Persistence of mortgage lending bias in the United States: 80 years after the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation security maps

Sima Namin, Yuhong Zhou, Wei Xu, Emily McGinley, Courtney Jankowski, Purushottam Laud and Kirsten Beyer

Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City, 2022, vol. 3, issue 1, 70-94

Abstract: Housing discrimination and racial segregation have a long history in the United States. The 1930s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) “residential security maps,” recently digitized, have become a popular visualization of Depression era mortgage lending risk patterns across American cities. Numerous housing policies have since been instituted, including the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), but mortgage lending bias persists. The degree to which detailed spatial patterns of bias have persisted or changed along with urban change is not well understood. We compare historic HOLC grades and contemporary levels of mortgage lending bias using spatially detailed HMDA data. We further examine the relationship between HOLC risk grades and contemporary racial and ethnic settlement patterns. Results suggest that historical mortgage lending risk categorizations and settlement patterns are associated with contemporary mortgage lending bias and racial and ethnic settlement patterns. Concerted and deliberate efforts will be needed to change these patterns.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/26884674.2021.2019568 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:urecxx:v:3:y:2022:i:1:p:70-94

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/urec20

DOI: 10.1080/26884674.2021.2019568

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City is currently edited by Casey Wagner, Ali Modarres and Yasminah Beebeejaun

More articles in Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().