The Legacy of Redlining
From 1935-1936, the federal government surveyed San Antonio’s neighborhoods and assigned grades “A,” “B,””C,” and “D” to indicate the security or risk of investing. Grades, shaded on a map in green, blue, yellow, and red indicated “best,” “still desirable,” “definitely declining,” and “hazardous.” The red-lining maps explicitly considered and detailed the population of neighborhoods by race.
For decades, this information was used by banks and mortgage lenders to subsidize home ownership for White people and deny people of color home ownership. Redlining was outlawed in 1968 through the Fair Housing Act, but its legacy remains oppressive.
In addition to building generational wealth, a safe home is directly tied to people’s health and well-being. The relationship between the value of homes in a neighborhood, property taxes, and school funding, is just one example of the legacy of redlining and the racial disparities in San Antonio’s education outcomes today.
Without this context, disaggregated data supports harmful narratives that blame individuals for long-standing inequities. The truth reveals the power and responsibility of institutions.
Friends,
After 12 years of driving progress toward a shared community vision, SA2020, the nonprofit organization, is dissolving. We believe this is the most visionary thing we can do. We made this decision with the greatest care for our organizational values of leadership, community, and accountability, and we hope you’ll read more about it on our blog.
Our website is live with our final data release, showing where San Antonio stands on reaching the shared community vision. The data release is accompanied by our final call to action—a policy agenda for City government based on our unique bird’s-eye view of San Antonio.
While SA2020’s operations ended March 28, these resources, along with the last twelve years of our research and stories, will be available to download from our website through September 2024.
– Team SA2020