Redlining in San Diego
By: Siera Beal
As cities across the nation are being forced to examine how and where structural racism manifests locally, redlining is often the first stop. In the mid 1930s, the Federal Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) established boundaries around neighborhoods based on composition of resident income levels, race and/or ethnicity, and housing and land use types then assigned investment risk grades (from A –Best, to D -Hazardous) to each area.
The practice of redlining was (often a bank’s) refusal to lend or invest based on the risk grading of the borrower’s local area. More often than not, C and D graded areas were where Brown and Black people and immigrants called home.
This federally endorsed commercial practice further deprived many communities of critical, once-in-a-generation wealth building opportunities afforded to white Americans that undergird the many societal inequities we see today.
Mapping Inequality, is the work of a four-university collaborative, that aggregated the HOLC maps and accompanying neighborhood descriptions from across the nation and presents them in a browsable, digital map that helps us visually explore inequality in America.
LISC Brochure Designer: Michael Soledad
Using Mapping Inequality’s work as a base, LISC San Diego zooms in on the HOLC redlining map of San Diego to acquaint San Diegans with the characterization of our neighborhoods and communities, then and now. From the “servant’s quarters” of La Jolla to the several areas “restricted to the Caucasian race”, the federally ascribed characterizations of communities in San Diego force us to confront our thoughts and feelings about how we would describe those areas today. How they have changed versus how they have remained the same.
As we think about issues of zoning, affordable housing, “preserving neighborhood character”, how often is today’s prevailing policy and language resonant with the ones we witness in these maps?
Order a Printed Copy
Click the link below to order a printed copy of "Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America - San Diego"
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9.11.2020
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