Steering, redlining, and mortgage lending discrimination are all discriminatory housing practices that impact people of color in the U.S. disproportionately.

Steering, redlining, and mortgage lending discrimination are all discriminatory housing practices that impact people of color in the U.S. disproportionately. Hello Lovely/Getty Images

How Federal Agencies Can Use Data to Promote Fair Housing

Historical and current housing data is a critical tool for advancing racial equity.

Housing inequity has made it more difficult for people of color, especially Black Americans, to own their own homes – and the problem is only getting worse. In 1960, White Americans had homeownership rates 26% higher than Black Americans. That gap has grown to 29.4%. Furthermore, redlining continues to affect financial opportunities and community services in Black and Brown communities with implications for financial, physical, and emotional health and well-being. 

Housing adequacy and affordability are complex, vary by locality, and are often dependent on state and local policy decisions, economic conditions, availability of federal housing assistance, and historical and ongoing discriminatory housing practices. Steering, redlining, and mortgage lending discrimination are all discriminatory housing practices that impact people of color in the U.S. disproportionately. 

While programs to fight housing discrimination have been in place for decades, federal agencies can do more. An issue brief from the nonprofit Center for Open Data Enterprise recently published by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, “Leveraging Data to Improve Racial Equity in Fair Housing,” shows that agencies can use data and analytics in new ways to promote fair housing and help close the racial homeownership gap. Historical and current housing data is a critical tool for advancing racial equity by mapping the status of housing disparities, providing use cases for data analysis, and identifying challenges to be addressed. 

Data is now available thanks to the Fair Housing Act, administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, administered by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which requires financial institutions to maintain, report, and publicly disclose loan-level information on mortgages. 

Federal agencies can build on these protections and collaborate with nonprofits like the Black Wealth Data Center, the private sector, and community-based partners to identify and apply new sources of data as well. The report from the IBM Center and CODE describes data opportunities in five areas. 

1. Reducing mortgage lending discrimination. Mortgage lending discrimination is a direct result of redlining and related HOLC maps. It occurs when lenders base credit decisions on factors other than the applicant’s creditworthiness, such as race or gender. Local lending outcomes and practices are also critical factors when assessing fair housing and access to housing opportunities in a community. Demographic data and information on lending practices can help analyze homeownership and lending access disparities according to demographics. 

2. Increasing homeownership and affordability. Consistent home ownership is a foundation for wealth building. However, Black homeownership rates have continued to lag substantially in comparison to all other groups in the United States. Local variations in affordability can be a significant cause of segregation, influencing some protected classes’ accessibility to certain neighborhoods.

Housing costs can be analyzed alongside income levels to measure housing affordability, relative to household income. 

3. Addressing negative effects on well-being and health. Studies have shown statistically significant correlations between historical redlining and present-day adverse health and socioeconomic outcomes at the census tract levels (i.e. declines in intergenerational economic mobility, lower life expectancy). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed an initiative to improve public health through data-driven approaches, such as using public health surveillance data to improve community design decisions through Health Impact Assessments and other tools. 

4. Improving socioeconomic outcomes. Poor economic standing is associated with limited health care access, low insurance rates, postponing needed care, and higher hospitalization rates — issues exacerbated by low-quality housing. Effective interventions, like the government’s success in radically curbing lead poisoning between 1976 and 2002, can reduce environmental health disparities related to housing. Interventions at the local, state, and federal level can help reduce these health and safety risks and promote health. Localized socioeconomic status data and tools like social vulnerability indices can help identify and target new interventions. 

5. Acting on housing insecurity during COVID-19. A number of social and environmental factors — such as neighborhoods with high levels of pollution or located in food deserts — have contributed to the higher rates of COVID hospitalization and death among Black and Latino Americans. In addition, structural and institutional effects of residential housing segregation have made it more likely for BIPOC people to live in densely populated areas that can make it easier for COVID to spread. Government data on household density and stability is critical to developing local housing response plans to curb the pandemic’s negative impacts. 

The report also includes specific recommendations for the federal government to use high-quality, detailed, accessible data in the interest of housing equity. These include: 

Data-driven strategies: Developing actionable strategies to improve and apply Federal housing data sources 

Data inventories: Creating inventories of high-priority, high-impact datasets and metrics through public-private collaboration 

Data standards: Using Federal guidance and public-private collaboration to create standards and data-sharing protocols for housing data 

Metrics and indicators: Proposing metrics to evaluate existing housing policies based on open data 

Case studies: Collecting and sharing examples of data analyses that have helped uncover racial discrimination and identify poor housing stock, and the use of data for policy reform

Discriminatory housing practices and policies have systemically disenfranchised communities of color, resulting in lower homeownership rates, higher eviction rates, discriminative lending, and other poor outcomes. As federal agencies work to correct these historical inequities, high-quality, accessible Federal and local data will be needed to ensure their success. 

Temilola Afolabi is the Center for Open Data Enterprise’s senior research associate and lead’s their Open Data for Racial Equity Program. She can be reached at temilola@odenterprise.org.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.