothwell, and David Harshbarger
Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Homeownership lies at the heart of the American Dream, representing success, opportunity, and wealth. However, for many of its citizens, America deferred that dream. For much of the 20th century, the devaluing of black lives led to segregation and racist federal housing policy through redlining that shut out chances for black people to purchase homes and build wealth, making it more difficult to start and invest in businesses and afford college tuition. Still, homeownership remains a beacon of hope for all people to gain access to the middle class. Though homeownership rates vary considerably between whites and people of color, it’s typically the largest asset among all people who hold it.

If we can detect how much racism depletes wealth from black homeowners, we can begin to address bigotry principally by giving black homeowners and policymakers a target price for redress. Laws have changed, but the value of assets—buildings, schools, leadership, and land itself—are inextricably linked to the perceptions of black people. And those negative perceptions persist.

Through the prism of the real estate market and homeownership in black neighborhoods, this report attempts to address the question: What is the cost of racial bias? This report seeks to understand how much money majority-black communities are losing in the housing market stemming from racial bias, finding that owner-occupied homes in black neighborhoods are undervalued by $48,000 per home on average, amounting to $156 billion in cumulative losses.

read full report:
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