Title: Redlining in Seattle — Real Estate Gals
Headings: Redlining in Seattle
Redlining in Seattle
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Content: If you were a person of color and wanted to buy a house, no one would give you a loan. The Federal Housing Administration explicitly refused to back loans to black people or other people who lived near black people. The Great Depression-era map from the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) shows redlining in action. Redlining both prevented minorities from owning homes and confined them to renting in red neighborhoods. In Seattle, red areas included Downtown, Central District, Pioneer Square, Georgetown, and Highland Park. Meanwhile, white neighborhoods reinforced that racism by adding local-level discrimination of their own. In Capitol Hill, for instance, homeowners went door to door and convinced other white residents to sign a covenant not to sell or rent to people of “negro Blood.” By 1947, those covenants covered 183 blocks around the neighborhood. Using research conducted by the University of Washington, The Seattle Times complied a list of other such covenants found in various Seattle neighborhoods: Greenwood: “