In this special episode, known as a Solutions Sidebar, Brick by Brick interviews authors Richard and Leah Rothstein on what role the government played to segregate society and how to undo it. We get their insights on everything from barriers to home ownership and rent equity to how communities can level the playing field. In the interview and in their book Just Action, the Rothsteins explain how to beat NIMBYism and establish land trusts. They also say for every example of a strategy, there is a group or a local community that is implementing that change. According to the Rothsteins “It’s all very achievable.”
In this special episode, known as a Solutions Sidebar, Brick by Brick interviews authors Richard and Leah Rothstein on what role the government played to segregate society and how to undo it. We get their insights on everything from barriers to home ownership and rent equity to how communities can level the playing field. In the interview and in their book Just Action, the Rothsteins explain how to beat NIMBYism and establish land trusts. They also say for every example of a strategy, there is a group or a local community that is implementing that change. According to the Rothsteins “It’s all very achievable.”
Ann Thompson (00:02):
More Americans own a home than in any other year since the Great Recession, but when it comes to black families, the picture is not as rosy. The National Association of Realtors says the home ownership rate among African-Americans is just 43% compared to 72% of whites. Why? For one thing, it hasn't been easy for blacks to own a home
Richard Rothstein (00:24):
Middle income African-Americans who want to buy a home are more at risk or unable to do so than middle income whites
Ann Thompson (00:33):
Owning a home builds wealth, and those who can't buy one have trouble accumulating equity. Some communities have stepped in to help.
Leah Rothstein (00:41):
So the Durham Land Trust started with these two vacant properties and fixed up the homes, sold them at affordable prices to lower and moderate income households.
Ann Thompson (00:50):
On this episode, we break format from our typical show for something we're calling a Solution Sidebar. Brick by Brick sits down with authors Richard and Leah Rothstein, who wrote the books, The Color of Law, and Just Action to get their insights on everything from barriers to home ownership and rent equity to what communities can do to level the playing field. My colleague, Hearnz Laguerre Jr. joins me both for the interview and afterwards for some takeaways. Let's get into it. This is Brick by Brick: Solutions for a thriving community.
Ame Clase (01:21):
Brick by Brick is made possible by a lead gift from Greater Cincinnati Foundation with additional major support from Laurie Johnston; Susan Howarth Foundation at the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay; The George & Margaret McLane Foundation; Diane and David Moccia; The Dayton Foundation; Murray & Agnes Seasongood Good Government Foundation; The Stephen H. Wilder Foundation; and from over 20 individual donors. Thank you.
Ann Thompson (01:51):
Welcome to Brick by Brick, Richard and Leah Rothstein.
Richard Rothstein (01:54):
Thank you. Thanks.
Ann Thompson (01:56):
We have lots of questions, so let's just get right into it. Richard, it hasn't been easy for African-Americans over the years to own a home. Why is that?
Richard Rothstein (02:05):
The primary reason is that the federal government created a program in the immediate post World War II period, two federal agencies, the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration that was designed to suburbanize the entire white working class and middle class populations, move them out of urban areas where they were living, into single family homes in all white suburbs, from which African-Americans were prohibited from living by explicit federal policy. These suburbs were created all over the country. Every metropolitan area has them. We weren't a suburban country before that, but in the immediate post-World War II period for the next 15, 20 years, the government suburbanized the white population. The homes that the FHA and the VA created were modest homes. These were working class lower middle class families. They weren't expensive, they weren't large, they weren't luxurious. They sold at the time for maybe nine, $10,000 apiece. In today's money that's about a hundred thousand dollars. African-Americans who had jobs in the post-war economy, just like whites, could have afforded a home for that price as they could today. But the federal government prohibited African Americans from buying them subsidized whites to buy them. Well, those homes no longer, they no longer sell for a hundred thousand dollars. Not in New York, not in Boston, not in Chicago, not in Los Angeles. Nowhere 300, 400, $500,000 in some places, a million dollars or more. The white families who bought those homes didn't expect to get rich. We had a housing shortage. They were just looking for a place to live, but they did get rich as a result of it. From the appreciation and the value of their homes, they gained enormous equity.
Ann Thompson (03:58):
Some of the things that you have referred to in your book, along those same lines, redlining, deed restrictions, predatory lending, illegal land contracts, exclusionary zoning, I'm guessing those all contributed.
Richard Rothstein (04:10):
Yes, they all contributed, and they were all required by government. We would not have a segregated society today if the federal government and state and local governments hadn't imposed unconstitutional policies to require segregation.
Hernz Laguerre Jr. (04:26):
Now Leah, I want to ask you about some of the barriers. What are the greatest barriers to home ownership and rent equity that African-Americans are still living with today?
Leah Rothstein (04:37):
Well, the greatest barrier to home ownership is what my dad described, the lack of access to wealth, to intergenerational wealth, which is a direct result from government policies that helped whites to get into home ownership when it was affordable and prohibited African-Americans from doing so. We have a wealth gap in the country between blacks and whites, where average household wealth for African-Americans is 5% of average white household wealth. It's a huge disparity. It makes it very hard, even a white family and an African-American family with similar incomes who could qualify for a similar mortgage, but the white family is more likely to have access to intergenerational wealth to pay for the down payment, whereas the African-American family is less likely to have that. So it makes home ownership unattainable now. That's the major obstacle. There's several more. One is the credit scoring system, which is currently in practice all over the country.
(05:28):
It's a system whereby banks determine if you're a good candidate for a mortgage based on a score that's computed with an algorithm based on your financial history. So if you have a good financial history, you have a high credit score, you can qualify for a mortgage and get a good interest rate. It seems like an objective system. It doesn't have a racially discriminatory intent in the system, but it has a racially discriminatory impact, and that is because the financial history that feeds into it, the credit system is just a certain type of financial history, and it's a type of financial history that whites are far more likely to have than African-Americans, and there's several reasons for that. African-Americans are more likely to live in neighborhoods that don't have bank branches, bank locations with loan officers in those bank branches. So they have to rely on non-Traditional financial institutions like payday lenders, even if you pay back a loan you get from a payday lender with the exorbitant interest rates, they charge, you pay it back on time.
(06:27):
That financial history doesn't get factored into a credit score. Similarly, if you've owned a home in the past and you've paid your mortgage on time, that gives you a benefit in your credit score. But if you've been a renter your whole life and have never had a mortgage, you're unbanked. Maybe you use payday lenders, you don't have a bank branch in your neighborhood, but you've been a renter your whole life and you've paid your rent on time every month and never missed a rent payment, that good financial history isn't factored into a credit score either. Residents of a neighborhood like-minded residents who are organizing around these issues can pressure their local banks and credit unions to start to factor rent payment history into their own personal, their own bank branch credit scoring algorithms, and we describe ingest action, some bank branches and credit unions that are doing that around the country. It goes a long way towards opening up credit access, especially for African-American families looking to buy a home.
Ann Thompson (07:23):
Leah, we're looking forward in Cincinnati to renters getting more on their choice vouchers to live in more expensive neighborhoods. Is this the only red tape that you think they're going to face?
Leah Rothstein (07:36):
No, I don't. I think it's the only, but it's a big step. So you're referring to section eight voucher holders. The Section eight program is the largest rental assistance program for low income tenants in the country. It's funded by the federal government and it has the intent and the promise to allow lower income tenants the ability to move to higher cost areas, to move out of high poverty neighborhoods, to what are called high opportunity neighborhoods. Those with well-resourced public schools and amenities like parks and transportation and access to good jobs. But for many reasons of how the Section eight program is designed, most section eight tenants can't use those vouchers to live in those high opportunity neighborhoods. One reason is the voucher amount itself. So the voucher amount, the maximum rent a voucher will support is set at slightly below the median rent of an entire metropolitan area.
(08:32):
So in the Cincinnati metro area, you take the lowest rent and the highest rent, the middle rent of those, and then 10% below that is the maximum rent of voucher holder can afford. So it's not surprising that over half of the rents in that area, especially those in the higher cost areas, are out of reach of voucher holders. They can't use those vouchers to move to those higher cost areas. So what you're referring to is there was recently a change to the federal government has previously required a handful of metropolitan areas to calculate that maximum voucher amount in a different way so that it's higher and higher cost areas in the metro region and lower and lower cost areas in the metro region rather than one maximum voucher amount for the whole metro area, which is great. It means that voucher holders now have better opportunity to move to higher cost areas because their voucher will pay more in that area.
(09:27):
Cincinnati was recently added to a list to add I think 40 more metropolitan areas in the country that are required to use these smaller area rent standards. So beginning soon, the Cincinnati, the public housing authorities in the area will have to adjust their maximum voucher amount so that they go farther in higher cost areas. So that's great. It removes one barrier, but it is only one of the barriers that voucher holders face. Another is discrimination. Landlords often discriminate against section eight tenants saying just a blanket refusal to rent to people who use section eight to pay their rent. This isn't allowed form of discrim discrimination by the federal government. It's not a protected class under federal law, but many localities states and cities, including Cincinnati, have passed laws that prohibit this type of discrimination. They're called source of income discrimination laws, and it makes it illegal to discriminate against someone just because they use section eight to pay their rent. Again, that's an obstacle lowered, but as we know, if we look into discrimination issues, passing an anti-discrimination ordinance is just the first step. It then has to be enforced. So we have to tenants and land landlords need to know that it is illegal to discriminate against section eight tenants and then tenants who are discriminated against need to know what to do when they experience that discrimination, and then those offending landlords need to face the repercussions of violating that law.
Hernz Laguerre Jr. (11:00):
Leah, is home ownership the best answer to the financial gap that the black community is trying to fill? Is it feasible? Is it possible?
Leah Rothstein (11:08):
Home ownership is one part of the answer, yes. It's not the only answer, and it's not going to be the silver bullet to solve all of our issues and all of the racial disparities in wealth and access to opportunity. And there's many reasons for that. Home ownership for whites has been a sort of silver bullet to achieving wealth because homes and white neighborhoods appreciate faster. And so we tend to assume that if we just get more African-Americans into home ownership, they will also achieve that same level of wealth and we will diminish the wealth gap that way. And to some extent that's true, but there's a lot of other pieces We also need to address to address all of the ways that home ownership for African-Americans is less likely to build the same kind of wealth as it is for whites. One, like the credit scoring system I described, if you don't have, say you have a high enough credit score to qualify for a mortgage but not high enough to get the best interest rate, then you pay more for your mortgage.
(12:15):
And African-Americans, as I mentioned, less likely to have very high credit scores because of all of the institutional factors that we've been talking about. So when they pay more for their mortgage, they can build less wealth through that homeownership opportunity. There's also disparities in the property tax assessment system all over the country, and communities are all around the country. African-American homeowners pay more than their fair share of property taxes compared to white homeowners. And so when you're paying more in property taxes than you should be, you can build less wealth through home ownership. So we need to address all of the pieces of the puzzle, both increasing opportunity to get into home ownership for African-Americans, and then addressing all of the ways that wealth building potential in home ownership is limited for those home buyers.
Hernz Laguerre Jr. (13:05):
I may be biased. I'm a millennial, so I hear a lot of stories from my friends who find difficulty finding home ownership. But we will start with Leah and then we'll go to Richard. In your opinion, which generation faces the most difficulty and why?
Leah Rothstein (13:17):
Well, I think every generation faces a unique difficulty. The generation, the time period my dad described of when the country became suburbanized and African-Americans were explicitly denied the opportunity to own homes. That's a very particular and important and intense barrier to home ownership that we don't face in the same explicit way today. We have the Fair Housing Act, which promises equal access. You can't discriminate on the basis of race in home ownership and access to homes. But I think the current generation millennials, the current housing shortage and housing affordability crisis that we're experiencing all across the country, and I would argue in part as a result of the racially discriminatory actions of our government and of private industry from the past generations that limited the amount of housing that could be built in suburban areas by instituting single family only zoning in most suburban communities, 75% of residentially zoned land all over the country is zoned to only allow one house per lot.
(14:32):
So that limits how many homes we can build in those communities on 75% of the residential land in the country, the sort of driving force behind the proliferation of single family only zoning was to ensure that white communities stayed white by not allowing more affordable homes, smaller homes, to be built in those communities. So that sort of past desire to maintain and perpetuate segregation has led us to this situation we're in today where there aren't enough homes for people and we just haven't built enough homes. And so the homes that do exist are unaffordable to younger generations who want to be able to buy a home, and that's an issue that we're confronting all over the country. And I think one of the main ways to get out of it is to build more homes and to change those zoning restrictions to allow more than one home to be built on a lot.
Hernz Laguerre Jr. (15:24):
Richard, what are your thoughts?
Richard Rothstein (15:27):
Well, I'll add this. Which generation is most impacted by this? Clearly most people don't start to buy homes or don't want to start to buy homes in their twenties. They begin to start thinking about settling down and having a more permanent place to live. They have a career that they think they can keep in the same community, maybe in their thirties or so. So those are the ones who are most impacted by this home ownership crisis. And it doesn't only affect African-Americans, it affects African-Americans more. Anytime we have a social problem in this country, African-Americans are more affected by it because of the enormous inequality that we've created. But people in their thirties begin to think of settling down and buying a home, and they're unable to. They wind up living with their parents at much later ages than past generations have.
Ann Thompson (16:22):
I hope you're enjoying our conversation with Richard and Leah Rothstein. There's more still ahead following this short break. This is Brick by Brick.
Ame Clase (16:32):
Brick by Brick is made possible thanks to the generous support of so many, including Murray & Agnes Seasongood Good Government Foundation, Rosmary & Mark Schlachter, The Camden Foundation, Patti & Fred Heldman, DeeDee & Gary West, The Stephen H. Wilder Foundation, Judith & Thomas Thompson... a donation in memory of Frank and Margaret Linhardt, and more. Thank you. We couldn't do this work without you.
Hernz Laguerre Jr. (17:01):
Hey, it is Herns Lagar Jr. One of the team members behind Brick by Brick. Our new show is about solutions for a thriving community, but if you think about it, we all have a different perspective of what a thriving community should look like. That's why we need to hear from you. We want to know what a thriving community looks like to you. Maybe it's more housing, more parks or stores or even safer sidewalks. Whatever your vision, we hope you'll share with us. You can do that by heading to the Brick by Brick Show page on CT connect.org or think tv.org. There you'll find an audience question button, just fill out the survey, and that's it. We look forward to sharing your hopes and dreams with the rest of our neighbors in future episodes. Thank you.
Ann Thompson (17:52):
Welcome back to Brick By Brick. I'm Ann Thompson. Let's get back into our conversation with Richard and Leah Rothstein and Hearns, and I will be back at the end for some reflections. Leah, what is your definition of affordable housing and how can it be created in a more equitable environment?
Leah Rothstein (18:11):
Well, we talk about this term in the book that oftentimes when we hear affordable housing, when people in the housing industry talk about affordable housing, they're referring to housing that's affordable to the lowest income families. That's the type of housing that there are federal subsidies for the low income housing tax credit program will provide subsidies for very low income households. We call that affordable housing. But what we argue in the book is that that is a limited definition and that middle income families also can't find housing that's affordable to them. They make too much to qualify for this very low income housing that's subsidized by the federal government, but don't make enough to be able to afford market rate housing. And so we need housing that's affordable to them as well. And that furthermore, there's a misconception in this country that when we talk about poor an African-American, it's the same thing and that most African-Americans are in this lower income group to qualify for the subsidized low income housing when in reality, most African-Americans are in this middle income category where they also can't find housing that's affordable.
(19:22):
And so when we talk about affordable housing in Just Action, we include housing that's affordable to what's called this missing middle group of families who can't find housing that's affordable and don't qualify for subsidized affordable housing. So we argue that we need to build affordable housing, this broader definition in all types of neighborhoods. So in developments that are mixed income and mixed race, we don't believe in sort of segregating low income families into one building. Even if that building is in a higher cost area, we believe that that housing should be mixed and should have units that are affordable to very low income families and middle income families, market rate units that are higher income families can afford. And that's how we truly integrate and desegregate neighborhoods. So when we approach affordable housing, we need to be looking at the broad need of affordability across these ranges of incomes.
Hernz Laguerre Jr. (20:16):
Cincinnati and Dayton, they both have experienced gentrification. In the book Just Action you guys describe gentrification as being inevitable in a sense. You can't stop people from going to a place that's attractive and has opportunity. Is there a way to include the existing community or what examples can you give of areas who are gentrifying but not forgetting what was there originally?
Leah Rothstein (20:42):
We give several examples of strategies that local groups can take on to, we say is minimize the displacement that can occur when gentrification happens. It's true that we can't prevent gentrification completely. The only way to completely prevent gentrification is to keep lower income neighborhoods from experiencing increased investment and from improving, and we don't think that that's a fair trade off. So those lower income segregated neighborhoods should receive more investments and more resources. And then it's inevitable when that happens that people with higher incomes become more attracted to those areas and want to move in. And that drives the prices up. So we can't prevent it completely, but we can prevent some of the displacement that occurs when those prices rise in the longtime residents are displaced and priced out of their community. One example we give is starting a community land trust. So we talk about a group in Durham, North Carolina.
(21:38):
They started when a group of neighbors just started going door to door to talk to their neighbors and talk about what were important issues for them in their community, what could improve their neighborhood. It was a predominantly African-American segregated lower income community. They first started to advocate that the city turn a vacant lot into a park because there was no safe place for the kids to play in their neighborhood, and they won. And so that galvanized this group. They got the park and they got excited about what else they could do to improve their neighborhood. Their neighborhood was gentrifying, and so they learned about the Land trust model and started one. And what a Land Trust is, it's a nonprofit organization whose goal is to create permanently affordable housing, often in a neighborhood where housing prices are rising. So the Durham Land Trust started with two vacant properties that the city donated to the land trust.
(22:28):
Often land trusts acquire vacant property. Local governments are often sitting on a lot of vacant land, either foreclosed homes or unused public land, public buildings that they could donate to a land trust to build housing on it or improve the housing that's already there. So the Durham Land Trust started with these two vacant properties and fixed up the homes, sold them at affordable prices to lower and moderate income households, and they can sell them at affordable prices because in the transaction, the land trust retains ownership of the land underneath the home just sells the house. And so the home buyers, they own that house like any other homeowner, and they ground lease the land from the land trust for something small like a dollar a year. And so they get an affordable price for that home, and they own it like any other homeowner. They pay their taxes, insurance, and mortgage. And when they want to resell that home, they want to leave the area. For example, they agree to adhere to a maximum resale price that the Land Trust sets and every land trust sets it slightly differently. But in setting that maximum resale price, they balance two goals of allowing the home selling family to build some equity and earn some equity from the sale of that home and ensuring that the new price to the next home buying family is affordable.
Hernz Laguerre Jr. (23:45):
Leah, what are the most solvable problems for renters and potential homeowners?
Leah Rothstein (23:50):
Well, all of the issues that we describe in Just Action are achievable. They're all solvable. We give dozens of examples of policies, programs, practices that serve to perpetuate, maintain segregation, and that we can change on the local level if we're organized and activated with our neighbors to advocate for change from local government, from local institutions, local companies to change their practices and policies, and they're all achievable. We don't describe anything that isn't being done or can't be done. For every example of a strategy we give, give an example of somewhere, a group in the country, a local community that is implementing that change. So it's all very achievable.
Ann Thompson (24:36):
Richard, let's talk about land contracts. They were widespread in Cincinnati and other cities. What were they? Why were they used and how problematic were they?
Richard Rothstein (24:47):
Well, I'll start with the last part. They were terribly problematic. The legacy of this awful system exists still today in those communities. What you're talking about is a system of home, not really ownership, but it was purported to be home ownership, that developed in neighborhoods where the Federal Housing Administration and local banks refused to issue mortgages to African Americans, conventional mortgages to African Americans. So African Americans couldn't buy a home by going to a bank and applying for a mortgage the only way they could find a place to live. And this was in a period of enormous housing shortages. I'm talking about the mid-20th century. Again, the only way they could find a place to live is by going to a speculator who would buy a home in the neighborhood at a very low price a family might have, it might be a white family that they scared into selling at a lower than market price because they told them that their property decline in value as the neighborhood became more diverse.
(26:01):
And then they turned around and allegedly sold it on a contract basis to an African-American, sometimes for as much as three times what they paid for it just a few weeks before. These contracts permitted the family to gather no equity. The speculators had an incentive to evict people, so-called foreclose on them as they came close to paying off their loan so that they could then turn around and sell it on the same exploitative basis to another family. This was characteristic in a number of communities where African-Americans couldn't find homes with legitimate mortgages because the federal government and banks refused to issue them or insure them. And the families gained no wealth from this process. Frequently they lost wealth because they had put a lot of money into these homes and then were evicted before they had the opportunity for a legitimate purchase. It existed in Chicago, Cincinnati, and a number of other places.
Ann Thompson (27:09):
Leah, how do we combat Nimbyism in neighborhoods where they don't want the look and feel of their neighborhood to change?
Leah Rothstein (27:16):
Well, nimbyism refers to a phrase, NIMBY not in my backyard, and it refers to residents of a community. They often say they support affordable housing development in general, but if it's proposed in their own neighborhood, they vehemently oppose it. Now, they often do that using sort of thinly veiled racial comments like, it'll change the character of the neighborhood or property values will go down if lower income housing comes into the neighborhood and people with lower incomes who are more likely African-American move into their neighborhood. So first of all, most of the sort of fear-based calls for what NIMBY's claim will happen doesn't happen. It has been studied over and over, and property values do not fall when lower income or multifamily housing is built in a neighborhood that hasn't had it before. Property values actually often rise because there's new development. The neighborhood is now attractive and accessible to more people.
(28:21):
And so that's a myth that needs to be debunked. But what we believe is that NIMBYs show up at public hearings, at planning commissions and city council meetings to oppose new development in their neighborhoods based on these fears. And they come and they're loud and they oppose, and they often block completely or slow down the development process because they feel personally impacted. They're afraid that this new development will be detrimental to their personal livelihood or their feelings about their neighborhood. Now, we believe that there are just as many people likely in those neighborhoods who support the new development and who support having a more inclusive and accessible neighborhood where people of different races and economic backgrounds can afford to live there. But those people just aren't as organized and they don't feel as personally impacted. So they aren't as motivated to show up to the meetings to support the developments. So the NIMBYs often win or they outnumber the supporters of those developments. We have some examples that we've written about one on our Substack column, we write a column on Substack that's justaction.substack.com, about a community that stopped a NIMBY effort to block any new housing development in their community by going door to door and talking to their neighbors who understood that blocking development hurt all of them.
Ann Thompson (29:47):
Richard, if possible, I want to see if I can get you to speculate on something. So what do you think the Greater Cincinnati housing market would look like today if it hadn't been for the discriminatory governmental policies?
Richard Rothstein (30:01):
Well, I think it's clear that we would have a non-segregated society today if the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution had been obeyed. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution not only abolished slavery, but it authorized a law that prohibited what it called the badges and incidents of slavery, any form of second class citizenship, any form of denial of property rights, had that law been obeyed, had government not blatantly violated its constitutional obligations in the more than a hundred years since those two post Civil War amendments were adopted, we would have a fully non segregated society today. It wouldn't be perfect, but the problems that we face today because of racial segregation would be much, much minimized if existence at all.
Hernz Laguerre Jr. (31:01):
Richard, what role can the federal government play now in solving these issues? What would be the most effective thing?
Richard Rothstein (31:09):
We don't focus on what the federal government can do because it's all fantasy. No political will for the federal government to implement policies to fix this problem. But there are many things that people can do in their own local communities to do so. What we write in the Just Action is that 20 million Americans participated in Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020. They were white and black. They came from suburbs and urban areas. They were of middle class and working class and lower income families. They then went home and put Black Lives Matter signs on their lawns perhaps, and didn't do anything further to make Black Lives Matter. And we wrote Just Action because we thought one of the reasons, perhaps the most important reasons, they didn't know what to do to make their vision a reality. And so we wrote this book to give dozens of examples of things that can be done in a local community. Some take a lot of work, some take very little work to redress segregation and to really put into practice the vision that was expressed by so many Americans in those demonstrations.
Hernz Laguerre Jr. (32:25):
Well, I could speak for Ann and myself. We just want to say thank you for these books. They truly have been foundational in our research that we've been doing so far. Well, my final question, I just want to know, where do you think the tipping point is terms of rectifying these issues? And also is there an ideal integration of neighborhoods or an ideal goal regarding affordability or home ownership in your view? And we'll start with Leah.
Leah Rothstein (32:51):
Well, I think the tipping point in taking on these issues is starting to develop relationships across races and with people from other race parts of town from where you live. So that's the first necessary step to build the movement that we imagine is possible and is necessary to enact the kinds of changes that we're talking about. So it means developing groups, starting discussion groups or social groups with people of other races in other race parts of town that you might not be familiar with, and it takes a little extra effort. But we also write about many examples of this around the country of communities that have done this. And it's extremely impactful when you start to develop these cross race relationships and then together start to learn about the history of your community and how it came to be segregated and what we can do about it now. I think that is the first tipping point. Without that, we won't be able to enact the kinds of changes that we're imagining as possible and needed.
Richard Rothstein (33:51):
Well, I'll add to that is that one of the things that we say in this book, just action, is that there are so many different areas in which racial segregation can be challenged at a local level. It doesn't matter where you start. Every community is a little bit different. They all have the same basic problem of racial segregation, but the opportunities to challenge it, to narrow it, to chip away at it vary from place to place. It doesn't matter where someone starts. Each small victory will build and give people encouragement for larger victories. And that's why we think there are so many opportunities to make real progress in redressing segregation.
Ann Thompson (34:33):
And we want to certainly thank you for your time. You're on both coasts. You're very busy people. Thank you so much authors Richard and Leah Rothstein for joining us on Brick by Brick.
Leah Rothstein (34:44):
Thank you so much for having us.
Ann Thompson (34:47):
Remember, if you're interested in learning more about Brick by Brick and want to read articles, hear the podcast and see Hernz's video stories, go to cetconnect.org and thinktv.org. You can also give us feedback or share an idea. We'd love to hear from you. That was a lot of material to digest. We know that for sure. We welcome Hernz Laguerre Jr. back to the studio time for takeaways.
Hernz Laguerre Jr. (35:14):
And I felt like with The Color of Law and Just Action, we read the playbook and talking to Leah and Richard in person is like we were talking to the coaches. But there's one thing that I felt like really stuck with me was the origin. Where did all this start in the first place? And both Richard and Leah said that a lot of these issues that we have in regards to housing in our country was due to the suburbanization of neighborhoods across the country that led to issues such as single family only zoning, redlining, African-Americans being barred from certain neighborhoods. And we see some of those effects in certain areas in Dayton and Cincinnati today. And these issues reverberate across different ethnic groups at different levels. But in general, it caused a lot of the issues that we have in regards to affordable and available housing. And my very next question to that was, okay, if the federal government, if that is the origin of the issue, clearly they carry the answer as well. Makes sense. It makes sense, right? But Richard and Leah said that no, a lot of the answers are through local government, through local action. And you see that with a zoning reform, how a lot of different cities across the country, even Cincinnati is looking at it too. Dan is making efforts to enact some zoning reform in order to remedy a lot of these issues
Ann Thompson (36:30):
In recognizing the troubled past, what I really appreciated that the Rothsteins did was that they didn't just stop at that. They continued their research and pointed out possible solutions. They talked about the Durham, North Carolina Land Trust. That's when a nonprofit acquires homes and then is able to keep them affordable. Durham went from two homes and now has about 300. Also in California, we've all heard the example of Not in My Backyard. Here's something where there was an apartment building that was able to be built. Residents kind of raised up and joined with the school district who wanted to build an apartment building for their staff on a piece of land it owned and was able to defeat a ballot measure that was going to stop it.
Hernz Laguerre Jr. (37:23):
Yeah. And you mentioned Nimbyism, Not In My Backyard. I think we get hints of that here too. When you spoke with Councilman Reggie Harris. He told us about developers of Connected Communities surveying different neighborhoods, and the majority of folks said they wanted the housing along transit corridors or the neighborhood business district. And one could infer is because they didn't want a certain type of housing where they were in their backyard. And I think you'll get that contention all across the country with people who want to keep the status quo, and also when you have local leaders and city leaders who want to feed the need of housing in our area by providing different types of homes.
Ann Thompson (38:03):
Good point Hernz. Thanks for that. No problem.
(38:06):
That's our show. If you like what you hear, please rate and review our podcast. We hope you learn something. And if you did, please share it with your friends and family. For Hernz Laguerre Jr. I'm Ann Thompson. We'll be back with more solutions soon. Take care. Our show is produced, hosted and edited by me, Ann Thompson, with reporting and story editing from Hernz Laguerre Jr. and Emiko Moore.
Our Executive Producer is Mark Lammers. Our show consultant is Gloria Gabe Wimberly is our audio engineer and mixer. Zach Kramer runs the lights and cameras. Derrick Smith is our production specialist and Jason Garrison is our production manager. Kellie May heads up our marketing and promotions, along with Mike Shea and Bridgett Dillenburger. Elyssa Stefenson handles the website, and Steve Wright is our designer. Bill Dean and Andresj Kruza are the engineers for the show, and our Chief Content Officer is Colin Scianamblo. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community is a production of CET and ThinkTV, Southwest Ohio PBS member stations.