Tim Lira’s Reviews > The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America > Status Update

The Ford plant and UAW were finally going to build housing in Milpitas for African Americans. However, the city raised the price to connect the sewer by 10x for each house, making it unaffordable for the low-middle class auto workers from being able to afford anything being built. The city did this only because the neighborhood was going to be integrated.

Chapter 9 is about local segregation tactics. Ben Gross, Chair of the Ford Plant’s Housing Committee, was trying to build a neighborhood around Milpitas for black people. He tried to develop 4 different sites, each time the local government deliberately rezoned the area to industrial to prevent a black neighborhood going up.

I was really interesting to read the chapter on the 2008 recession. Lenders (I.e. large banks) targeted low income and typically black borrowers with “subprime” loans to get them to over borrow on houses they couldn’t afford. When the borrow inevitably defaulted, the banks would get more in return on high interest rates. Black people were targeted with the belief they wouldn’t know they were being exploited.

Block busters would do a number of things to try and cause white flight. They’d have black woman walk the streets with a stroller, have black men drive around blasting loud music, they’d stage a realtor and black “buyers” and have them knock on doors asking if the house was for sale. All to cause property value to crash, buy it up, then sell it at inflated prices to black families.

The first portion of chapter 5 was about private agreements to keep black families out. Some neighbors drafted contracts that made an agreement to not sell to black families. Other developments had it in the signing clause that the property could not be sold to black families.

In Detroit a builder wanted FHA loans but the development site was deemed too close to black neighborhoods, so the request was denied. The builder then built a cement wall separating hose site from the black neighborhoods, his loan was then approved by the FHA.

The city also zoned areas around black families for undesirable business like strip clubs, bars, liquor stores, and polluting business (i.e. factories, landfills)

The St Louis zoning segment is heart breaking. To skirt the Buchanan ruling, the city created zoning ordinances to stop the spread of black families and to basically quarantine them. The city would change zoning from residential to industrial if black families started moving in. Basically keeping their property values low and putting them on undesirable locations.

Chapter two
About the housing projects was interesting, but saddening. At the end of the chapter a policy is mentioned that set a maximum income cap to live in the projects. Driving out middle class families and cementing house projects as neglected low income slums. Sad perpetual demise.

The bit about someone on Palo Alto selling a house to a black family broke my heart. The president of the California Real Estate Association set up office in East Palo Alto. He scared the white familiars that a black invasion was coming and caused the families to move out after property values crashed. Realtors bought the houses cheap and sold them at inflated prices to black folks. Terrible.