Sub-Threshold Redlining in North Carolina

This presentation represents the takeaways from a larger report done on multiple neighborhood classifications of North Carolina towns drawn by D.F. Betts, the HOLC North Carolina district appraiser, in 1936. The systematic denial of housing investment on the basis of racial composition is among the most studied policies of American urban geography, yet its operation and consequences remain relatively unexamined in cities under an official 40,000 population floor. Primarily focusing on Fayetteville, the largest of the surveyed cities, geographic analysis examines contemporary conditions while archival evidence is utilized to trace institutional decisions that entrenched systematic inequities in municipal services, access to financial instruments, and housing itself, with a focus on illustrating the sequence and perpetuation of inequities. The study also examined contemporary lending patterns in the sub-threshold cities, controlling for factors such as applicant race, income, loan characteristics, and city.