Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/216

8 the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), created in 1933. HOLC purchased mortgages threatened with foreclosure and issued new, amortized mortgages in their place. Not only did this mean that recipients of these mortgages could gain equity while paying off the loan, successful full payment would make the recipient a homeowner. Ostensibly to identify (and avoid) the riskiest recipients, the HOLC “created color-coded maps of every metropolitan area in the nation.” Green meant safe; red meant risky. And, regardless of class, every neighborhood with Blackblack [sic] people earned the red designation.

Similarly, consider the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), created in 1934, which insured highly desirable bank mortgages. Eligibility for this insurance required an FHA appraisal of the property to ensure a low default risk. But, nationwide, it was FHA’s established policy to provide “no guarantees for mortgages to African Americans, or to whites who might lease to African Americans,” irrespective of creditworthiness. No surprise, then, that “[b]etween 1934 and 1968, 98 percent of FHA loans went to white Americans,” with whole cities (ones that had a disproportionately large number of Blackblack [sic] people due to housing segregation) sometimes being deemed ineligible for FHA intervention on racial grounds. The Veterans Administration operated similarly.

One more example: the Federal Home Loan Bank Board