redlining

Redlining began in the United States in the 1930s as a discriminatory practice of denying housing loans to applicants who wanted to refinance or buy property in what were called “D" zones, neighborhoods that were marked on real estate maps as a risky investment because of their ethnic or racial makeup and other factors such as income level. The result was the disinvestment of entire neighborhoods, where property owners became ineligible for New Deal assistance programs that staved off foreclosures. When the Fair Housing Act became law in 1968, such discrimination was prohibited and banks were forced to release lending data, which exposed decades of widespread and systematic race-based real-estate and banking practices. The term "redlining" now refers to any form of racist housing policy, including the overuse of eminent domain in nonwhite neighborhoods and the rezoning of Black residential areas.