Neighborhood Segregation As the Mexican-origin population increased through the 1920s, by 1930, Mexican Americans, alongside other communities of color, were subject to unfair housing policies in cities like San Diego, thereby ensuring future generations of increased segregation and barriers to home ownership, the most prevalent form of wealth building by residents of the U.S. This occurred in 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt created the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) in response to the Great Depression. Under Roosevelt’s New Deal program, federal mortgage policies were introduced to prevent foreclosures and to expand home buying. To do this, HOLC evaluators created maps that usually marked Black and Latino neighborhoods in red, 10 and deemed these communities as risky investments that buyers and lenders should avoid. Redlining overwhelmingly allocated mortgage funds to white homebuyers and directly implicated the federal government of the unequal manner by which public funds from the Federal Housing Act of 1934 were distributed. 11 HOLC determined redlined areas as “Fourth Grade” or “D” rated. They were defined as “areas characterized by detrimental influences in a pronounced degree, undesirable population, or an infiltration of it.” They recommended lenders “refuse to make loans to these areas…” 12 In San Diego that recommendation affected the communities of Golden Hill, Logan Heights, Old Town, and East and Southeast San Diego, all residential areas with concentrated Latino populations. Moving Forward The resilience of the Latino community underscores the struggles that took place in the face of some of the most challenging circum- stances in our nation’s history—migration, labor, and segregation— that continue to this day.
HOLC Map of the City of San Diego January 1935 – By Office of the City’s Engineer
HOLC created a neighborhood mortgage rating system, what would be later known as redlining maps. Realtors, lenders and developers graded residential neighborhoods with color coding. People of color mostly resided in C and D areas:
A – GREEN was the best
C – YELLOW was declining
B – BLUE was still desirable
D – RED was hazardous
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San Diego Latino Legacy – Timeline • Milestones • Stories
Chapter 2 – Rebuilding Lives, Against All Odds
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