Reduce structural racism in housing
Hundreds of years of racist policies have led to hyper-segregation in Connecticut locking Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) into under-resourced neighborhoods. The legacy of these policies has already caused BIPOC to bear the brunt of the COVID pandemic and Gov. Ned Lamont must take this moment to institute a forward-thinking anti-racist response.
Throughout the 20th century, every economic crisis has led to a governmental response that reinforced segregation and stripped wealth from BIPOC. Starting in the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation refused to lend, and federal agencies refused to back loans, in mixed race and Black neighborhoods. As a result, the families who vaulted into the middle class through homeownership were overwhelmingly white.
In the 1950s and 60s, the government limited and stigmatized its support for public housing and the non-white residents forced to live there, investing instead in highways, parking garages, and suburban sidewalks. Officials in Connecticut used “slum clearance” money to bulldoze predominantly Black, Latino, and Jewish communities for private economic purposes. Black homebuyers were prevented from buying in communities by racial covenants, redlining, steering, intimidation and other forms of discrimination.
In the 1990s and 2000s, lenders targeted Black and Latino borrowers for predatory mortgages. By 2008, BIPOC in Connecticut’s cities and inner-ring suburbs like West Haven, Stratford and East Hartford were seeing the first wave of foreclosures. The ensuing real estate collapse led to further wealth stripping from BIPOC neighborhoods as banks prioritized maintaining foreclosed properties in white neighborhoods over those in BIPOC neighborhoods.
Today, Connecticut and much of the nation maintains racist barriers to integration through exclusionary zoning that limits affordable housing and by concentrating affordable housing in neighborhoods with high poverty rates. The preservation of discriminatory policies leaves a homeownership gap where Black and Latino residents have barely half the homeownership rates of white families. Black students attend high-poverty schools at five times the rate white students do.
All these policies have inhibited the creation and retention of generational wealth building based on race and ethnicity. Coupled with the pandemic’s economic and health disruptions, our policies leave thousands of families of color struggling to pay rent.
Despite knowing the pandemic’s effects on BIPOC, Connecticut allocated just 1% of the nearly $1.4 billion it received in CARES Act funds to assist tenants and stabilize the housing market. Many states, like New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, are spending far more.
Evictions will likely more than double from their usual rate as the state’s eviction moratorium is lifted. Because BIPOC are more likely to be renters and because of the specific economic harms caused by the pandemic, the affected tenants will mostly be BIPOC (who even pre-pandemic already face eviction at twice the rate of white renters). Tenants with good rent payment histories before for the pandemic will be set back for life once tenant screening reports reflect an eviction filing.
The state has appropriately extended the eviction moratorium to August 25.
State officials now must use that time to improve its proposed rent relief program by 1) making it mandatory for landlords; 2) including people who did not get unemployment as well as people who were denied unemployment; 3) including additional protections against eviction and rent increases; 4) publicizing the program effectively to people with limited English proficiency, people who are disabled, and the elderly; and 5) providing enough funding to address tenant and landlord need, regardless of their status. Connecticut’s credit ratings and rainy-day fund allow it to tap the bond market at historically low rates. There are few better returns on investment than preventing mass homelessness, loss of wealth and community deterioration.
Connecticut’s response must reduce structural racism — not reinforce it. Doing so requires committing resources to ensuring all residents have housing where they can safely weather the pandemic and all the economic turmoil it has caused.