Affordable Housing is a Racial Justice Issue

Jenny Connelly-Bowen

Jenny Connelly-Bowen, Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis

Lacy Cagle, Sunni Hutton, and Jenn DeRose, Blackrock Consulting

Lacy Cagle

Conscious choices created our “geography of inequity” in St. Louis. Conscious choices can also help to reshape it.
- Segregation in St. Louis: Dismantling the Divide

We cannot discuss affordable housing in the St. Louis region without considering race.

Sunni Hutton

Race has sculpted St. Louis’ social geography and physical infrastructure, dividing Black and white families both physically and economically, just as the Mississippi River has carved the land between Illinois and Missouri. This “geography of inequity” was created intentionally throughout many decades by those in power and reinforced, sometimes unintentionally, by systems and infrastructure. Policies that encouraged white flight, housing discrimination against Black residents, and preferential lending led to racial segregation that negatively impacts Black St. Louisans to this day. St. Louis continues to be one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in our nation. Wealth, health and longer life expectancy, employment opportunities, and political power are pooled in majority white neighborhoods. Even though majority Black neighborhoods are rich in culture and experience, they also have significantly higher concentrations of substandard housing, vacant properties, illegal dumping, lead pollution, and other conditions that negatively impact health.

Jenn DeRose

It is important to understand that many of the issues we face regarding race and housing in St. Louis were created intentionally by those in power. Racial segregation was codified by a 1916 racial segregation ordinance. Even though the US Supreme Court overturned the ordinance the following year, surreptitious forms of segregation — such as “racial covenants,” where homeowners signed legal contracts promising to never sell their home to a Black person — prevented neighborhood integration, and banning affordable housing — such as apartment buildings — became commonplace. Black residents were steered away from white neighborhoods when seeking housing, and planners sited highways to further isolate Black neighborhoods. 

The concentrated areas of poverty we see particularly in North St. Louis exist because of historic and continued segregation of the St. Louis region based upon race and social class. Redlining, economic disinvestment, and outright neglect have caused majority Black communities to unequally bear the burden of substandard housing, as well as the accompanying health disparities and social consequences caused by lead pollution, illegal dumping, and air pollutants. This disinvestment often contributes to the lack of amenities in these neighborhoods, including grocery stores, health care facilities, and green spaces, which creates a cycle of poor health that further perpetuates intergenerational poverty.

A significant proportion of overall wealth in the U.S. is linked to home ownership. But redlining historically shut Black residents out of the housing market through racist home lending practices and housing policies that prevented Black residents from receiving loans to purchase or update properties. Black applicants are still more than twice as likely to be denied a home improvement loan than white applicants and three times as likely to be denied a home mortgage loan than white applicants, most frequently on the basis of their credit history. In 2019, white residents were nearly twice as likely as Black residents to be homeowners in both St. Louis County and St. Louis City.

While a lack of quality and affordable housing for lower income residents affects people of all races and ethnicities in our region, we cannot release this Affordable Housing Report Card without acknowledging St. Louis’ specific history and context of racial segregation and its pervasive effects.