While the U.S. supreme court had ruled against municipal and residential segregation laws in 1917, The National Association of Real Estate Boards – 1914 – ethics code that forbid members from “introducing into a neighborhood … members of any race or nationality … whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values” heavy fines for violations banks refused to provide mortgages to blacks, and community members signed contracts agreeing not to rent or sell their homes to “any person other than one of the Caucasian race”
HOLC – financing of mortgage – high marks were given to neighborhoods that were homogeneous, which was defined as containing “American business and professional men”
- Lowest grade – assigned the letter D or the color red – went to neighborhoods that had declined with “an undesirable element”
FHA – with the creation, adopted the HOLC plan – “the most important single cause of residential segregation”
- Established to protect and expand the housing industry
- Underwriting Manual from 1936 – FHA mandated, “if a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that its properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes
FHA exhorted segregation and enshrined it as public policy
GI bill of Rights – 1944, offered veterans a real dream: a low-interest no-money-down mortgage
McCarthy – public housing is socialism
Government subsidies provided by GI bill, innovations in mass production, and banks “busting with money”
- Hired nonunion workers, pay not by the hour, but by completed projects – success in mass production
Rules of levitown
One of the most important rules – “the tenant agrees not to permit the premises to be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race – explicit racial covenants in their leases
- Part of the FHA standards
- In 1948, the supreme court ruled that the clause was “unenforceable as law and contrary to public policy” o Removed the language from the Levitts’ leases, but had no intention of changing their policy