Housing segregation still sidelining people of color from dream homes | Nightline

this has been the neighborhood that i've adored for many many years um these houses are gorgeous houses i'm not exe tatum iii is on the hunt for a new home for his growing family he spent years preparing for this moment landing a well-paid union job purchasing a starter home now he wants to trade up to the american dream and leave something behind for his son charles to inherit generational wealth being able to have a home as an asset and pass it down exe grew up in milwaukee and while he's seen the city change he's also seen some things stubbornly stay the same if you look at the north side of milwaukee you're going to see african-american as soon as you cross to the south side that's where the latino community begins despite its overall diversity milwaukee is the most segregated big city in america according to data analyzed by abc news we're getting close to wauwatosa today xc search is leading him to the pricier suburb of wauwatosa is this the kind of neighborhood you dream of for yourself and your family definitely definitely if you can look around you see everybody manicures their yards and i have a two and a half year old son that i would love to just be able to ride his bike up and down the street without having to worry about something bad happening to him but xe sees no future for his family in milwaukee's virtually all white suburbs he says generations of past legal segregation and present lending standards have conspired to lock out buyers like him the numbers show it more than 90 percent of black people in the milwaukee area live in the city and whether you're white or not still appears to make a difference in your ability to get a traditional mortgage even if you've done all the right things i still feel like my bankers always have to go to the underwriters and fight for me why do you have to fight for me when i'm meeting all the criteria that you told me i needed here in milwaukee's majority white neighborhoods our data show that white people have a loan approval rate one and a half times higher than people of color with the same income range applying for similar loan amounts and it's not just milwaukee abc news partnered with our own stations to investigate mortgage lending data and found gaping racial disparities how many times did you try to apply at least three times and you were denied deny each time more than 50 years after the fair housing act cities from new york to new orleans to chicago are still extremely segregated the neighborhood you live in can impact everything from schooling to health care to future job opportunities tonight we go inside the issue from talking to those locked out of their dream homes to those feeling pushed out of the neighborhood they built against all odds and tough questions for those tasked with overseeing the federal agency responsible for keeping housing fair we have never as a nation gone all in on fair housing [Applause] growing up did you know anyone who lived in the suburbs um growing up i did not if you don't know someone there then you don't go in that neighborhood because you're not supposed to be over there and that's just known and that's just known not just known it was actually codified in these restrictive housing covenants that became popular starting in the 1920s one that really stands out let me read it at no time shall lot of any building thereon be purchased owned leased occupied or used by any person other than a citizen of the united states of the white race historian and writer reggie jackson's work focuses on segregation in milwaukee so this sign from wauwatosa was all over the city of tulsa the people who were living in these covenant neighborhoods knew that this meant okay this is an all-white community the racist practice of redlining was also pervasive enforced by federal government standards largely based on neighborhood demographics within red line neighborhoods banks seldom approved loans or charged predatory rates when they did d5 on the map all nine thousand black people lived inside that box it said that this is the negro slum area this is the work of the federal government federal government the homeowner's loan corporation and the greatest benefit of these maps was white people [Music] during the post-world war ii housing boom that gave rise to america's suburbs millions of white veterans secured home loans with the help of the gi bill but for black veterans the discriminatory way the bill was implemented often prevented them from accessing those same loans shutting them out from being able to build generational wealth the fair housing act's passage in 1968 outlawed racial covenants redlining and racist lending practices but their legacy still lingers they were intentionally creating a two-tier system of homeownership a two-tier system of wealth building you can't just fix this generations of white families have been enriched most american wealth is in homeownership the typical white family has eight times the wealth of the typical black family this often puts black people at a disadvantage from the start when applying for a loan an analysis done by our partner 538 shows that in many of the major cities where redlining once existed nearly all of those formerly red line zones are still disproportionately neighborhoods of color and the vast majority of them still segregated [Music] i don't think there is another suburb in the inner city anywhere in america like hellion park no i doubt it seriously yeah we are a real close-knit community starting back in 70 1977. halyard park a neighborhood that rises out of the inner city like an oasis planned financed and constructed by black milwaukeeans who decided that if they were going to be locked out of the suburban life they would simply create one themselves lenny mosley first moved to the area with her husband in 1981 when it started to take shape what was that like for you it was beautiful people were buying they stopped putting inside and the houses were going up and we were all excited it felt good to be here and be a part of something you stayed in the state 40 years now 40 years and i'm not going anywhere halyard park was born from mortgages mostly funded by a black-owned bank called columbia savings and loan recently downtown development has made the neighborhood attractive sending property values and taxes soaring nearby is the phi serve forum where the milwaukee bucks play black people built this neighborhood are you concerned that they could be priced out of it pushed out of it soon absolutely it can happen anything can happen david it'll be gone in no time it'll be gone it's gonna be a disaster for everybody clara smith has lived in halyard park for 38 years she's feeling the pinch i have seen my taxes go from fifteen hundred dollars to over four thousand dollars i do not want to be taxed out of my home the economist would say that all that development downtown that increases the value of your property which is good for you do you buy that no because they are trying to steal what we have already established they they're trying to steal our community is there a number that someone could offer you for for your home for your property that you would have to consider don't do that to me brother brother scott real talk yeah it's real talk but wow wow it's hard it's hard justification is like a slow-moving freight train you see it coming but you're not going to do anything to stop it from moving hello how are you doing it's good to see you meet lenny's next door neighbors chris and avery nielsen look at this ray of sunshine right here the nielsen's have been living in halyard park for four years they say they chose the neighborhood because they value diversity halyard park may become whiter and whiter do you think about that it's a fantastic question honestly i don't know that i've given the future much thought um just being in the present is kind of what's filled our time we just wanted to find a spot that fit in our budget that we could raise a family in a diverse area but as to your point looking to the future i think it is a concern and something that we need to be aware of and help keep a diverse atmosphere there's a difference between integration and gentrification that pushes people out does that ring true to you yeah i think that's very fair if we know that there is a risk coming how can we prevent it i think we should restore the history that's here and keep it alive because it's good for strong communities and good strong diverse communities just a few blocks from halyard park xi's home search continues it looks like right right a gut rehab situation and it definitely is he knows the suburbs are not an option and now imagines rebuilding this foreclosed inner city property walling it off with an eight-foot fence to create his own little sanctuary i can make my own customize it for my family and then create a safe zone for my child exe currently owns this home in a predominantly black neighborhood that was once redlined the plan was that this was a transitional home because of where your home is yes how did it go with appreciation you know i went from my house being worth about 110 thousand down to them telling me my house is worth twenty five thousand because of the location that i lived in it's another hurdle for exe to overcome he feels stuck he applied and was approved for an adjustable rate mortgage but he says it's not enough to cover the gut rehab so he's going to reapply i'm jumping through multiple hoops just to stay somewhere where i really don't want to stay when we come back exe's house hunting takes a surprising turn and we head to the nation's capital to get some answers on why the country's racial housing divide persists hi everyone george stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the abc news youtube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and don't forget to download the abc news app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

Views: 18,585

Keywords: Discriminatory, Housing, abc, abcnews, blm, color, data, discriminatory, disparities, eatate, fair, home, housing, lending, mortgage, of, ownership, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-82794840, people, practices, racial, real, segregation

Id: 45oXzC09Im4

Length: 11min 41sec (701 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 10 2022