The Context of Baltimore

Image Source: Eric Fischer/ Flickr/
Data from Census 2010. Base map © OpenStreetMap, CC-BY-SA

The socio-economic Effects of Redlining & Restrictive Covenants in Baltimore City

What is redlining?

Redlining, now illegal, was an unethical practice that began in 1934 and was banned in 1968, that systemically denied services (federal & local government, and the private sector) to residents of certain areas based on race or ethnicity. It can be seen in the systematic denial of mortgages, insurance, loans, and other financial services based on location rather than an individual’s qualifications. Notably, the policy of redlining is felt the most by residents of minority neighborhoods (John McKnight, 1960).

Restrictive Covenants:

In 1925, 18 Baltimore neighborhood associations came together to form the “Allied Civic and Protective Association” for the purpose of urging both new and existing property owners to sign restrictive covenants, which committed owners never to sell to African Americans. Where neighbors jointly signed a covenant, any one of them could enforce it by asking a court to evict an African American family who purchased the property in violation.
Restrictive covenants were not merely private agreements between homeowners; they frequently had government sanction.
In Baltimore, the city-sponsored Committee on Segregation organized neighborhood associations throughout the city that could circulate and enforce such covenants (Rothstein, Economic Policy Institute, 2015)
Racial covenants were outlawed by the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968.

How has This influenced baltimore today?

Image Source: https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/32621">Johns Hopkins University

Redlined Map-1937

This map, from 1937, was created in partnership between Baltimore and local banks. It ranked neighborhoods according to their racial and ethnic population. It was used to dictate where funding went, in accordance with the race & ethnicity of each neighborhood's residents.

Image Source: Laura Bliss/ Citylab.com

Poverty Map-2015

This map depicts the areas with the highest concentrations of poverty in Baltimore in 2015.
When viewed side-by-side with the Redlined Map of 1937, one can see the inextricable & detrimental affects Redlining has had on Baltimore's communities.

How has redlining and Institutionalized Racism Impacted socio-economics in baltimore city?

A bird’s-eye view of Baltimore reveals what’s long been true of many major cities: geographic segregation. The 1970 map is especially striking, with whites and blacks living in tightly defined areas. Today, African-Americans reside throughout the city, but data from the 2010 Census show few neighborhoods that aren’t dominated by one race (Yeip, 2015).

Another way to gauge the city’s racial mix is using a diversity index, or the odds that two randomly selected people would differ by race or ethnicity. Using six racial/ethnic categories—Hispanics, plus non-Hispanic whites, blacks, American Indians, Asians and others—most of Baltimore scores relatively low on the index, further evidence of the city’s segregation (Yeip, 2015).

Not surprisingly, different parts of Baltimore experience poverty conditions to varying degrees. Using a broader measure that includes “near poverty”—those with incomes up to 125% of the poverty level—large swaths of the city have more than a third of residents living below or just above the poverty line. Those areas are primarily concentrated in the city’s center, with much lower rates in North Baltimore and the upscale Inner Harbor area. (Yeip, 2015)

Source: City of Baltimore

Officer-involved shootings and arrests are also concentrated in areas with more black residents. Police brutality is a major issue in the city. Baltimore paid $5.7 million in court settlements to victims of police brutality between 2011 and 2014, the Baltimore Sun found (Scheller, 2015).
"Years of abuses are every bit as egregious as what the Department of Justice documented in Ferguson, Missouri, and as deserving of a national response," Conor Friedersdorf wrote in the Atlantic.
As of March 30th, 2020, roughly 70% of all significant Baltimore City litigation went to alleged police misconduct.
Note, the outlined area is Sandtown-Winchester, where Freddie Gray lived.

This graph shows food deserts in Baltimore City. Food deserts are studied in areas, often with low socioeconomic status, that experience a shortage in food security. These areas do not have sufficient access to large grocery stores to meet their common shopping needs. According to Larsen & Gilliland (2009), a food desert is “a socially distressed neighborhood with relatively low average household incomes and poor access to healthy and affordable food.”

This graph shows the percentage, by neighborhood, of residents without access to internet at home according to 2018 census data and was assembled by the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance.
[In Baltimore] around 70% of white households have access to internet compared to 50% of African American households and 46% Latinx households (Paz, 2020).
In Baltimore, roughly 22% of residents go without internet access at home according to data from the 2018 census.

Baltimore, like many large cities, also experiences poverty more acutely than its neighboring counties. Over the past 25 years, the city has rarely seen less than one-fifth of its residents living below the poverty level. That figure is well above the nation’s 16% rate, or Maryland’s 10% figure (Yeip, 2015).

Baltimore wasn’t immune to the decades-long suburban flight that hollowed out cities across the country. From 1970 to 2000, Baltimore’s total population declined nearly 30%. Remarkably, the city’s black population remained steady for much of that stretch, boosting African-Americans’ share of the population to roughly 65%. But in more recent years, trends have reversed. In raw numbers, Baltimore’s black population has declined every year since 1993, while the white population has increased seven years in a row (Yeip, 2015).

The prevalence of poverty conditions isn’t just a matter of geography, but also race, education and family dynamics. In Baltimore, poverty rates among whites and families headed by married couples are significantly lower than the citywide rate, while those with less than a high-school education and those in families headed by single women are much higher. Especially striking is Baltimore’s high child-poverty rate, which at 33.5% is roughly 12 percentage points above the national rate (Yeip, 2015).

Sources: The Black Butterfly
Roads to nowhere: how infrastructure built on American inequality
Baltimore’s Digital Divide: Gaps in Internet Connectivity and the Impact on Low-Income City Residents
As school lessons move online, some Baltimore neighborhoods have difficulty accessing the internet
Percent of Households with No Internet at Home
Baltimore’s Demographic Divide
The long, painful and repetitive history of how Baltimore became Baltimore
6 Maps That Show How Deeply Segregated Baltimore Is
Majority of Baltimore’s significant litigation stems from alleged police misconduct, new report shows
Food Deserts in Baltimore
After Nearly a Century, Redlining Still Divides Baltimore

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