Student Posts – Page 15 – Cities, Suburbs & Schools Project at Trinity College

Sheff vs O’Neil 2003

September 20, 2013September 20, 2013Christina Raiti, Bianca Brenz

Sheff vs. O’Neill Stipulation and Order (Phase I, 2003) is a document dealing with the opening and production of Magnet Schools in the Hartford area. In an attempt to create racial, ethnic, and economic equality, this document provides an abundant plan. The purpose of a magnet school is to integrate the suburban and city students. However, there must be guidelines for this to take place. The percentage of minority students in any school cannot exceed the Sheff region minority percentage enrollment plus thirty percent. They must reach this number by their third year of operation. The schools will be run by the public school system and they must follow the Open Choice policy. The Open Choice policy allows children from Avon, Bloomfield, Canton, East Granby, East Hartford, East Windsor, Ellington, Farmington, Glastonbury, Granby, Hartford, Manchester, Newington, Rocky Hill, Simsbury, South Windsor, Suffield, Vernon, Wethersfield, Windsor, and Windsor Locks to have access to enter a lottery in order to attend these Magnet Schools. It is important to note that none of these schools are guarantees for residents of these areas. Seats are guaranteed for a certain number of minority students and the remaining seats are based on lottery. The State will be an extreme catalyst in the building of these schools. They will aid in everything from regulating the amount of students per complex to funding the actual construction projects. The Commissioner also plays a large role in the process of these magnet schools as well. Through the Commissioner, student’s time spent on the bus was supposed to be cut down, parents were to become more informed, and suburban students were to be persuaded to participate in the Open Choice Policy. To avoid stagnant educational patterns, parties are to meet no less than twice a year to make sure everything stays fresh and up to date.

Paul von Zielbauer mentions in his article “Change in Hartford” a quote from Susan Eaton. This was prior to the book The Children in Room E4, however Eaton makes a comment stating ”If you compare what they got with what the original vision was, it’s a huge disappointment,” This Sheff case runs parallel and is mentioned in Eaton’s chapter called The Plantiff and is indirectly referred to in the chapter named Separate but Equal? On page 266. It outlines the inequality within urban and suburban school districts through telling a story of a field trip to Simpson-Waverly Marlborough.

“Sheff v. O’Neill Complaint”

September 19, 2013September 25, 2013Elaina Rollins

“Sheff v. O’Neill Complaint” is a legal complaint filed by ten-year-old Milo Sheff and seventeen other Hartford school children, all acting through their parents, which claims that the state of Connecticut has denied their right to an equal education, as is guaranteed to them in the state constitution. This complaint, filed on April 26, 1989, argues that not only has Connecticut tolerated school districts that are racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically segregated, but that the state has played a major role in creating and maintaing isolated residential communities.

The plaintiffs identify the defendants as William O’Neill, Governor of the Connecticut, Gerald Tirozzi, Commissioner of Education of Connecticut, Franciso Borges, Treasurer of Connecticut, J. Edward Caldwell, Comptroller of Connecticut, and several members of the State Board of Education.

The complaint begins with a statement of facts regarding the racial disparity between Hartford and its surrounding suburbs, citing that while the state’s population is made up of 12.1% black school-age citizens, 44.9% of the students in the Hartford school district are black. Sheff also cites statistics about single-parent households, children with limited English proficiency, and families receiving federal aid in order to argue that Hartford operates at a “severe educational disadvantage in addressing the needs of all students” (Sheff 11).

Under the section titled “An Unequal Education,” the complaint cites the percentages of students in Hartford and 21 other suburbs who fall below the State Department of Education’s “mastery benchmark” level on the Statewide Mastery Tests. The data shows that Hartford students, on average, performed strikingly worse than suburban students. Sheff also insists that the integration of city and suburban schoolchildren would benefit all students, not only those in Hartford, because blacks, Hispanics, and poor children make up such a large part of the state population.

The complaint offers numerous examples of Connecticut’s “longstanding knowledge of these iniquities,” as well as its “failure to take effective action” (16, 22). For example, Sheff points to exclusionary zoning as one of the most prominent housing barriers affecting Hartford schoolchildren’s education, arguing that Governor O’Neill and his predecessors “failed to take action to afford meaningful racial and economic housing within school zones” (Sheff 22).

Generally, Susan Eaton’s description of the Sheff complaint reflects the original document’s text. She discusses test scores, overall school quality, and the benefits of school integration. One difference between her book and the actual legal complaint is that while The Children in Room E4 goes into great depth about the current state of Hartford education, using a vivid and touching narrative, the document spends much more time referencing past malfeasances the state had already committed in regards to ignoring educational inequality and obstructing any attempts to remedy the issue.

Discussion Questions:

Do you agree with the decision to mainly choose plaintiffs who live in Hartford, or do you think this case could have benefitted from citing more students both inside and outside the city?

Sheff proponents face many criticisms from those who belief that while de jure segregation is wrong, de facto segregation should not be remedied by the government. Do you think Sheff could have predicted these criticisms and rewritten part of the complaint to address these concerns in advance?

Could Sheff have benefitted from a more specific definition of school integration?

Fair Housing at Its Worst: the flagrant violation of Title VII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act in Greater Hartford, Connecticut, report 6.

September 15, 2013September 18, 2013Emily Heneghan

The article I examined was “Fair Housing at Its Worst: the flagrant violation of Title VII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act in Greater Hartford, Connecticut, report 6.” This report speaks about “blockbusting” and “panic selling” and about how mass solicitation of homes and apartments in communities creates an artificial reservoir of sales. Mass solicitation could be desirable for a neighborhood or it can have a negative effect in neighborhoods of minority or low-income concentration. In such situations, perfectly adequate housing goes unemphasized, which then causes leaders who often have significant decision-making power to move from such areas. Usually criticism of public schools increases as well as the poor morale in health recreation and summer programs. Government services are threatened by elimination and there is an increase in news reportings of unpleasantness and negative reaction is multiplied. The result of this is a loss of the sense of confidence, stability, and healthy growth in that area.

The next section explains the lack of racial integration in the state of Connecticut, calculating that in order to achieve a random distribution of blacks and whites 71% of the regions population would have to relocate.

Collective racist action is so clear in the federally established financing program of home-ownership for lower-income families known as section 235. The Federal Housing Administration discriminated against blacks by discouraging investment in racially mixed neighborhoods as well as inner-city neighborhoods. This report gives evidence that from the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, the HUD 235 program was used to reinforce racial segregation in housing and used to further urban economic and physical decay. It is known that mortgage lenders, builders, brokers, and HUD officials understood the racist process but did nothing. The evidence behind this is that it is clear that HUD was aware what was occurring in the 235 program because it issued regulations requiring affirmative action program to integrate the projects which were being constructed and sold. “Although steering was clearly occurring in both the ‘new’ and ‘existing’ home purchase aspects of the program and two-thirds of units being purchased were ‘existing’ homes, HUD affirmative action requirements were only applied to ‘new’ construction. Both HUD and the lenders ‘looked the other way’.”

Sources:

Gotham, Kevin Fox. “Beyond Invasion and Succession: School Segregation, Real Estate Blockbusting, and the Political Economy of Neighborhood Racial Transition.” City and Community 1.1 (2002): 83-111. Print.

-I went to google scholar and typed in “blockbusting” and “panic selling”

Keating, W. Dennis. The Suburban Racial Dilemma: Housing and Neighborhoods. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1994. Print.

-I typed in “lack of racial integration in Connecticut” into jstor.

Rotberg, Robert. “Where can a Negro Live?” The Hartford Courant (1923-1987): 1. Aug 20 1956. ProQuest. Web. 13 Sep. 2013 .

Discussion Questions:

1) Since this report makes it clear that HUD officials were aware that the 235 program was reinforcing racial segregation because it issued regulations requiring affirmative action but only for “new” home purchases which does not include the “existing” two-thirds of homes, does that mean that “steering” could be a public rather than just a private matter?

2) What is mass solicitation and what are ways in which it can either promote a neighborhood as being “desirable” or have negative effects in neighborhoods of minority or low-income concentrations?

FHA Underwriting Manual

September 15, 2013Shaun McGann

The source that I looked at was the Underwriting Manual, written by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in 1936. It contains instructions and regulations governing the procedures to be followed by the Underwriting Departments in Insuring Offices. It also describes techniques used by the FHA to determine whether or not mortgages are eligible for insurance. Insurance eligibility is determined by risk rating. The process of “risk rating” is extremely relevant to our discussion about housing barriers.

The famous term “red lining” comes from the FHA process of risk rating. The basic idea is that the FHA used race of occupants as one of the measurements for the value and stability of a neighborhood. Thus, neighborhoods that contained non-white inhabitants were given a low ranking (red) and thus those who lived there were deemed a risk and refused loans. The Underwriting Manual is a long and dense document, and one must dig through the text to find the few blatant racial provisions. These can be found in Section II under the heading “Risk Rating Instructions” in the subsection labeled “Protection From Adverse Influences”.

Paragraph 228: Deed restrictions are referenced as more effective than zoning ordinances in providing protection from “adverse influences”. Racial occupancy is noted as a type of deed restriction that can have a favorable outcome if it is applied to all properties, including those in adjacent blocks.
Paragraph 229: Geographical position is said to afford protection against adverse influences in some cases. The manual states that, “Usually the protection against adverse influences afforded by these means include prevention of the infiltration of business and industrial uses, lower-class occupancy, and inharmonious racial groups.”
Paragraph 233: This paragraph contains some of the most racially charged language in the manual. It basically states that the Valuator needs to check out neighborhoods surrounding the property to see if there is the presence of incompatible racial or social groups as they could potentially invade the area. It recognizes that a change in racial or social occupancy leads to instability and reduced value. It is noted that once the character of a neighborhood is established, it is impossible to induce members of a higher social class to move in.
The same paragraph mentions that value is hurt if the children of inhabitants must attend school with pupils of a far lower level of society or an incompatible racial element.
Paragraph 284: “The prohibition of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they were intended” is listed as an example of an effective deed restriction to supplement zoning.
Paragraph 289: The manual states that schools should be up to the standards of the neighborhood and not be attended in large numbers by inharmonious racial groups.

Secondary Sources:

1) Charles Abrams, Forbidden Neighbors (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955), 162.

– I found this source because in it Charles Abrams cites the FHA Underwriting manual from 1936.

2) John P. Dean, “Only Caucasian: A Study of Race Covenants,” The Journal of Land & Public Utility Economics, vol. 23 no. 4 (1947), 428-432.

-I found this article on jstor by searching the term “FHA Underwriting Manual”.

3) James A. Berkovec et al., “Discrimination, Competition, and Loan Performance in FHA Mortgage Lending,” The Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 80 no. 2 (1998), 241-250.

-I found this article on google scholar by searching the term “FHA Underwriting Manual”.

Bibliography

-Abrams, Charles. Forbidden Neighbors. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955.

-Dean, John P. “Only Caucasian: A Study of Race Covenants.” The Journal of Land & Public Utility Economics. Vol. 23 No. 4, 1947.

-Berkovec, James A., Glenn B. Canner, Stuart A. Gabriel and Timothy H. Hannan. “Discrimination, Competition, and Loan Performance in FHA Mortgage Lending.” The Review of Economics and Statistics. Vol. 80 No. 2, 1998.

Discussion Questions

1) In what way was the FHA’s underwriting process inherently related to race?

2) What role did the FHA play in redefining the notion of real estate as having a market value rather than a use value and how did their use of racialized language in the Underwriting Manual affect what constituted real estate value?

Housing Sources

September 15, 2013September 15, 2013Savahna Reuben

Screen Shot 2013-09-15 at 8.22.56 PM — From:
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)

“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?

[1] 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)

[2] 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)