I recently re-read the Pulitzer-prize winning Evicted by Matthew Desmond for my property class. Desmond truly does an incredible job providing a lens into the lives of the renters that he details, specifically in the way he traces the cyclical nature of eviction faced by many Americans today. I would recommend Evicted to anyone regardless, but Desmond leaves a lot on the table when it comes to developing a greater understanding of these issues.
I like that Desmond makes it clear that race is inextricably linked to evictions and the ability to acquire property, but I want this to be seen in a greater context. It packs a punch to tell the stories of renters like Desmond does, but it does not reveal much about how or why these things occur. I hope to fill some of the gaps he left unanswered. Think about this article as an expansion of what Desmond said in Evicted; an attempt to understand Desmond’s conclusions in a way that fits within a larger picture, without ever leaving Milwaukee. I think Milwaukee is a great city to illustrate the interplay between a variety of social dynamics, including racism, property, and inequality.
Specifically, I attempt to trace how the housing markets in Milwaukee developed based on racially motivated laws and codes, and that this has resulted in impoverished African American communities, and perhaps most importantly, an exacerbation of inequality in educational attainment between black and white Americans in those cities. Eviction sits at the crux of the argument; the inability to acquire or maintain adequate housing is one of the primary reasons that African American communities in Milwaukee cannot escape the cycle of poverty. Race is inextricably linked to the ability to own, rent, or acquire housing, and the ability to own, rent, or acquire housing is inextricably linked to levels of educational attainment and economic inequality.
In summary, Desmond does a great job illustrating the issues surrounding race, eviction, and property ownership in Milwaukee. However, he never discusses why or how Milwaukee became so intensely segregated, and what the impact of this segregation is today.
The answer to these questions is what I am in pursuit of.
As of 2016, Milwaukee, Wisconsin was the most highly segregated city in the United States. The city has long been a city composed of immigrants – external and internal. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Milwaukee received a large group of white, Scandinavian immigrants from overseas, to work in the booming industrial district. Many African Americans from the southern United States subsequently followed during the “Great Migration.” The internal immigrants arrived in two waves; after the First World War, and after the Second. By the 1960s, Milwaukee had become an active and highly polarized American city.
Redlining played a critical role in preventing Milwaukee’s white and black residents from integrating. Not only was redlining implemented underhandedly in the second half of the 20th century, but it was explicitly written into the law until the mid-20th century. Professor Mark Pearcy of Rider University presents an interesting conclusion pertaining to redlining in Milwaukee; in his 2015 paper for the Virginia Academic Journal, he discusses the fact that as the United States became increasingly diverse, the communities within it became increasingly segregated. Milwaukee is a case in point; redlining, and the practice of “exclusionary zoning” prevented residential integration. As the 20th century progressed, integration became more difficult. It was only in the 1990s that the Fair Lending Action Committee’ report on mortgage lending determined that lending was disproportionately low in predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that there was evident and outright discrimination among loans and banking discrimination in black communities.
Another significant factor that prevented racial integration was a tactic called “blockbusting,” which was particularly effective in the 1970s. “Blockbusting” is the process whereby real estate agents would utilize phone calls, for-sale signs, in-person visits, or the distribution of pamphlets to invoke fear in white families – specifically those with aversions to living in integrated neighbourhoods – and thus convince them to leave the area. Real estate agents knew white families were more likely to sell their homes below market values because of their fear of living in the same neighbourhood as Milwaukee’s African American residents. Agents consistently had white families sell their homes for under market value, subsequently flipping those homes to families of color at or above market value. Milwaukee faced a lack of institutional equality; “blockbusting,” in combination with redlining, had the effect of pulling white families away from their traditional neighbourhoods – characterized by older housing stocks – and pushing them towards new suburban neighborhoods in Milwaukee.
These factors obviously encouraged white Americans to relocate to the suburbs, but how was it that African Americans became trapped within their segregated areas of the community? The primary factors keeping the black population stationary – along with redlining – were unwarranted tenant eviction, residential segregation, and discriminatory housing policies. Evictions were once a rare occurrence through the United States; a New York Times account from 1932 observed that a crowd of 1,000 people confronted marshals and police as they tried to evict a neighbour. Today, there are squads of sheriffs whose full-time job is to carry out foreclosure orders. Certain moving companies specialize in evictions; their crews work all day, every weekday. With the growth of data mining, companies have emerged with the sole purpose of selling landlords tenant screening reports listing past evictions and other court filings. The number of evicted tenants has led to the overcrowding of housing courtrooms – most tenants don’t care to show up. It has become routine for black and minority families to hear early morning knocks on the door, and see their belongings line the curb outside the place they once resided.
In Milwaukee, a city of fewer than 105,000 renter households, landlords evict roughly 16,000 adults and children annually. That represents the eviction of sixteen different families daily. Moreover, as evicting tenants can be expensive, landlords have discovered many different informal ways to remove tenants. Some landlords have handed their tenants a few hundred dollars and told them to be out by the end of the week, others have simply removed the front door of their tenants’ apartment. Half of all forced moves in Milwaukee are “informal evictions” that take place “in the shadow of the law.” Adding up all of the informal and formal evictions, the landlord foreclosures, and the building condemnations, one will discover that between 2009 and 2011, more than 1 in 8 Milwaukee renters experienced a forced move. The fallout from evictions cannot be understated. Losing a home will often send a family to shelters, abandoned houses, or the street. Disease and illness run rampant in these settings, forcing families to move into cheap housing in familiar and impoverished neighbourhoods. As a result of redlining, “blockbusting,” unwarranted tenant eviction, poor housing laws that disproportionately affected African Americans, and a variety of other factors, the neighbourhoods that are familiar, yet impoverished, are those that are predominantly African American.
One more factor must be considered in a discussion of racial segregation in Milwaukee; the construction of the I-43 Expressway. Streetcars were popular in the late 1960s, but this did not stop urban renewal programs from continuing without the input of the community. The construction of the expressway ultimately detrimentally impacted the African American and Latino neighbourhoods that bordered the expressway. In these neighbourhoods, the construction of the highway destroyed the property values in the community, discouraged outside investment and caused these areas to deteriorate and become desolate. On the other hand, white families simply moved to suburban neighbourhoods that were designed to have access to the freeway. White people did not have to worry about any institutional and social barrier preventing them from moving or receiving a loan or other forms of credit. The construction of the I-43 reveals the impact that a singular decision can have on an entire community.
Triangle North is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Milwaukee – 87% of its residents are African American. A four-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,471 square foot property in Triangle North is currently for sale for $29,000. The Historic Third Ward community – one of Milwaukee’s most wealthy neighbourhoods – has a population that is 85.9% white. A similar sized home in the Third War with a total area of 1,547 square feet is currently for sale for $245,000. The prediction of this paper remains intact; property values are closely correlated to the level of wealth in a community, which is a strong predictor of a community’s level of educational attainment.
The statistics on educational attainment continue to be supportive of the thesis here. In the Triangle North community, 57.2% of residents aged 25 years and older stopped their education after receiving their high school diploma. Only 19.9% of residents have a post-secondary degree. 22.9% of the community’s residents did not even receive their high school diplomas. The level of educational attainment in this community reflects its property values.
One can observe the same conclusion, namely that educational attainment is correlated to property values, through an analysis of the Historic Third Ward community’s level of educational attainment. 81.5% of residents aged 25 or older have received a post-secondary degree – just under 50% of those people received bachelor’s degrees. Only 16.6% of residents in this same age group stopped their education after receiving their high school diploma. Only 1.9% did not graduate from high school.
These statistics reinforce my conclusions; racism and inequality in housing has segregated metropolitan areas, and the consequences have been dire. The predominantly black neighbourhoods have become poorer and the predominantly white ones have become richer, as evident from the comparison of property values. Using educational attainment statistics as a litmus test because of its clear connection to future and current wealth, it is evident that the wealth gap between these communities is incredibly large, and correspondingly, the gap in economic inequality is equally as large.
To conclude, racism forced African Americans into poor, segregated communities in Milwaukee, while white Americans fled to the suburbs. Unsurprisingly, property values were, and are currently, much lower in these neighbourhoods, in contrast to higher property values in white suburban neighbourhoods. Property values showed to be closely correlated to levels of educational attainment – poor communities have lower levels of educational attainment, and vice-versa. Think about it – a young student is much more likely to complete their homework at the desk in their room, than at the bus stop in sub-zero weather, or at a crowded homeless shelter. Yet, the true dagger of the whole thing is that the divergence in educational attainment leads to a further divergence in economic inequality. Racism drove down property values in black areas of Milwaukee, and because of low levels of educational attainment, it is near impossible for these communities to ever break the cycle of poverty!
Seems like a sick joke to me; alas, one that tells us a lot about racism, property, education, and inequality in the United States.