Yolanda, 61, owns a home in the predominantly black 7th Ward neighborhood of New Orleans.
To repair her leaking roof in 2020, she had to borrow money.
"It's one of those credit card loans," she said. "Like 30% interest and stuff, you know. My back was a bit against the wall, so I just went ahead and made the loan, a high-interest loan."
As a sociologist who has studied housing conditions in the U.S. for the past decade, I led a research team that conducted interviews with homeowners struggling with basic maintenance issues, such as rotting wood siding and floors, mold, crumbling masonry, outdated plumbing, and leaky walls. ceilings. Our first paper from this project is currently under peer review.
Like Yolanda, our interviewees-whom we gave pseudonyms to protect their privacy-were almost all black women over the age of 60 who lived in old buildings in neighborhoods that have borne the brunt of discrimination-such as redlining and unjust land use decisions- and divestment.
Once a vibrant neighborhood with black-owned businesses and homes, the 7th Ward has become an area of high poverty since the I-10 freeway was built directly through its heart in the 1960s.
Yolanda had lived there for ten years before the highway was built.
Although brightly painted, Yolanda's house is separated from I-10 only by an empty lot, and the constant noise and higher pollution levels make it difficult to imagine that Yolanda could sell her house for a profit or its declining value if equity could use. .
Did Yolanda take out a high-interest loan for nothing?
Was she throwing good money after bad?
These are not easy questions to answer.
Like other Black female homeowners we interviewed, Yolanda had to choose between debt and decay.
As she explained, she had her "back against a wall."
The racist and sexist history of decline
According to a 2022 analysis of federal census data by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, nearly a third of homeowners making less than $32,000 - about 4.8 million people - have spent nothing on maintenance or improvements.
I have noticed worrying trends in the conditions of those living in homes in disrepair.
In my book 'Stacked Decks' I explore the connections between urban housing, race, gender and income inequality.
Since at least the 1970s, real estate agents and lenders have exploited the precarious financial position of black women and sold them mortgages on homes in poor condition.
Today - fifty years later - these homes pose even greater health and safety risks to their owners than when they first purchased them.
Research shows that after less than two years of ownership, disrepair makes maintaining a livable home difficult for low-income homeowners.
Unaddressed repairs, such as leaky roofs or broken pipes, often result in code violations and lawsuits, leading to foreclosures, evictions and the possibility of homelessness.
The situation is worse for black women, who on average have much less wealth than their white or male counterparts. Without money to pay for repairs, female homeowners face incurring more debt as they make repairs.
Climate change means these problems are worsening due to increased rainfall and extreme temperatures.
Doris, a homeowner in Chicago, told us in 2021 about her old and leaky roof and the flooding in her basement. She explained that the flooding was partly due to nearby city drains overflowing.
"Every time it rains, water comes in," she says. "Because the sewer wasn't clean...so much water came into my basement that my washer and dryer were floating on top of the water." An insurance claim covered some of the cost of this repair for Doris, and the city is experimenting with new ways to address flood water, but water still comes in when it rains heavily.
Racism and sexism in housing construction
The racism that pervades the housing industry is now common knowledge. The real estate industry has, at various points in history, excluded Black Americans from home ownership, included them through predatory lending and deals, and reinforced racial segregation by denying loans to Black and other minority residents. This practice is known as redlining and became a self-fulfilling prophecy of disinvestment and declining values.
But real estate agents and mortgage brokers were also sexist.
These real estate agents and mortgage brokers knew that Black women had limited options and assumed they were likely to default on their mortgages.
Black women were consistently sold homes in need of repairs.
A lot can happen to a house in 50 years.
Buildings naturally deteriorate over time due to the combination of aging building materials and weather. At some point, all homes need repairs and preventative maintenance.
Kimberly from Chicago cares for her grandson almost full-time and told us about her concerns about the rotten wood making it dangerous to stand on her back porch.
"We're not going out the back door at all," Kimberly said. "We haven't used that for years. Four years now. We didn't use the back porch at all for four years."
Decay and environmental injustice
Decline is a matter of environmental injustice. The government has a responsibility to help with repairs because of its role in the housing discrimination that has created such racial disparities in housing conditions.
But like disaster relief, assistance to homeowners is uneven and difficult to come by.
American cities often use lotteries to hand out money for repairs, barely scratching the surface of the number of homes in need of repairs.
Although all homes require repair work over time, disrepair disproportionately affects those with the least resources because maintenance is expensive. Deterioration also causes health and safety problems, as do other environmental injustices such as the construction of highways and the location of polluting factories.
Decay can also force people to leave their homes because they cannot afford repairs.
But making repairs can make the debt worse.
What all this means is that owning a home, or even paying off a mortgage, does not guarantee that homes will remain affordable, an asset, or a safe haven.
Recognizing decay as environmental racism could be a step toward ensuring that homes are all of these things.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit organization providing facts and trusted analysis to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Robin Bartram, Tulane University Read more: Robin Bartram does not work for, consult with, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
