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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Arlington Fair Housing Action Plan

Figure 17: Homeowner’s Loan Corporation Residential Security Map, 1938, with Arlington outlined17

Arlington was predominately classified as blue or “still desirable,” with yellow “declining” areas clustered along
its borders with Somerville, Medford, and Lexington and along Massachusetts Avenue. These yellow areas—
which notably overlap with much of the area where multifamily housing is allowed today—would have had
fewer resources directed to them than the blue and green areas north and south of Massachusetts Avenue. The
town as a whole would have received far more investment than the red “hazardous” areas in Boston, Cambridge,
Somerville, and communities to the northeast. These so-called redlining maps cemented racial segregation in
greater Boston for several decades. The maps’ use was formally banned in in 1968 with the passage of the Fair
Housing Act.
Regional segregation was further embedded through “racially restrictive covenants,” contractual agreements
written into property deeds that prevented homeowners from selling or renting their home to non-White

17 Source: Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers, accessed October 11, 2020, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/

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Arlington Fair Housing Action Plan