IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/urecxx/v3y2022i1p70-94.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Sima Namin
  • Yuhong Zhou
  • Wei Xu
  • Emily McGinley
  • Courtney Jankowski
  • Purushottam Laud
  • Kirsten Beyer

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Sima Namin & Yuhong Zhou & Wei Xu & Emily McGinley & Courtney Jankowski & Purushottam Laud & Kirsten Beyer, 2022. "Persistence of mortgage lending bias in the United States: 80 years after the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation security maps," Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 70-94, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:urecxx:v:3:y:2022:i:1:p:70-94
    DOI: 10.1080/26884674.2021.2019568
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/26884674.2021.2019568
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/26884674.2021.2019568?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:urecxx:v:3:y:2022:i:1:p:70-94. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/urec .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.