Episode 3 - Housing

Welcome back to Buy Every Measure. This is Tareek Modi. On this episode, we're going to talk about another systemic disparity that has been baked into the black experience for decades. Racism and housing. The rampant discrimination that kept black people from owning property, renting homes, living where they wanted to live. It's especially bad in Milwaukee, not just the city itself, but all the suburbs around it. We have the most segregated metro area in the nation, in the entire nation. You don't just become the most segregated without years of policies, and we're going to show you just some of the levers that were pulled over time to create the segregation we see today in Milwaukee and countless other cities like it. So if you're listening Milwaukee, this topic has probably already rung a bell in your mind. When you think about fair housing, you probably think about 1967. And the famous fair housing marches that occurred in Milwaukee streets for 200 consecutive nights. Led by the NAACP Youth Commandant. "Is my right to protest? I feel like protesting. I'm going to protest." Who were a group about 250 young black men, teenagers, who organized, mobilized, protected demonstrators. They marched from the north side of Milwaukee to the south, over to 16 street vianduct. This audience from the UWM O'Haberry's Archive, originally gathered by WTMJ and Journal Broadcast Group. UWM, by the way, has carefully archived Milwaukee's fair housing marches on its website. Waiting for them on the south end of that bridge was an angry mob of white people. Waving the same Confederate flags you see today hurling racial slurs and beer bottles. A handful of people died and more than a thousand were injured. Protests went on for six months. The commandos teamed up with a white Catholic priest. We know what they added to the people is an assault site, but we want a fair housing law. You might know his name as Father James Grohby. Well, for heaven's sake, apparently there isn't any leadership in the white community because those people are going to church every Sunday and I can't understand how they can go to church, where they're supposed to be learning the doctrine of Jesus Christ, which is love and brotherhood, and then come out there and call people niggers and black bastards and wave that Confederate flag and chant we want slaves and everything else. Then the black brothers over Vietnam dying for them. Meanwhile, on the city council trailblazing all the women in Vell, our fellows fought to pass a fair housing ordinance, one that would make racial discrimination illegal in Milwaukee. Nobody is free until everybody is free and we intend to march all of us until we get just some of the basic freedoms that are ours. It took six years and it was a battle, but the city eventually passed one in 1968. It was a dramatic chapter of our history. If ever a matter demanded the urgent attention and forthright action of this common council, this is it. Gentlemen, the time is now. Thank you. But systemic racism and housing goes way further back than that. It can be traced all the way back to 1865. What special feels ordered number 15, also known as 40 acres in a meal, were 400,000 acres of land, what's promised to newly freed slaves. The order was overturned by President Andrew Johnson in the fall later that year. And at the same time, the Homestead Act signed by Lincoln, gave land to 1.6 million white families, citizens and immigrants, while only between 4,500 black families received land from that same act. And that was according to historian and scholar Carrie Lay Merritt, who wrote the book, "Masterless men, poor whites, slavery and capitalism in the deep south." In fact, M.O.K. himself talked about the issue of housing. Many people only think of his famous "I have a dream" speech, but he also spoke to many of the same issues we were talking about, one by every measure, including housing. Here's a clip. You're with an economic floor, but not only did they give the land, they built land-grant colleges with government money. This is what we are faced with. And this is the reality now when we come to Washington, in this campaign, we are coming to get our check. Back before COVID-19, Rady Milwaukee hosted a free event in our community space called, "How to Have Better Conversations About Race." Thank you all for coming out. I'm going to do. We had a pack house on a snowy February evening, and Reggie Jackson started evening off with a short presentation on the history of segregation and how he got to this point. And he showed how the federal government helped create the disparities in housing we see today. Traditionally, and I have to be honest with you, I tell people all this, "Hum, to have these conversations, you can't push the foot around about it and be dishonest." The reason it looks like that is because white people wanted it to look like that. That's the bottom line. So I'm going to tell you some of the mechanisms that they had available to them to create. We're going to spend a few minutes going through different ways that black people were left out of the American dream of home ownership. And if I'm going to be completely totally honest with you, the housing situation now for black people isn't all that much better compared to the time when Vell Phillips was all the woman fighting for fair housing for Milwaukee. According to recent data from the real estate company Red Finn, Milwaukee has a third worst black home ownership rate in the entire country. Salt Lake City and Minneapolis takes the number one and number two spot. Just to give you an example, how little progress we've made, 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act was supposed to end discrimination and housing on the federal level, outlawed all those different things. The black home ownership rate at that time was 41.3 percent. And it's 42.9 percent today. It peaked at 50 percent in 2005 and it's gone down every single year since then. We're moving in the wrong direction, but nobody knows. A couple months after his talk at Radio Milwaukee, we followed with Red you on another conversation going more detail on all these systems. We go back to the stage just a bit, but first we get to go back way back to the Civil War. During the Civil War, the Homestead Act was created in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln and lasted until 1934. Basically in a speech by Lincoln, the purpose of this act was to elevate the condition of men to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered, starting fair chance in the race of life. Except this act benefited mostly white families and left out a lot of black people. We've learned about the Homestead Act in school. All you had Homestead Act allowed, you know, people to immigrate and become, you know, homeowners and blah, blah, blah. No, you stole the land from the Native Americans and literally just gave it to white people. And guess what? When you have land in America, you have the beginnings of wealth building in America. Only land is the major way American families built wealth. And so you have this built-in advantage over people of color. And then when the federal government starts to help people become homeowners by creating a new type of mortgage that allows you to pay only 20 percent down, white people are the main beneficiaries of that because when the federal government issued federal housing administration loans to people from 1930 to 1960, 98 percent of those loans went to white people loan. This discriminatory lending led to a practice called redlining. A term you might have heard. There is a fantastic book called Color of Law that describes redlining as a practice used to deepen segregation by refusing to ensure mortgages and in around black neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the FHA was subsidized and developers were building these amazing suburbs for whites, but with one caveat, they couldn't sell to black people. Area area that black people lived in or redline, right? It didn't matter if you had money or not. You're going to be redline if you lived in that area, you will black. So that's another economic advantage. And you have to remember at this time, this was the era of the new deal. But that new deal enacted by President Roosevelt used coded language to exclude black people from various programs that were meant to help all Americans. One of my favorite books on this topic is called When Affirmative Action was White. And it talks about how we had a system in place that when we created Social Security and Unemployment in 1935, both programs were written with very colorblind language, but then, all of a sudden, we decided that we were put in a clause here at the end that said, all if you are domestic. worker or a farm worker, you're not eligible for either program. So here you are, most black people in the South, which is where majority black people lived in the 1930s. You're the domestic worker, son. You can't put any money away in a social security so that you have some money in your old age. Oh, man, you're a domestic worker. You work for Mr. Johnson, you know, cleaning his house and nursing his children. You're not eligible for social security, man. I'm sorry. And that was the case from 1935 until 1952. So between the lack of social security, no unemployment insurance and the widespread practice of redlining, it's no wonder that we're still dealing with these disparities in housing today. And you think it would stop here. But no, it even affected black veterans. To me, one of the greatest disservices ever done to any American in history is the GI bill that promised all those GI's who fought in World War II and came back after fighting, you know, fascism. We're told that you'd be able to get access to a VA Guarantee Home Loan and you'd be able to get free access to college or tech school, whatever, you know, post-secondary education you want. And in its face, it's colorblind, you know, it doesn't discriminate. The law says all of these GI's are eligible, but guess what? You're a black GI. You come back like two of my mother's uncles from fighting in World War II. Do you think the people in Mississippi are going to let you buy that house that you're trying to buy and give you that loan? Heck no, they are not going to do it. So I told you a story about my dad who, you know, I'm a veteran. My dad was a veteran, came back to GI Bill and he was telling me he couldn't get the loan. But luckily, he found a house where the owner was white, but he was just the developer, whatever was just desperate to sell to whoever. So they worked a deal together. So my dad got his first home and built his wealth again. He's the first in the family to do that, right? So the generation of wealth is brand, brand, brand new, you know, and of course, he's had issues of corporation racism and being pushed out and all this stuff. But I just got me thinking about what my dad is and the wealth generation of wealth, black middle classes and wherever's Atlanta, wherever's usually a first generation of middle class right now. You know, one element related to what you just shared about your dad, you know, trying to buy a house, right? You know, there've been multiple black people here in Metro Milwaukee in the North Shore region, right? They literally, one of my best friends heard her mom and dad tried to buy a house, right? And these were both highly educated people had great jobs and they couldn't buy a house. So you know how they bought the house? They had a white friend buy the house, right? And that's how they were able to acquire the house. They have this white person, you know, buy the house from this white family. And then when when when the movie truck pulled up and they saw it with some black folks, they was like, wait, wait, wait, hold on, wait a minute. Why are you all here? They were like, what's your father's house? They were like, no, no, this, this, this, the name is, oh, that's my name. This is in the South. This is not Mississippi. This is not Montgomery, Alabama. This is right here in the suburbs in Milwaukee. The majority of the top segregated cities in the country today are all located in the Midwest and North, including right here in Milwaukee, which takes the number one spot for racial segregation. And when we mean segregation in Milwaukee, we mean suburbs versus the city. We're going to back to Reggie's talk for the Radio Milwaukee stage where Reggie shows evidence of the restrictive practices in place in Milwaukee suburbs. This is a sign in a ring, "Low-Wretosa City of Holmes" "Restrictive Zoning." This is a sign that used to be all over "Wawretosa" for years. For years, this sign told you that "Wawretosa" had what they call "Restrictive Zoning." And what "Restrictive Zoning" simply meant was that only white people could live in "Wawretosa." In these communities that had restrictive covenants in place, these were legally binding documents that said only white people could occupy this particular space. And so that particular sign was assigned. I went and took a picture of it, the "Wawretosa Historical Society" last year. I used that photograph and presentation that I did for the NAACP in Milwaukee, reported from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel-Giant Schmidt was there. He came up to me and asked me about the sign. I told him about it. He inquired about it. He did a really good article. I consulted with him on the article. He wrote about the history of racism and segregation in "Wawretosa." After that photojournalist from the Journal Sentinel took a picture of that sign, the next day they took it down. They literally took it down. And that photograph, when I used it one other time, "Wawretosa, all the person, from all the person," said Reggie. You know they had one of those in City Hall too. I'm like, really? He's like, not only did they have it in City Hall, but they just took it out last year. I was like, really? And he said, "That's not even the worst part." He says, "The worst part, back in the 80s, somebody came along with some green duct tape." And they taped over the part that said restrictive zoning. We green duct tape, as if nobody knew what was under the tape, right? I said, "You guys shouldn't love to sign up." I said, "That's a teachable moment for Tosa. Don't try to hide from your history. You can't cover it up." Listen, the photograph was on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Reggie Jackson has used that photograph like a hundred times in presentations. People know, don't hide from it, use it as a teachable moment. And this is exactly what they do. I'm working with them now to kind of get the sign put back up there. So that's a good sign. But while Tosa certainly wasn't the only community with these restrictions in place, in fact, racial covenants like the one in Tosa took place in multiple cities surrounding Milwaukee, Bayside, Fox Point, Hills Corner, Glendale, Greenfield, Cudahay, St. Francis, Sherwood, Whitefish Bay. They all have their own types of covenants. This is an example of one from South Milwaukee. So it was written in 1937, it's said to expire in 2024. And let's read it together. Can we read it as a course? At no time shall any such lot or building an area on be purchased, owned, leased, occupied or used by any person other than citizens of the United States of America of the White Race. This provision shall not apply to domestic servants which may be employed by their owner or occupant of any such lot or building their own. However, the government was an only institution to play to role in systemic racism and housing. The banking sector played a devastating role in early 2000s with the subprime mortgage crisis which led to the great recession. During this period, black people lost over half of their wealth. One bank, Wells Fargo, targeted black communities with these mortgages within the last 15 years. They were giving Latino and black borrowers completely different mortgages than whites who had the same exact credit worthiness. Wells Fargo bank settled with federal government for $175 million in 2012. Countrywide financial set of $335 million, the largest lawsuit settlement ever for housing discrimination and then associated bank settle for $200 million. So what is the real impact of systemic racism and housing? What does it mean? Well, basically it means that black people ended up decades. No, centuries behind white people in terms of wealth building. They didn't have access to one thing, equity. Equity builds wealth. As you can use that equity to make repairs to your home, to send your kids to college without debt, to buy a boat to go out on a lake fishing, to buy a cabin up north, to go on vacations to Paris and France and other places. It leads you into the American dream. And when you deny whole segments of society, the right to build that generational wealth, you have what we have today. These are the things you need to know to have productive conversations about race. I believe that the biggest challenge we have in terms of having these conversations is that we don't know enough to start the conversations the right way. Thank you all so much. Appreciate your time. So that is the problem. And that is just scratching the surface. Coming up in the second half of By-Evie Measure, we're talking about an organization that is tackling one facet of systemic racism and housing. Radio Milwaukee is on a mission. And if you hear to discover new perspectives on music and Milwaukee, then you're on a mission too. Join today to support the programming you love. Visit radiumawalky.org and click the orange heart. We're back on episode three of By-Evie Measure. In the second part of every episode, we're talking to local and national experts about solutions in each of these areas. In the first half of this podcast, we learned that the government played a huge role in creating segregation across the country and right here in Milwaukee with practices like redlining. But can the government solve this problem? It created. Joining me is Bill Tisdale, president and CEO of Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council to discuss the role his nonprofit organization plays in dismantling systemic racism and housing. - Government is not unaware of this. This is like, you know, what can we do? This is not any place high on the government's agenda. This is not any place that the government feels this is a talking point. Basically, that's all it is, is a talking point. We have had laws on the books since 1864, or back in Recon, with Reconstruction. So it's not anything new. What we look at today is why isn't government doing anything? And then don't leave it just to government. It's a citizen involvement. So our organization has actively been involved in proactively investigating the housing markets, and not only sales, but also rental, mortgage lending, and insurance, homeowners insurance. All of those things play key roles in getting housing. And people just generally think, you know, "Well, housing discrimination happens if you can't afford to get a house." So you're doing rental and you're just going to get a rent. It happens in the sales market, as we're talking about with steering, blockbusting, denial of loans. But what our organization does is investigate housing discrimination through a method called testing. The Fair Housing Council actually sends people out to look for discrimination and housing through an undercover testing approach. They're able to test for bias in the real estate market and the rental market, even home insurance. And testing is matching individuals equally on every socioeconomic characteristics except for the one you're testing for. So protected classes are race, religion, color, national origin, sex, or sexual orientation on down the line. So if you're testing for race, we went to match two individuals, one African-American, one white, send them out into the housing market, see what kind of information they get. I'm looking for a $70,000 home on the inner city. I'm looking for a $190,000 home in Indra's Park and send those two people out and see what kind of information they get. That information comes back to us and all we do is look at the differences. When I say people are matched similarly on every characteristic, the same age, same income, same time on the job, same debt, same family structure, you've got two people identical, one person black, one person white. And that is why testing is so important because housing discrimination is hard to prove. You have to go out looking for it. We can't wait for people to complain about it because it's so sophisticated this way. You don't know you'd be in the night. They're still taking your information. They're doing a credit check. They're doing all of the things that they need to do and that what you think needs to happen for a legitimate sales transaction. You don't know if your property is being marketed the same way. You don't know if you're being listed the same way. So this is the kind of stuff that's going on today. This is an old time information. This is information that we deal with on a daily basis. And there's no way to get to that without the investigative, investigative technique of testing. Speaking of testing, do you have any kind of numbers? The results from your testing of when those people come back? Well, yeah, you know, over the years, we've had thousands of incidences where we've conducted tests and had tests come back as far as positive results from the standpoint of showing differences in treatment. We have had approximately over 700 times that we've been in court with testing evidence. We've only lost eight cases. So testing is a very viable means to do that. Most of the cases that we have, the thousands of cases that we have had, those settle out of court because when presented with the information, this happened to this person who's African-American or a woman or has a disability. Those cases settle out of court generally, because the evidence is right there. So testing is effective. Probably the best means of getting to the differences in treatment that occur in the house. Here's a real life example. In the early days of these testing programs, Bill went out with a white colleague of his Fred to follow up with a property manager. We'll let him tell the story. But pay close attention to how subtle the discrimination and racism is. Fred and I went down. There was an advertisement in the newspaper that had been run for about two weeks. That there was a two bedroom unit available on the South Side of Milwaukee. Available immediately. This was the rent. This was the availability of all of that. Fred and I drove down in Fred's car, parked around the corner, and I said, "I would go in first." African-American went in first and see what they tell the white person who comes afterwards. I went up to the door around the block. There's the penets out, the little sign that says, "Overfore inspection knocked on the door. The guy comes to the door." He says, "Yes, may I hope you?" I said, "Oh, I'm here to see the unit you have advertised." He said, "Unit." He said, "What do you--?" I said, "You have a two bedroom unit. It's been advertised in this paper for the last two months or so." Huh. That's still advertised. He said, "Well, come on. Let me check this out. Let me check it out." He said, "Come on in." So he asked me in. I had a seat in his living room. I could see from the kitchen was looking through a series of leases, what appeared to be leases on a clipboard, going through some other documents and some index cards and came back and said, "No." That unit was rented several months ago. He said, "I don't know why that ad's still running." I said, "Well, it is still running." I said, "I'm sorry." He said, "Well, I said, "You don't have anything." I said, "Do you have at least a one bedroom I could take a look at?" He said, "Well, yeah." I said, "Well, I'm going to school." I said, "I was going to use the second bedroom as a study." I said, "I can just keep my book packed up." When the two bedroom becomes available, I'll be first on the list. He said, "Well, let me check." He said, "Well, we don't really have any two bedrooms. When I have any one bedrooms, I don't have any units." I said, "Well, this is really convenient to where I'm going to be working." I said, "I'm sorry, it's still being advertised." He said, "Well, do you have a model I can look at?" He said, "Well, they basically look like my unit." He said, "Well, can you give me a call or let me know when you have something?" He said, "Well, listen, let me do this." He said, "Let me show you around." He said, "It takes me around. He shows me that he's feeling more comfortable with me." He said, "It takes me out. It shows me the parking places." He said, "Ask me if I play golf." I said, "Yeah, it says not golf course, not far from there. The green fees are not that bad." He said, "We come back." He said, "I'm really sorry that we don't have anything of it." He said, "You seem like a nice guy, kind of person we'd like to rent to." He said, "Well, I'm sorry you didn't have anything either." I said, "Well, just keep in touch." He said, "Well, before you leave, let me give you my business card." He said, "Don't call on the business card. I'm going to give you my home number." He writes his home number on the back of the card. He said, "Don't call the front office. They deal with all apartments all around town." He said, "You can just get a runaround going there. Call me back." As I was going through the clipboards, I saw a list that's coming up next month. He said, "That might be the perfect unit for you." I said, "This is great." He said, "Don't forget. Don't use the front. Call on the back. Just cross out that front number." I went around the corner, back down to Fred. I said, "Fred, let's go." I said, "This guy was great. He wanted to adopt me." I said, "He was wonderful." Fred said, "Well, as long as we're here, let's go." I said, "Fred, it is hot in this car." I said, "It's 90-some degrees out." I said, "People are already looking at wondering what somebody parked in their neighborhood." I said, "I'm a black guy parked sitting in the driver's -- in the passenger seat of a car." I said, "This guy across the street has moved his lawn about three times going back and forth wondering what I'm doing sitting in the car." I said, "Why don't we just go?" He said, "No, let me check it out." Fred went up, talked to the same person. I said, "Where is Fred? Fred is gone. Fred is like 20 minutes." Fred comes back and says, "Fred, what were you doing?" He said, "I saw three vacant two bedroom units." I said, "What?" I said, "Do you talk to Mr. Sonslow?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "You saw three vacant units. You just talked to the same guy I talked to." He said, "Yep." I said, "Well, you know what happened. Three people moved out between the time I came back to the car and the time you went up to see the units." This is housing discrimination. I knew it existed, but I didn't know to the level, to the extremes, and how they use subtle ways to discriminate. My parents growing up in time where they just said, "Get out of here." "Yeah, just slam the door." I was treated royally. I had really been looking for a unit. I would have not reported it. People say, "Well, no matter, you know, not a big number of people reporting. How would I have reported this to HUD? How would I have reported this to the Equal Rights Division? Why would I have gone to the Fair Housing Council?" This guy told me, "Don't call downtown. I'll get the runner. I'll call my home number back." So I'm thinking, "Shoot, if you didn't call me back and nothing came up, I find another place." We have replaced the slam door of discrimination. Where you get close and face, we don't want your kind living here. With a revolving door. Where you are revolved out of the system. Only through testing, would I have found out that that man had discriminated against me. And there were three units available when he told me nothing was available. That's tested. You mentioned when we were talking about policies and stuff. But you said something about everyday citizens need to get involved. How should everyday citizens get involved and help change this issue? Citizens cannot sit back and think somebody else is doing this. No one else is doing it. And the folks who are doing it don't have your best interest in mind. And so citizens have to take action. Citizens have to become involved. If we had 200 Regis, we would be moving. I mean, you're talking about somebody who has taken upon themselves to be this crusader. And I'm not saying that in a negative sense. I'm talking about we need crusaders and advocates. We need Regis out there. Because you can't do this. And people say, "Oh, the government takes care of that." The government and on your side on all of these things. They don't have the staff and they're interested in putting funds ahead to make diseases in a top burner issue. So citizens have to pay attention and know that housing impacts all of us. Housing is going to be a great deal. and extractively linked to where you live, is inextricably linked to how, where you get job opportunities, health care service delivery, employment, all of those things are tied together. And all of us are tied together in that. It ain't no us and them when it comes to housing. And we have to undertake activities and become involved in the political process. Talk to your older people, talk to your city council, talk to your supervisors, talk to your resident, let them know this is an issue for you. And don't think that this happens accidentally, it does not. - Thank you for enlightening. Thank you for telling us what you do to try to change this. So that's very important in letting our community know that there are people out there trying to make a difference. - Absolutely. To recap on this episode of By Every Measure, dealing with systemic racism and housing, some of the things that we discuss as actions include press government officials to keep fair housing top of mind, just as Bill Tillsdale mentioned. Housing is not normally a top priority issue, neither party is even championing it right now. Also, keep going out and looking for discrimination actively, bringing lawsuits against offenders, support organizations that are doing the work like the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council. And a solution is not necessarily that black people need to move to the suburbs, but we also need to invest in black neighborhoods, create more opportunities to buy homes, rehab existing housing stock. There are great organizations in Milwaukee doing just that, like Milwaukee's acts housing. We have more information about them at radio-mawaki.org/measure. We also have a great reading list you wanna learn more about systemic racism, including, Know Your Price, Valueing Black Lives and Property in America's Black Cities by Andre Perry of the Brookings Institute, and the Color of Money, Black Banks, and the Racial Wealth Gap by Marissa Baraduran. She also put together this amazing proposal idea for a solution called the 21st Century Homestead Act. The proposal would create public trust to purchase abandoned property and target cities and grant them to qualified residents by pairing this plan with the suite of programs to redevelop these cities. Really interesting read. You can find links at our website at radio-mawaki.org/measure. On our next episode of Buy Every Measure, we're gonna go even deeper on the conversation of wealth and the racial wealth gap. How big is that gap? Well, in terms of housing, a report from the Institute of Policy Studies showed that the average black own home is valued $48,000 less than the white own homes, and that adds up to $156 billion of lost wealth. And you can measure that gap in dollars and in time. That same study showed it would take 228 years. 228 years, do you understand what I just said? The closed the wealth gap, meaning black families will not reach to wealth parity with white households until the year 2241. We'll break it down next time on Buy Every Measure. Buy Every Measure is hosted by Tareek Moody and Reggie Jackson, Executive Produced and edited by Nate Imig, with additional production support from 889 program director, Jordan Lee, Marketing Director, Sarah McClanahan, Marketing Coordinator, Aaron Bogada, Web Editor, Evan Rantleski, Audio Producer, Salam Fatayer, Executive Director, Kevin Suker, Content Marketing Manager, Amalinda Burrach, Community Engagement Manager, Maddie Reardon, and Imaging Manager, Kenny Perez, Handcrafted Sonic Inspiration from the License Lab, and are sincerest thanks to our members for making all radio Milwaukee content possible. Buy Every Measure, an original podcast production of 889 Radio Milwaukee. [BLANK_AUDIO]