The legacy of a 1930s federal housing program still shapes the Lansing area, where racial gaps in homeownership and income can be traced to government-drawn maps that marked Black neighborhoods as too “hazardous” for investment and helped cement segregation for generations.
After inheriting the worst economic depression in U.S. history, President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, or HOLC, in 1933 to purchase and refinance foreclosing mortgages. By 1935, the agency had refinanced more than 20% of urban mortgages.
The HOLC then moved to create investment risk maps for nearly every U.S. city with a population of over 40,000, maps that would guide public and private investment in the U.S. for generations…