PP&D 4 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Sundown Town, White Flight, Exponential Growth
27 Apr 2018
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WEEK 6 Reading response
The Making of Ferguson Public Policies at the Root of its Troubles by Richard Rothstein
●When African Americans moved in to places like Ferguson it was followed by “white flight”
○When all the white people who lived there prior move out of the area and it become
primarily segregated
●Prejudiced real estate agents would steer African American buyers to different suburbs allowing
certain ones to maintain their homogenous environments
●Governmental policies give incentives to people and businesses that follow zoning laws, resulting
in a segregated metropolitan areas which allowed places like Ferguson to become Ferguson
●Ferguson was once a “sundown town”, meaning at night African Americans were banned from
the premises
●“By 1980, Ferguson was 14 percent black; by 1990, 25 percent; by 2000, 52 percent; and by
2010, 67 percent” - exponential growth - grew 53% in 30 years
○The communities’ appearances and maintenance services would get worse as the
percentage of African American residents went up
○Services like trash collection, street lighting and emergency response were less adequate
than those in white neighborhoods
●Rent was about 25% higher for African Americans because demand was high and less adequate
fire insurance led to higher insurance rates for landlords
●Black families would sublet their homes or apartments to make up for the higher rents, which
would lead to overcrowding and dangerous living conditions
○Even with good jobs it made it harder for African Americans to save up and leave the
ghetto due to higher housing costs
●Whites observed these slum condition as a characteristic of black families not as an outcome of
political housing discrimination
○Reinforced the fact that black communities bring slum conditions which encourages
“white flight”
●Blockbusting: a term used when a real estate agent would assist in the conversion of all white to
black neighborhoods
○First would help move in an African American family to the suburbs
○Then would encourage the surrounding white neighbors to sell before more black
families moved in and their house values deteriorate
○Would go to such limits as to hire “black youth to drive around the neighborhood blasting
music, by placing fictitious for-sale advertisements in African American newspapers (and
showing copies to white homeowners), or by hiring black women to push baby carriages
around, or engaging in other similar tactics”
●Strategies include to prohibit landlords from refusing to accept tenants whose rent is subsidized,
require even outer-ring suburbs to repeal zoning ordinances that prohibit construction of housing
that lower or moderate income residents can afford, and require every community to permit
development of housing to accommodate a “fair share” of its region’s low-income and minority
populations
Document Summary
The making of ferguson public policies at the root of its troubles by richard rothstein. When african americans moved in to places like ferguson it was followed by white flight . When all the white people who lived there prior move out of the area and it become primarily segregated. Prejudiced real estate agents would steer african american buyers to different suburbs allowing certain ones to maintain their homogenous environments. Governmental policies give incentives to people and businesses that follow zoning laws, resulting in a segregated metropolitan areas which allowed places like ferguson to become ferguson. Ferguson was once a sundown town , meaning at night african americans were banned from the premises. By 1980, ferguson was 14 percent black; by 1990, 25 percent; by 2000, 52 percent; and by. 2010, 67 percent - exponential growth - grew 53% in 30 years. The communities" appearances and maintenance services would get worse as the percentage of african american residents went up.
