Town of Arlington, Fair Housing Action Plan (July 2021)

Citation: Town of Arlington, Fair Housing Action Plan (July 2021)
Jurisdiction: Arlington (municipal)
Source: Official source
Original Source: https://www.arlingtonma.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/57214/637641171662530000 ↗

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Structural Barriers to Fair Housing
Legacy of Exclusionary Past
Like nearly every community in the United States, Arlington and greater Boston have a history of discriminatory
practices in its housing and land use policies, which has led to persistent racial segregation and inequity
regionally and in town. Twentieth century segregation in the northern United States was never as legally explicit
as that in the South, but suburbs created more covert systems of racial segregation through web of contract law,
financing practices, and development regulations. This historical context is an important framework for any fair
housing discussion because the legacy of that system—local policies that favored high-cost, low-density housing,
coupled with federal housing policies that denied Black residents the opportunity to pursue generational
wealth—are evidenced in the region’s continuing racial segregation today.
The housing market in greater Boston was significantly shaped by a practice we now call “redlining,” which
determined where and for whom financing for housing was made available. Redlining emerged during the New
Deal era in the 1930s, when the federal government began insuring residential mortgages. To guide
underwriters in determining the level of risk associated with a given mortgage, the federal government produced
maps that stated investment worthiness by location. The racial and ethnic composition of neighborhoods was
explicitly considered a factor of investment security within these maps. Neighborhoods where the majority of
residents were people of color or other ethnic or religious minorities were marked red or “hazardous” on the
maps. Any level of racial integration was seen as a sign of “decline,” and marked yellow. Affluent White areas
were marked “best” or