How the City Survey’s Redlining Maps Were Made: A Closer Look at HOLC’s Mortgagee Rehabilitation Division

Abstract

The infamous “security maps” made in the 1930s by the Home Loan Owners’ Corporation (HOLC), rating supposed mortgage lending risk in urban neighborhoods across the United States, have long been considered the quintessential expression of racist redlining policy. However, a number of misunderstandings and unwarranted speculations about how these maps were made and used have proliferated. Using previously unexamined correspondence, this article establishes that HOLC could not have used the maps for loan denials, did share them with the Federal Housing Administration but not with private industry, and highly improvised their production with numerous methodological inconsistencies, including with regard to race.

The Long-Run Effects of the 1930s Redlining Maps on Children

“…7 Potentially more important, the maps could have been shared with the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), a separate Federal agency which drew their own neighborhood maps in order to decide whether to insure mortgages. 8 Michney (2021) highlights that the HOLC maps were an important input into the FHA's maps (p.19): "Crucially, the new evidence cited here almost certainly confirms Jackson's original contention that HOLC's maps factored into the FHA's own mapmaking process and quite plausibly that agency's racially-informed denial of access to its mortgage guarantees." Light (2020) also documents evidence that the HOLC maps impacted FHA mapmaking and policies and that the two 5 Also see Jackson (1980).…”

“…This just happens to be one city for which we found such a list and it would be useful for future researchers to look for similar lists of the reviewers of the HOLC maps for other cities. 7 Michney (2021) describes several examples of the HOLC maps being shared with private actors as well as with local and regional managers (p. 15-16), although he concludes that the maps were largely kept confidential from private actors. 8 See Light (2010), Woods (2012), Hillier (2013), Michney (2021) and Fishback et al (2021).…”

“…Hillier, 2003, Fishback et al 2021, there are known examples of breaches in confidentiality (e.g. Michney, 2021), suggesting that policies to prevent their dissemination were not always strictly adhered to. In addition, many private real estate and banking professionals throughout the country were involved in producing or reviewing the maps, thereby providing access to their underlying content which they could have retained for future use or shared with others.…”

New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s

“…The evidence of the HOLC agents' discriminatory views is readily evident in how they discuss Black urban residents in the textual descriptions accompanying their neighborhood ratings. It is essential to note, though, that this project did not guide the HOLC's own lending, which had already been almost wholly completed (Michney 2021) even though many scholars have written otherwise. Instead, these maps were intended for the use of the HOLC in gauging the risks of the enormous portfolio of loans it had already accumulated, and in managing the resale of its foreclosed real estate holdings back into distressed housing markets (Hillier 2003a, Greer 2012, Michney 2021, Howell 2015 Home Loan Bank Board various years).…”

The Long-run Effects of the 1930s Redlining Maps on Children

“…Hillier, 2003, Fishback et al 2021, there are known examples of breaches in confidentiality (e.g. Michney, 2021), suggesting that policies to prevent their dissemination were not always strictly adhered to. In addition, many private real estate and banking professionals throughout the country were involved in producing or reviewing the maps, thereby providing access to their underlying content the maps were first drawn in the late 1930s.…”