New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s

Price Fishback, Jonathan Rose, Kenneth Snowden () and Thomas Storrs

No 29244, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We show that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), from its inception in the 1930s, did not insure mortgages in low income urban neighborhoods where the vast majority of urban Black Americans lived. The agency evaluated neighborhoods using block-level information collected by New Deal relief programs and the Census in many cities. The FHA’s exclusionary pattern predates the advent of the infamous maps later made by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and shows little change after the drafting of those maps. In contrast, the HOLC itself broadly loaned to such neighborhoods and to Black homeowners. We conclude that the HOLC’s redlining maps had little effect on the geographic distribution of either program’s mortgage market activity, and that the FHA crafted and implemented its own redlining methodology prior to the HOLC.

JEL-codes: G21 G22 G28 G5 N22 N42 N92 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-isf, nep-pke and nep-ure
Note: DAE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Price Fishback & Jonathan Rose & Ken Snowden & Thomas Storrs, 2022. "New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s," Journal of Urban Economics, .

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Journal Article: New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s (2024)
Working Paper: New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s (2022)
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