Subtheme: Historical Harms, Contemporary Effects

Greater Boston, like the US more broadly, has a long history of both public and private housing discrimination written explicitly into laws and regulations at multiple scales and inscribed into property records. While the explicitly discriminatory (or “de jure”) forms of housing discrimination have now been outlawed, decades of legally sanctioned exclusion still have reverberating effects. Moreover, methods of housing discrimination persisted in implementation beyond their formal ruling as unconstitutional or illegal.Historians and scholars often talk about these practices in terms of investment and disinvestment where we can see how government policies at multiple scales have selectively invested in housing, amenities, transportation and education in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods, limited access to those neighborhoods, and not only neglected to invest in minority neighborhoods but targeted them for locally unwanted land uses, such as hazardous waste sites, among other things.

Students investigating this area can look at historical discriminatory practices like redlining and racially restrictive covenants in relation to contemporary housing access, stability, and affordability in Metro Boston. Groups could also look at effects of past housing policies related to present day environmental justice concerns, such as climate vulnerability as examined through the MA state designated environmental justice populations.

Background Reading

  1. Timeline of Housing Discrimination from the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston – An online timeline narrating the history of housing discrimination in Greater Boston, including redlining, racial covenants, and challenges to housing discrimination.
  2. Exclusionary by Design: An Investigation of Zoning’s Use as a Tool of Race, Class, and Family Exclusion in Boston’s Suburbs, 1920 to Today – A video as well as a report that goes through the history of exclusionary zoning practices in Boston.
  3. How Has Boston Gotten Away with Being Segregated for So Long? – A report by Boston Magazine about the origins of segregation in Boston (rated as a “highly segregated” city).
  4. A ‘Forgotten History’ Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America – NPR report about Richard Rothstein’s widely acclaimed book “Color of Law” which argues that New Deal housing programs like redlining constituted a state-sponsored form of racial segregation.
  5. Report on Housing Harms for Black Bostonians and Ways to Redress Them – Embrace Boston, a nonprofit that originally formed around the MLK Jr monument on the Boston Common and has now developed into a civic organization promoting racial healing and racial justice, released a report outlining the history of housing harms against Black Bostonians and recommended steps to take to redress and repair them. See pp. 34-58 on housing and transportation.
  6. The Color of Wealth in Boston – A landmark and oft-cited report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston about the racial wealth gap in Boston. Co-authored by MIT Economics alumnus William Darity. One of the recommendations for ameliorating the gap is ensuring fair access to housing.

Datasets for the Final Project

  1. Racially Restrictive Covenants in MA - A set of historical deeds from MA properties with racially restrictive clauses, e.g. limiting sale or rent to people from specific racial or ethnic groups. The dataset for the class is a preliminary data set from Northern Middlesex County in MA from The Massachusetts Covenants Project, an MIT DUSP research project that is on-going. You will need to sign a data use agreement to use this dataset.
  2. Redlining data for Greater Boston - Redlining was the US federal government’s practice from roughly 1934-1968 of denying or limiting financial services to certain neighborhoods based on racial or ethnic composition without regard to the residents’ qualifications or creditworthiness. Neighborhoods deemed less worthy for loans were colored red, hence the name “redlining”. The program operated at a national scale comprising 239 US cities, including Greater Boston. The agencies involved included the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). Redlining has been shown to contribute to many contemporary racial divides, including the racial wealth gap, inequitable health outcomes, and environmental inequalities among other things.
  3. Geographic data for making maps
  1. Fair Housing Legislation – MAPC’s Housing Legislative Agenda includes an Act promoting fair housing by preventing discrimination against affordable housing – Filed by Representative Barber (H.1295) in the MA House and Senator Cyr (S.859) in the MA Senate.
  2. Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Zoning in Boston – AFFH zoning review is a policy in the City of Boston which, since 2021, requires large development projects to undertake an impact assessment that will “consider impacts on area residents historically discriminated against so that steps can be taken to reduce those impacts, provide new housing opportunities, and address past histories of exclusion”.
  3. Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Bill in MA – A proposed statewide bill (H1375), that would require all new large-scale developments to undertake a fair housing assessment to show how their development would minimize harms such as discrimination and displacement and affirmatively further fair housing practices. Currently in the House Ways and Means Committee.
  4. Reparation policies and legislation in Boston? In 2022 the City of Boston created a task force to explore the city’s history of discrimination and to consider reparations for Black Bostonians. Reparation legislation in Boston is yet to come but you can hear about some of the ideas on the table through WGBH’s podcast What is Owed?. There is a precedent for municipal reparations in Evanston, IL, which provides those reparations in the form of housing assistance for Black residents.