Homeownership, Wealth Accumulation, and Segregation: Housing Policy and the Creation of Food Deserts in Columbus, OH
Kierra S. Barnett, Glennon Sweeney, and Mikyung Baek
A t this time of year, many families are gathering to share holiday meals. Yet millions of Americans lack access to both adequate food and a safe space to share it. Food and housing insecurity plague too many people in this country, and the two problems are linked in terms of both their causes and possible solutions.
Throughout the better part of the 20th century, housing and development policy were used nefariously to separate black from white, wealthy from poor, and “desirable” from “undesirable.” Since the end of slavery, these policies have sought, both intentionally and inadvertently to perpetuate inequalities and unequal access to opportunity for African Americans, enacting policies that have shaped their experiences and those of other marginalized groups in America. This post explores how discriminatory housing policies have altered people’s ability to access healthy food and to build and sustain food-related businesses — problems which contribute to the urban food desert phenomenon and racial wealth disparities.
Because we work at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University, this piece focuses on Columbus as a case study, and emphasizes the black experience. We describe specific historical development policies that disproportionately harmed black communities. We unpack how these policies were accompanied by similarly restrictive retail practices, and trace how these policies and practices have contributed to the urban food desert phenomenon we see today. Housing and food policy should not be considered in silos but rather in tandem and in recognition of their inherent intersectionality within the broader context of health policy. Promoting policy solutions that address this relationship can significantly impact the health outcomes of the nearly 16 million US families impacted by food insecurity.
How Housing and Transportation Policies Created Today’s Food Landscape
Over the course of the 20th century, the way people shopped for food transformed significantly. Until the post-World War II era, people shopped at multiple specialty stores for their groceries, buying bread at a bakery or meat at a butcher. However, with suburbanization came the consolidated supermarket and store sizes exploded throughout the second half of the century. The changes in food retail were partly set in motion by housing and transportation policies that concentrated wealth in white middle class suburbs. The new policies created a host of new incentives for food retailers to move out of urban neighborhoods. Food retailers who wanted to stay in urban neighborhoods, which contained decreasing numbers of white residents, were unable to access business loans, further eroding residents’ ability to buy healthy food.
Without full-service grocers, residents living in urban centers became more reliant on small corner stores, which were never designed to provide access to healthy, affordable food. Over time, stores providing healthy, affordable food in urban neighborhoods would disappear altogether, creating the food deserts we see today.
The first set of policies that triggered a massive shift of wealth towards the suburbs were designed to standardize how homes were valued. The purpose of this standardization was to clarify which homes and neighborhoods were “safe” investments and which were “risky.” The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) officers were tasked with determining risk at the neighborhood level in order to inform this new insurance program.[1] Many factors were used to assess neighborhood risk, however, the most decisive characteristics were the race, ethnicity, and immigration status of the people living there. Communities that were predominately African American, Hispanic, Native American, and recent immigrants were deemed “risky” by assessors and denied the capital required to invest and generate wealth. This practice is known as redlining. Often clusters of neighborhoods were redlined, as illustrated on the Columbus redlining map below.
HOLC employees assessed each neighborhood of Columbus and other major cities. Homes that were deemed safe investments were eligible for federally insured mortgages; homes that were assessed as risky were not.[2] Those communities were therefore unable to secure any loans, becoming known as redlined communities. Because the emphasis of the assessment was based on race rather than actual risk (e.g. proximity to industry, blight in neighborhood, large numbers of vacant homes, etc.), many well-to-do and successful black communities were severely impacted by the fallout from this policy. For example, in Columbus the King-Lincoln[3] neighborhood was the hub of the city’s black community, at one point boasting a school, hospital, numerous theaters and restaurants, and many retail establishments, like Carl Brown’s Foodliner.
But the impacts of redlining meant that the doctors, lawyers, business owners, and other successful black members of this community were no longer able to secure loans to invest in homes or businesses there. As a result, many left the neighborhood or lost wealth over time as their property values continued to deteriorate. Not only was the King-Lincoln neighborhood redlined, the majority of Columbus’ east side was redlined as well, creating a large swath of land that suffered decades of disinvestment.
At the same time, racially restrictive covenants — clauses written into housing deeds prohibiting the sale of the home to people of specific racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds — prevented many wealthier members of marginalized groups from moving into many middle-class neighborhoods, cutting off their ability to build equity in their homes. This policy directly impacted black people’s ability to generate household wealth, confining many black families to urban neighborhoods such as King-Lincoln. Today, the majority of the redlined communities surrounding King-Lincoln are considered food deserts by the USDA.[4]
While redlining and restrictive covenants were primarily utilized during the first half of the 20th century, highway construction and a shift to auto-oriented retail during the second half of the 20th century dealt another blow to many communities of color. Highway construction facilitated access between urban centers and the newly constructed suburban Levittowns[AA1] throughout the post-World War II era. As the highways made their way through Columbus, they followed a path that went almost exclusively through C and D grade neighborhoods. Interstate 71, for example, cut the King-Lincoln community off from the rest of the city, leaving it isolated on the city’s east side.
The grocery industry also changed significantly during this same period as a result of consolidation. Grocery chains followed middle-class wealth to the suburbs, and adopted a larger format that was very car-oriented and not necessarily well adapted to urban neighborhoods. The new business models for grocery stores disincentivized retailers from setting up shops in neighborhoods that were predominantly home to people of color.
The shifts in the grocery industry, the growth of wealth in white suburbs, and the increasing isolation brought on by policies such as the Highway Act, resulted in compounded disinvestment in communities of color. Disinvestment became a signal to food retailers that their business would not be sustained in certain areas of town, leading them to bypass opportunities to locate in neighborhoods like King-Lincoln. Overtime, the dearth of healthy food options and the glut of liquor stores would leave many urban families with few healthy options in what are now termed food swamps. Residents of food deserts and food swamps often experience disproportionate cases of diet-related diseases, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity, among others.
Where Have All of the Grocery Stores Gone?
In Columbus, the result of these policies is a deeply segregated city. Race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status also correlate with unequal access to healthy food. While the policies outlined above worked together to create current metropolitan landscapes, redlining had particularly lasting impacts on black communities’ ability to own property and accumulate wealth, particularly in light of the fact that grocers rely on discretionary income as a factor to determine locations. This transcended residential property and also greatly impacted access to capital for business and entrepreneurial investment. Often, grocery stores were either unable or unwilling to open in redlined neighborhoods, which created a negative cycle of poverty and resource scarcity. Groceries that did open had trouble sustaining themselves with their customer base growing rapidly more impoverished. As discussed in our previous post, today exclusive and prohibitive use covenants further prevent new grocery stores from opening in under-resourced areas, even, in some cases, for years after a store has closed.
The King-Lincoln neighborhood is designated a food desert today because it is considered both low-income and low-access. Due to decades of disinvestment and associated poverty, the community is unattractive to big grocery chains.
Policy has a critical role to play in alleviating food insecurity. When we see communities like King-Lincoln today, it is imperative that we remember that policy made this neighborhood a food desert by denying the accumulation of wealth and concentrating poverty within its borders. By recognizing this history, we can shake off some of the stereotypes and tropes that infiltrate modern policy debates about how and where to invest, like those that point a finger of blame at the residents of low-income neighborhoods for their lack of healthy food options. We can also explicitly connect housing and food access policy, for example, by investing in affordable, quality housing in neighborhoods with health-promoting amenities, like grocery stores. We can adopt living wage ordinances so that grocery store workers can afford to pay the rent. And we can support entrepreneurialism and homeownership for people who have long been locked in a cycle of policy-driven disinvestment.
[1]The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) was a product of the New Deal aimed at resurrecting the nation’s construction industry and creating a standard form of mortgage insurance to prevent a future housing crisis similar in scale to that experienced during the Great Depression.
[2] Homes were deemed eligible for mortgage insurance based on their HOLC grade. Receiving an A, or green grade, meant that mortgages for homes or businesses were eligible for up to 80% of the property value in a federally insured mortgage. Eligibility dropped according to grade. In a D, or red grade community, no property, residential or otherwise, was eligible for a federally insured loan.
[3] The King-Lincoln Neighborhood is also known as the King-Lincoln or Bronzeville.
[4] A food desert, as defined by the USDA, includes “parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers.”
Kierra S. Barnett, Glennon Sweeney, and Mikyung Baek are all research associates at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. Their individual focus areas range across a broad swath of public health issues, yet all touch upon the impact of housing and food security.
