Housing Sources

“Fair Housing At Its Worst: Redlining in Hartford Connecticut, report 9” is an article published in 1977 from a series of reports on equal housing opportunity from the Education/Instruccion, an group led by Ben Dixon, Boyd Hinds, and Julia Ramos[1]. The report was submitted in partnership with the Cities, Suburbs and Schools project, namely for the On The Line web-book by Jack Dougherty and colleagues[2].

The article seeks to define and explain the practices of redlining, as well as explicate how this practice has affected the city and the surrounding suburbs of Hartford. Furthermore, this report looks into the procedures for mortgage loans in Hartford’s city and it’s surrounding suburbs, comparing the two and drawing conclusions as to why such practices are different. The report also seeks to outline how anti-disinvestment practices can be modified. In sum, the report offers a plethora of evidence to suggest that the blatantly racist practices of banks have had detrimental effects on the city of Hartford.

Source:

Education/Instruccion. Fair Housing At Its Worst: Redlining in Hartford Connecticut, report 9. Hartford, CT, 1977. Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford, Connecticut (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu)

 

 The three other resources I located were:

Resource:

Urban Decline or Disinvestment: Uneven Development, Redlining and the Role of the Insurance Industry. Gregory D. Squires, Ruthanne Dewolfe and Alan S. Dewolfe. Social Problems , Vol. 27, No. 1, Policy Processes (Oct., 1979), pp. 79-95. Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Article DOI: 10.2307/800018, Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/800018

I located this resource by utilizing the JSTOR resource online. I searched for articles, books, etc. pertaining to, “Redlining in Hartford.” The article covers all of the material expressed in the main source I was observing:

“The findings suggest—as its critics have charged and the insurance industry has generally denied—that redlining of man urban communities and discrimination against the poor and minorities are facts of insurance life, and contribute to the deterioration of those communities. We offer some policy recommendations for eliminating redlining and for the stimulating reinvestment in urban neighborhoods.[3]”

Resource:

Lawsuit Accuses Travelers Of Redlining, By DIANE LEVICK; Courant Staff Writer, The Hartford Courant, July 08, 2000 http://articles.courant.com/2000-07-08/business/0007127403_1_travelers-property-casualty-corp-minority-areas-market-share

I found this article by going to courant.com, the website of the daily paper for Hartford. I searched for articles about redlining practices, and found this very interesting report about women who are suing Travelers for their racist practices.

Resource:

Why Banks Go Bad—Understanding a Banking Crisis in Transition
 with
 Professor William K. Black, author of 
”The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.” Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report
. National Edition
. Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg. 
27 minutes. Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/BuildingBridgesRadioWhyBanksGoBad

This last resource I found using the Internet Archive. I searched through a plethora of medias searching for archives relating to “mortgages in Hartford” and “redlining in Hartford” and “1977.” And I’m very excited about this resource because it is “untraditional” in terms of the media I usually utilize. This is a half an hour podcast, originally aired on the radio. It discuses banks and their correction, and the processes that lead to such corruption.

 

Questions:

How did the redlining procedures from the 1970’s contribute to the current racial and economic make-up of both the city and suburbs Hartford?

What can be concluded about the practices of banks in the 1970’s in terms of racism? Were the banks racist…? Did anyone try to stop the redlining process?