Redlining in your city
To see your own city's redlining map, you can click on the map above. The Mapping Inequality website allows you to zoom in on detailed maps of cities across the continental United States.
Warning: The National Archives' Home Owners Loan Corporation materials shared at Mapping Inequality were completed 80 years ago. As you explore, you will likely encounter hurtful language in the descriptions, using words such as "infiltration," "undesirable," "lower grade" and worse.
Does your home have deed restrictions?
For many years real estate developers were able to use deed restrictions, or covenants, to prohibit a property's purchase, lease, or occupation by particular groups of people. If you are living in an older home, it is possible that your deed still contains restrictive language. It might even say that you yourself aren’t supposed to live there.
Although a Supreme Court decision in 1948 made racially restrictive covenants unenforceable, some still appear in deeds simply because they were never taken out. To find out if your deed has restrictions, you can ask for a copy at the Recorder’s office from your municipality. If you are interested in looking back in time, you can often research previous owners online, or if you are interested in finding restrictive covenants in general, you can skim through pages of your neighborhood’s deed books.
Learn more about this practice from the University of Minnesota's Mapping Prejudice project.
