Write a 3-4 page housing biography since the end of WWII.
Reflect on the typical family home in the neighborhoods researched in the years since WWII (Chestnut Hill, MA and Roxbury, MA). Using what you learned from the maps, reflect on how the aforementioned neighborhoods were affected by US housing policy from 1946 to today, how wealth was either accumulated or not through housing and passed down to generations after WWII. How did they either or benefit or suffer losses from various stages of US housing policy (from redlining to urban renewal, to attempts to implement the fair housing law, to the great recession and Covid 19)?
Some questions to consider:
Did the WWII generation in these neighborhoods buy a house and get a 30 year fixed-rate mortgage with a low down payment? Was that house in the suburbs? In a rural area?
Did they remain renters in the city in areas that were redlined? In the city as renters but not redlined?
Were members of these neighborhoods in areas that were demolished or made more livable through urban renewal (made more livable if benefitted by the highway systems which were built by demolishing urban neighborhoods but made commuting much easier and/or created attractive downtown areas for suburbanites to work or find entertainment in)?
Did these people have a standard 30 year mortgage or a ‘sub-prime’ mortgage during the Great Recession?
Have these people been affected by gentrification and the boon in the construction of luxury housing for the super-rich?
How segregated have the neighborhoods been since WWII? What is the racial make-up of these neighborhoods?
PLEASE USE ONLY THESE SOURCES:
https://www.propublica.org/article/living-apart-how-the-government-betrayed-a-landmark-civil-rights-law
https://nationalfairhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/US-Commission-on-Civil-Rights-Statement-of-LR-on-Predatory-Lending-Final…-1.pdf
https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/discrimlend_final.pdf
https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/27011/1001550-Rental-Market-Stresses-Impacts-of-the-Great-Recession-on-Affordability-and-Multifamily-Lending.PDF
https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/54106/2000260-The-Housing-Affordability-Gap-for-Extremely-Low-Income-Renters-2013.pdf
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DrUNMpDVxbyyee_oOpEPlVClxmlGSZbcwRhA0sfzGQA/edit#heading=h.8o7zy4hi6ukl
Housing hardships reach unprecedented heights during the COVID-19 pandemic
https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/#maps
https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/#maps
https://apps.urban.org/features/rental-housing-crisis-map/
