(soft music) (upbeat instrumental music) - [Narrator] It's not surprising that the rise of the American middle class and the rise in homeownership shared a similar trajectory.

That first home.

A sweet slice of the American Dream.

Birthdays and barbecues.

Good neighbors and good schools.

But it was more than that.

It was a launching pad for the average white American family.

As your home appreciated in value, your financial options increased.

Home equity allowed you to move up to a bigger home as your family grew.

It meant you could tap your home's value to pay for a college education.

And eventually, the wealth your home helped create, was passed on to the next generation.

This created a cycle of prosperity.

This was the American Dream.

- Well, how do you like it?

- [Narrator] But it wasn't for everyone.

(soft music) Denying the American Dream was easier than you might think.

All it took was a map, a red pencil and the intent to exclude.

Along with the blessing and authority of the United States government.

It's called redlining.

Redlining is the now illegal practice of refusing to provide mortgages and other financial services to consumers based on the area where they live.

Here's how it happened: Government officials, using data provided by local real estate professionals, lenders, developers, and appraisers, assigned grades to residential areas.

These grades reflected the level of "mortgage security" in each neighborhood.

The results were turned into color-coded maps.

These maps determined who could get access to a mortgage and who could not.

The maps were said to be based on risk to the lender, but the level of risk was almost entirely based on race and ethnicity.

It was no accident.

This was federal policy.

And it was repeated in most metropolitan areas across America.

The maps were drawn in the 1930s.

They were never intended to be made public.

Sometimes it's unclear how our past actions influence our world today.

But with redlining, it couldn't be more explicit.

Because the maps themselves tell the story.

(upbeat music) Dayton and Springfield are two Ohio cities that grew up 26 miles apart.

- Both cities become really important manufacturing cities and then centers of innovation.

Springfield is a smaller city than Dayton but across most of its history it had a much larger African American population, at least in terms of percentage.

It had percentages in the 11, 12%, dating all the way back to the 1870's after the Civil War, where Dayton is much less.

- [Narrator] However, Dayton's black population was on the rise.

Jim Crow policies, a lack of economic opportunity and racial violence motivated black southerners to leave their homes.

Often impoverished, they traveled northward, into the unknown, any way they could get there.

It was a journey of great hardship and great risk.

There were no guarantees.

It was called the Great Migration.

- The Great Migration was a period where around six million blacks left the southern parts of the United States.

And, Dayton, Ohio was a great region for people to come to.

You know, the manufacturing jobs that were here, the ability to raise your family and have the wages that you wouldn't get down south and a lot of people were thinking they were leaving some of the racial issues that they had faced down south, unfortunately, they found it was a different kind of racism.

- [Narrator] The exodus lasted from about 1910 to 1970.

For most black families living in the north, the Great Migration is a part of their family history.

- That's how I got here.

My grandparents came from Kentucky, they came up and next thing you know their brothers were up here, their sisters were up here, they started raising their family here and that's the story for so many people like me in Dayton.

- My family originally came from the south.

On my mother's side, she and her siblings grew up in Tuskegee, Alabama.

On my dad's side, that family grew up in Mississippi.

- I was born in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

My dad was a sharecropper, his dad was a sharecropper.

Mound Bayou, Mississippi was once the largest all black city in the United States, until farming died in the late 60's, it actually died.

When I got to Dayton I saw a lot of nice neighborhoods.

I said, "Wow, these neighborhoods are nothing like Mound Bayou."

- True story.

My grandmother and grandfather lost their home in the Tulsa race massacre, it was burned to the ground.

My mom came here when she was 15 from Tulsa.

My dad and his family moved to Springfield, in 1926 from Cynthiana and Paris, Kentucky.

- [Narrator] In 1910 blacks made up about 3% of Dayton's population.

When the migration ended in the 1970s, over 74,000 blacks were living in Dayton.

Comprising about 30% of the city's population.

They were not met with open arms.

(KKK speaker addressing the crowd) - The Ku Klux Klan was very active in Ohio.

Indiana and Ohio for years fought it out for who had the largest membership.

(KKK speaker addressing the crowd) - [Narrator] This meeting in Dayton in September, 1923, drew 30,000 people according to the Dayton Daily News.

7,000 took an oath to the Klan.

That same month, the Klan paraded through downtown Springfield.

But in Springfield the music stopped.

- In large part because of their views towards Catholics, they caught the attention of the Springfield police and actually the police chief, O'Brien led a raid personally in 1923 of the Klan headquarters in downtown Springfield.

They arrested people.

There was a meeting going on, they released their roles to the newspaper.

The newspaper published the names and addresses of the Klan members.

And that really kind of quieted the activity of the Klan in Springfield in those years.

- After the 30's that Klan population kind of died down in membership but that doesn't mean that those sentiments and the things that they believed in, those didn't go away.

- [Narrator] Violence and intimidation weren't the only challenges the newcomers faced.

In response to the growing numbers of blacks, a new tactic was employed.

Racially restrictive deeds started showing up in real estate transactions.

In Springfield the developer of a place called Ridgewood, was an early adopter.

- Ridgewood was one of the first neighborhoods in America that specifically restricted people due to their race.

- [Narrator] The language was as blunt as the intent.

- [Man] Said premises shall not be sold or leased by the grantee or his heirs to a colored person or occupied by a colored person other than a servant to the owner or tenet.

- [Narrator] Harry Kissell, was a young, smart, energetic real estate developer in Springfield, Ohio.

In the language of the day, he was an 'up and comer'.

In some ways, he was ahead of his time.

1945.

Levittown, New York.

Many people believe this was the first suburb in the United States.

But in 1915, 30 years before Levittown, Harry Kissell created Ridgewood.

- Ridgewood is one of American's first fully planned, fully restricted suburban neighborhoods.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] It stood out in sharp contrast to the industrial grime of downtown Springfield.

- It's tree lined.

There's large lots.

It creates just this picturesque neighborhood, with breezes, wide open avenues, a cleanliness that you're not gonna find in other parts of the city.

Springfield is one of the larger industrial cities.

In the Victorian period Springfield claimed to have built the largest factory in the western hemisphere.

There's street car trolleys, there's markets, there's horses, there's noise, there's animal feces, there's prostitution, there's crime.

The goal for Ridgewood is to create that suburban utopia.

(soft music) - [Narrator] That utopia was designed for whites only.

It stayed that way for 70 years.

- My mother worked in Ridgewood.

So I knew exactly where, Ridgewood was and I knew that I wasn't welcome there.

My mother, during certain times of day, was welcome and spent all day there working but you knew that it was not a space for you.

This is Ridgewood.

And as you can see, it's a beautiful neighborhood.

There were black families that could afford to live in Ridgewood.

The reason blacks had no access to Ridgewood was because of restrictive covenants and deeds that would deny them access.

In fact, the first black family to purchase a home here was in 1985.

Have things changed?

Sure they have.

In fact, my brother owns a home here in Ridgewood.

But that doesn't quite make up for 70 years of racist policies and practices that prevented blacks access to neighborhoods all across America.

- [Narrator] Racially restrictive deeds were just the beginning.

Housing discrimination was evolving.

As America moved through the 1920s, blacks would soon be up against a carefully crafted tool, a tool designed to limit their access to home ownership.

It began in October, 1929, the start of the Great Depression.

Home construction plummeted by 92%.

By 1933, a 1000 homes went into foreclosure, every day, to stop the flood of foreclosures, congress created the Home Owners' Loan Corporation.

The HOLC revolutionized the mortgage industry by introducing the practical, long-term amortized loan.

Previously, home loans required 50% down with a term of only five years.

And the bank making the loan bore all the risk.

These new loans required a much smaller down payment and the term stretched from five years to 20 or 30 years.

Plus, they were backed by U.S. government, should the homeowner fail to make payments.

- [Reporter] Homeownership is the basis of a happy, contented family life.

And now, through the use of the National Housing Act, an insured mortgage is brought within the reach of all citizens on a monthly payment plan no greater than rent.

- [Narrator] Nearly one million loans were refinanced.

Homeownership was within reach of the average American.

Between 1940 and 1970, 72 million Americans became new homeowners.

The program was innovative and smart.

It was the brainchild of Harry Kissell.

This Springfield native had stepped on to the national stage, spending time in Washington and advising Presidents.

But, like a home in Ridgewood, the loans weren't for everyone.

The HOLC appraisers evaluated and ranked every block in every city.

Areas considered to be a poor financial risk were redlined.

The Federal Housing Administration, or FHA, adopted both the appraisal methods and the color coded maps.

The FHA's first Underwriting Manual, issued in 1935, made their position clear.

- [Man] "If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.

Incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities."

- [Narrator] Appraisers were instructed to give higher ratings to areas with protection against the "infiltration of inharmonious racial or nationality groups."

Protections often meant racially restrictive deeds.

- [Man] "Natural or artificially established barriers will prove effective in protecting a neighborhood, from adverse influences."

- [Narrator] In Springfield, Harry Kissell had been looking after the interests of white property owners for years.

The FHA guidelines were an extension of his belief that one way to keep property values up, was to keep blacks out.

The color codes gave lenders their orders.

Areas colored green were rated 'Best'.

Blue areas were 'Still Desirable'.

Yellow areas were 'Definitely Declining' and red, well red was 'Hazardous'.

No loans were to be made here.

Old Dayton View was a neighborhood designated as being extremely risky for loans.

Agency officials conceded it had some good qualities.

But these couldn't overcome what it called "detrimental influences".

To them the problem was plain as day.

"Older section of city.

Negroes moving in."

- Redlining is a discriminatory banking practice that denied basically minority populations access to mortgages, especially African American populations.

It was a policy based on a risk formula but that risk formula was race based.

- And I think that surprises some individuals, that poor whites could still be in those green areas but the presence of a single African American, a single person of color could be enough to downgrade those to a less than desirable rating.

- You can pretty much trace where the African Americans were because those will be the neighborhoods outlined in red.

(birds chirping) - This is where I grew up.

2422 Lexington Avenue.

My family bought their home in 1958 and it is the redlined section that you see on the map, D-6.

We didn't know it was redlined, we just knew that everybody in our neighborhood was black.

Completely surrounded by white families and neighborhoods, A sea of blue and green.

- We talk about redlining but we don't unpackage what the severity of the impacts actually are.

Redlining could be perceived as being an economic sanction against a community.

And, so when we talk about sanctions normally these are instruments that may be imposed on a foreign power as a way to penalize them but in this instance we're actually imposing a domestic economic sanction that had a clear impact on underserved communities, minority communities and the impact of that wasn't just local, the policy was scaled up nationally.

- [Narrator] When blacks arrived in Dayton and Springfield, restrictive covenants pushed them into designated areas: Redlined areas.

This ensured they could not get a mortgage to buy a home.

What options were left?

- [Rhine] What was left was, land contracts.

- A land contract was quite often referred to as the poor man's mortgage.

- Land contracts is when the owner still owns the property, you pay down on it and it's like rent, well, we still see it today, it's rent to own.

And, if they decide to call it in, you know, you don't have anything.

And those are the kind of things that happen a lot in west Dayton.

- Bye, mom!

- That was the life for a lot of people who were poor, a lot of people who were black.

Because people still had to live, they still had to raise their family, they still had to provide and so unfortunately, they were put in these positions where they had to do what was there.

And it really hurt them.

- [Narrator] Studies estimate that In Chicago, 85% of black home purchases were made through land contracts.

It was common in Dayton as well.

For some blacks, even land contracts were out of reach.

Overcrowded and underserved, they were pushed to the very fringe of society.

- There was a large area in west Dayton called Hog Bottom.

And in this area, you had 1000s of people around.

And this was an area that had no indoor plumbing, no electricity.

It was a shanty town for lack of a better word.

You had animals out there, it wasn't very clean, you didn't have regulations and this was a large area.

- [Narrator] In 1954 the Dayton Daily News reported that in Hog Bottom, one outhouse serves as many as 20 families.

It came to the attention of the Federal Housing Administration.

Their report stated it was the worst slum in North America.

- And that's when Hog Bottom was demolished and the city built a housing plat there called Madden Hills.

But all of that at one time was called Hog Bottom.

- [Narrator] To achieve greater home ownership in Dayton, blacks needed a champion.

- When I was growing up there were a number of people in our community who were actively involved in helping blacks with homeownership.

Supporting each other, finding resources for each other, reaching out to other people in the community.

And, Mrs. Francis was one of those individuals.

- [Narrator] In 1947, Mrs. Lelia Frances became the first black real estate professional in Ohio.

And the second in the entire United States.

- There was an acute housing shortage in Dayton after World War II and that's when people were coming back from the war.

Dayton is a factory town, we've got NCR, we've got General Motors factories, we've got Frigidaire.

Cooper Tire.

So the people are making the money and people want to be a part of the American dream.

Well, part of the American dream is owning property, so you want to buy a house.

But you can't get a house because, well, you can't get a loan.

Dayton was closed to giving loans to people of color.

What Mrs. Frances did is she would go and try to get loans for people.

She went to places like Memphis where there were African American banks and so she was able to negotiate the loans and was able to make sure that people were able to have a part of the American Dream.

- My parents became involved with Francis Realty because my father was interested in buying a home.

Mrs. Francis at the time said, "Frank, that's my father, I'm going to help you to get a home."

- [Narrator] Ro Nita's father worked at Fridigaire.

But he soon stepped onto the frontlines in the battle against housing discrimination.

- My father was a consummate salesman, he could sell just about anything and so he studied, he got his real estate license and he began to sell real estate.

- [Narrator] Black real estate professionals were shut out of the industry.

So they formed the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, also known as the Realtists.

- [Cora] The Realtist is a black organization formed in 1947.

- The reason we were formed was because African American practitioners were denied access to not only the real estate inventory but the mortgage products that were available to their communities.

- We got active in our local chapter and we went to the first national convention that, I believe it was in Memphis, Tennessee, and we were so impressed looking at all these professional black people all in one room, it was so inspiring.

- I got into real estate almost 36 years ago.

I didn't feel welcomed or even needed by the realtor association but I felt that our community, our African American community needed people who really were looking out for them.

So, it means a lot to me that we represent them, pass out information, do everything we can to help them attain their real estate goals.

- [Narrator] Since the beginning, black real estate professionals were often more than just realtors.

- My father would talk about places in Dayton where he integrated neighborhoods.

There's a community called Townview and he sold one of the first houses to African Americans in Town View and he had to stay there with the people at night after they moved in so that they would feel safe and secure.

I see my parents as very brave individuals to do what was necessary at the time because they felt that they had to.

- [Narrator] By doing what they believed in, they crossed a line.

And because they were black, they knew there would be consequences.

- We had been living in west Dayton on Home Avenue and my mother was very concerned about my education.

So, they decided to move into Residence Park which was an all-white neighborhood.

Residence Park elementary school was an all-white school.

- [Narrator] At their new home, night fall brought danger.

- I saw the domestic terrorism, the burning of the cross on our property shortly after we moved into Residence Park.

I experienced the trauma of not quite understanding but knowing that there was something really wrong.

My father was working real estate in the day time and he was working at Frigidaire, his other job, in the evening.

- [Narrator] The evening.

That's when it happened.

Under the cover of darkness.

(gunshots fire) - That is the point that my father decided to stop working the night shift and to then start working the day shift so he could be at home at night with his family and when the cars would come by.

He told me, he said, "And I had my gun and I would shoot up in the air too."

(gunshots fire) It happened two times and then it stopped.

So, when I asked my father about that experience he said, what he wanted everyone to know, whoever was burning the crosses, whoever was leaving the notes from the Ku Klux Klan and whoever had the nerve to drive by and to shoot, he wanted them to know that he was going to do whatever it took to be able to protect his family and to protect his property and that we were not leaving.

- [Narrator] Slowly, families like Ro Nita's were moving into neighborhoods of their choice.

But one thing hadn't changed.

Blacks in west Dayton and south Springfield were credit starved.

(soft music) - When maps were created, basically a line was drawn around a physical geographic area which would send a signal to the market that this is an area where investments aren't being made.

So, not only does it affect the ability for one to get a mortgage but the ability to secure the necessary investments in order to maintain, the assets that you have in place.

The ability to expand business, expand economic development is also limited.

And then eventually it cascades into the problem of just deferred maintenance, because if you're not getting the resources that are necessary in order to maintain what you have, eventually it just goes into a state of disrepair.

- We can see that with these redlining maps they really created these self-fulfilling prophecies.

You're going to deny access to goods and services and then wonder why is there more trash in some neighborhoods?

How come the schools aren't necessarily as good?

It's really easy if you're an outsider and with your kind of white blinders on to say, "Well, I took care of my neighborhood and my district, we value education, why don't these people over here?"

- [Narrator] After decades of housing discrimination, redlining became illegal with the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Finally, the government made things right.

Or did it?

- No, housing discrimination did not stop with the Fair Housing Act.

It was the first federal piece of legislation that prohibits discrimination in housing transactions, all housing transactions.

- [Narrator] The Miami Valley Fair Housing Center investigates claims of housing discrimination.

- It's 40-some years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, guys like me should be without a job, I should be doing something else.

But we're not, you know, I have plenty of work and it's unfortunate but the Fair Housing Act was passed as, largely as what we would now call an unfunded mandate.

There was no additional funding allocated by Congress provided to HUD to do enforcement and HUD had no other department that enforced anything.

"... file in federal court unless we settle-" - [Narrator] The Fair Housing Act had no teeth.

Mandates and good intentions didn't stand a chance.

Redlining evolved.

Housing discrimination persisted.

- My father-in-law was on the board of directors for Winter's National Bank and I think it had just turned into Bank One and so we're trying to get our first house.

Well, it's our only house.

We're still in it today.

And that was around 1985.

We couldn't even with my father-in-law being on the board of directors, get a decent mortgage.

We had to get what they call an ARM, an adjustable rate mortgage.

And that's with me as a lawyer, my husband as an architect, both of us worked for government.

My husband worked for the city of Dayton as the Chief Building Official and I worked in the Montgomery County Prosecutor's Office as an assistant.

We had great credit, we never lived beyond our means, you know, we had money saved up, we had the down payment, we had everything, couldn't get it.

With regard to the loan I don't remember what he said but it was an excuse and it pissed me off and I wasn't powerful enough to be able to say or do anything about it.

So, I remembered the incident and I had to get rid of the anger but what I remember is that I knew and he knew that I knew, meaning, the loan officer, that what he said was BS.

That's just the way it was and that was 1985.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Even today, blacks have a hard time getting home loans.

In 2021, the Dayton Daily News reported that black residents in Dayton were twice as likely to be denied a conventional home loan, compared to white residents.

In many census tracts in west Dayton and Trotwood, more than half the loan applicants were rejected.

Part of that problem is credit history.

And how lenders evaluate credit worthiness.

- There were many people of color who, they may not have a credit record that showed, that they had three Visa's and one Mastercard, oh, and a Diner's Club card but they certainly had those type of credit within the community.

So, they could go to the local mechanic and they could get their car fixed and pay on credit to the local mechanic, no problem whatsoever.

There were other forms of credit that were extended to one another within the community that were never counted as valid.

And, because they weren't counted as valid, it just didn't matter.

But we've gotten the industry to recognize some of that and they are broadening some of the credit scores, there's actually a whole different model now that they use.

And, so we've made some in roads.

- [Narrator] Some people feel that lenders are using new tactics to avoid working with black applicants.

Tactics that are legal but ethically questionable.

- Now they raised their minimum loan amount.

So, we don't loan money under 50,000 and I consider that part of discrimination as well.

If a house is in good condition and it's 15,000 very few lenders will loan money.

We don't do any loans below 50,000.

So, that's one way of keeping the poor people from getting a loan but that's it, that's just life in real estate.

- [Narrator] And then there's 'the knowledge gap'.

Parents teach their children valuable life experiences.

But what happens when people of color are denied access to a financial education?

Those families are kept in the dark.

Important life lessons are missed.

When parents can't share valuable financial lessons, well, that knowledge gap that can be painful.

The first home Larry Williams occupied in Dayton was a rent to own agreement.

- Now, the reason I chose that route is mind you I have never been privy to a lot of business tutoring.

My dad even though he was a pastor in a church, he's a former sharecropper.

So, when I got to buy my house, he never said, "Larry, I went to a bank," 'cause he didn't go to a bank.

Being familiar with my Dad buying his house on a contract and he never pulled out a piece, I have never seen a piece of paper; I have made payments to the guy once I got old enough to drive, I would drive the house payment over.

I never got... there was never a receipt.

So I'm thinking this is how you buy a house.

The guy says so much, you pay so much.

When I sat down with the guy in Trotwood, he pulled out a piece of paper, he says, "Larry here's what I want you to take a look at and this a rent to own.

X amount of dollars of your rent will go towards the purchase of the house, if you buy the house, if you by the house."

I didn't hear, if you buy the house.

- [Narrator] Under the contract Larry had a year to come up with a down payment toward purchasing the house.

- When I said, "I can't come up with a down payment.

Can I get my money that is supposed to go toward?"

"No, Larry, you signed a contract."

And, I did but to me, the contract had no meaning 'cause I've never been confronted with a contract at that time.

And, I even think...

I just didn't know and if you don't know, you just you can't fill that gap.

- [Narrator] That gap, that lack of financial experience would continue to haunt citizens on the west side.

For decades, mortgages and equity-based improvement loans were impossible to get.

Then, around the year 2000, things changed.

Men in suits showed up in the neighborhoods.

And they had money to lend.

That seemed like a good thing.

At least in the beginning.

- Predatory lenders began targeting brown and black communities because they knew they were credit starved, they knew that they could pander any type of garbage loan and by doing good customer service which it felt like good customer service in the beginning.

The predatory lenders were really good about connecting with people.

I had a bunch of clients who said, "That man sat at my table and ate food I cooked for him."

They were very creative about the type of products they offered.

So, you don't have any money down, that's fine, what kind of equity do you have in your home?

We can borrow against the equity in your home and that was a very insidious practice because what they were literally doing was harvesting the equity in the home.

- At one point, Dayton, Ohio was the epicenter of predatory loans.

- [Narrator] Many of those loans resulted in foreclosures, evictions and abandoned homes.

This was the Mortgage Crisis of 2008.

- A prospective buyer doesn't want to buy a house next door to a boarded-up house.

So, it affects the value for the homeowner.

- The property values go down.

Those who are left behind, you might cut the grass and take care of it 'cause you want to make sure that your property doesn't down but the values go down.

So, that's what tears up a neighborhood.

- At one time there were so many foreclosure sales in certain neighborhoods and in particular, Westwood, it definitely impacted the value of the house.

Now, they tried to say when it comes to assessing tax values that they weren't using foreclosed sales when they do their evaluations but appraisers were using it.

I know firsthand they were and some of them impacted the sale of houses we had listed.

- My neighborhood has 800 vacant homes in it.

We have no grocery stores, we have no professional buildings, we have no doctors, we have no lawyers.

We have no amenities in Westwood, which has 5,000 residents.

48% of those residents are seniors.

- [Narrator] In south Springfield, the former redlined district has the same problem.

- Redline continues to adversely impact our communities on a daily basis and we can see that in very tangible ways, how old policies are continuing to manifest themselves in the present.

In some pockets of southwest Springfield neighborhoods more than 44% are vacant lots.

And that same neighborhood is proportionately high levels of dilapidated housing, code violations, et cetera.

So, really just a decline of the physical infrastructure and redlining is really at the heart and the root of all of it.

- [Narrator] Karlos is the founder of the Conscious Connect.

A community action group that is transforming former eyesores into neighborhood pocket parks.

- We have acquired these properties and revitalized them into community spaces with beautification, benches, little libraries, basketball courts to really just create a community and cultivate a sense of love and south side pride in Springfield.

- [Narrator] The pocket parks are just one example of innovative collaborations.

But the challenge of abandoned properties is massive.

In Dayton, 11,000 homes are vacant, according to the Dayton Daily News.

That's over 16% of the city's housing stock.

- The other day when I was out walking there's an area that was, for a whole block from one corner to the next, the whole side of the street was abandoned housing.

I'm the former mayor of Dayton, Ohio and when I was mayor, abandoned properties were really a drain on the city in so many ways.

No property taxes.

And property taxes are for the schools.

No income tax because people aren't working, because of circumstances, maybe not of their own, predatory lending, loss of jobs, health care issues.

When we see abandoned properties, let us not forget the families that were there, and not abandon them.

- [Narrator] For the people who remain in the neighborhood, abandoned homes are more than an eyesore.

They pose very real health risks.

- A lot of the people who don't have homes go into them, try to keep warm, there's fires.

And Dayton's housing stock is old and when you talk about old housing, guess what we have?

We got lead paint, we got asbestos, we got formaldehyde.

And some places you can walk by and you can smell the mold.

- Minority and low income populations in our country, have not always had access to the benefits of a clean, safe, healthy environment.

- Asthma rates are disproportionately much higher for individuals that are living in largely black and brown communities as compared to white communities.

Exposure to lead paint, exposure to other kinds of environmental toxins.

- Many of the communities that historically were redlined 70 years ago are now associated with exposure to lead because of housing stock that may have been poorly constructed or poorly maintained.

So, there's a sense of interconnectivity and the fact that where there has been disinvestment, where there has been neglect, not only does that have an economic impact, it also has an environmental impact, it has a public health impact.

- [Narrator] In these neighborhoods, appraised home values are low.

Even for black homeowners who have meticulously maintained their homes.

- We had to put in a furnace, heating and air conditioning, recarpeted it.

You know, we've done everything.

And, got it up to, I think they said, $43,000.

"This is worth $43,000."

I said, "It is?"

I said, "I seen houses not half as good as mine and they selling them for $110,000, $112,000 out in Kettering.

How do you validate this?"

- My wife and I experienced that a couple of years ago, where we knew our house was valued at less than it was when we purchased it even after we had made upgrades.

- [Narrator] For years, many black homeowners have felt shorted by appraisers.

- Perception plays a big part in coming up with the value.

I've only met in my 36 year, almost 36 years about five black appraisers.

In Dayton right now I could probably only name two.

That's a very small percentage.

- The only thing I can do about it is the next time we do it one of my white friends will be... they'll be Michael Carter.

I mean, it's frustrating but that's what you... that's what I'll have to do.

And, like the woman in Indianapolis who's home doubled in value when she had her white friend pose as her.

When it was her, it was undervalued.

- There's now way we can get that price I have- - [Narrator] They didn't mean to pour salt on the wound, but a friendly chat with some of Larry's former white NCR co-workers was revealing.

- When I talked to some of the retirees, they say, "Larry you outta come on to the retirement village where we live in.

You know, we sold our house, we paid $26,000 for it in the '70's and I sold it for $260,000."

I said, "$260.000?"

I said, "I put $40,000 into my home, minimum of $40,000."

I said, "And now it's still only worth $43,000, how?"

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] As we take stock our past and map out our future, where do we stand today?

- This is the house I grew up in.

When I was seven years old we moved here to Residence Park.

I remember coming out to play and several of the white mothers not wanting their children to play with me.

It makes me think about how brave and courageous my parents were to move into an all-white neighborhood and also to really fight against housing discrimination in this community.

But there's so many unresolved issues and it's disappointing to know that today we're still fighting against segregation.

- The segregation in Dayton today is worse than it was in the 1960's before the Civil Rights Act was passed.

- Dayton is still one of those cities that can be defined as being hyper-segregated and the Miami Valley region, is really largely characterized by this black-white divide that we see.

- [Narrator] The price for being poor and black is paid by each successive generation.

The area that used to be called Hog Bottom, the shantytown slum condemned by the FHA, has been replaced by the communities of Madden Hills, Pineview and Highview Hills.

Communities adjacent to a landfill, a prison, a halfway house and a waste water treatment facility.

Thanks to the prevailing winds, students at nearby Dunbar High School are greeted most mornings with a pungent remainder of which side of town they call home.

All this is separated from the more affluent southern suburbs by the Great Miami River.

Past is present.

90 years later and the maps continue to tell the story.

(upbeat music) - If we look at the maps that were created in the 1930's, we can see the direct impact on how it impacts things that we're living with today.

For example, looking at housing values we see a large correlation there between those areas that were greenlined with the exponentially higher housing value in the Miami Valley today.

So, in some areas there's a $100,000 difference but it goes to as much as a quarter of a million-dollar difference in housing values.

- [Narrator] Schools are largely funded through local property taxes.

So, housing values have a direct relationship with the quality of local schools.

And then there's life expectancy.

- We see disparities as well with longevity and life expectancy rates in the Miami Valley region in which one mile can mean more than 10 years of one's life.

In some areas across the Miami Valley region, the life expectancy difference is 25 years.

A 25-year differential.

And I think a lot of people are confused about that, many of my students will say things like, "Racial discrimination is illegal now, we had the 1968 Fair Housing Act."

- People think that because laws change, attitudes do and that's not the case.

A law can be changed but that doesn't make you like somebody anymore, that doesn't make you think that the law's even okay.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Perhaps the most damaging legacy of redlining is the how it's minimized the ability for black families to build wealth across generations.

70% of whites in the Dayton metro area own their homes, compared to 42% of blacks.

- Home ownership is one of the basic ways in which individuals can build wealth.

If you're renting, you're not building up wealth, you're not building up equity.

- [Narrator] Equity adds up.

$188,200 is the net worth of a typical white family.

That's nearly eight times greater than the average black family, according to the Brookings Institute.

- We have that particular challenge that we're dealing with in terms of the ability to transfer wealth to the next generation.

So there's an immediate impact on the individual.

It's also an impact on the extended family of the individual in terms of the ability to build up wealth.

- [Narrator] In 2020, Citigroup estimated the U.S. economy lost 16 trillion dollars over the past 20 years as a result of discrimination against African Americans.

That's money that would have been spent by black families and black businesses.

Money that could have helped power the economy.

- And so I'm inclined to say that we're wrapped in a garment of mutual destiny because at the micro-level, inequality effects individuals and it effects households, but at the macro-level it effects our ability to remain competitive, especially in a world of increasing global competition.

When we don't address equity, we are basically allowing a self-inflicted wound to persist.

- [Cora] We can't make the world better unless we are fighting with words and ideals and then we turn them into action.

And until we can do that, we just talkin'.

(upbeat music) (soft music)