Sep 7, 2008

THEN AND NOW: City shut its doors to blacks in past

By Matt Bowling / Daily News Columnist

Editor's Note: This is the second installment in a two-part series on housing discrimination in Palo Alto.



The Federal Housing Association divided properties into four categories for banking purposes, from desirable Type A properties to "risky" Type D properties, outlined in red. Black neighborhoods were almost always put in the D category - a practice which would later be called "redlining." In fact, FHA manuals instructed banks to steer clear of sections with "inharmonious racial groups" and suggested that cities enact racially restrictive zoning ordinances, as well as covenants prohibiting black owners.

With such covenants excluding blacks from Type A and B neighborhoods and as they were unable to secure mortgage loans to buy homes in Type C and D communities, many blacks faced few options but to rent in urban ghettos. And indeed when blacks were looking for housing in the Palo Alto area, they would usually find the real estate agent driving to redlined East Palo Alto.

For real estate agents, these actions tended to be motivated by profit as much as by bigotry. One Burlingame Realtor bluntly told the Palo Alto Times in 1956 that "It's pretty well proven that when Negroes come in, property values drop. It's quite a determining factor when I realize I'm going to cost my neighbors two or three thousand dollars." In the same article, Doug Couch, president of Palo Alto's Board of Realtors, agreed, "If you do sell to Negroes, everyone else is down your throat."

Couch's estimate of attitudes in Palo Alto was pretty accurate. A 1952 survey by the Palo Alto Fair Play Council reported that only 68 Palo Altans polled would rent to person of good character regardless of race while 198 would rent to whites only.

Other real estate agents engaged in so-called block-busting schemes, in which they would stir fears that a neighborhood was about to be inundated by minority residents - and then seek to profit from panic selling. Many parts of East Palo Alto and Menlo Park's Belle Haven district experienced this sort of massive "white flight" after a few black residents moved in. Furthermore, when blacks did break the color line, they would often find their new white neighbors putting up "for sale" signs.

Of course, there were groups in Palo Alto that condemned such attitudes and supported open housing. Throughout the 1950s, the Palo Alto Fair Play Committee pushed housing integration by showing documentary films, lobbying government to adopt new laws and helping to improve infrastructure and housing conditions in largely black neighborhoods. In 1958, more than 1,000 Palo Altans signed a petition for "open and unsegregated housing" that was backed by 12 area churches. The petition stated that "all person are children of God and therefore to be treated as equals under God."

And by the 1970s (although the "black neighborhoods" of Palo Alto were long gone) there were many more advocacy groups fighting for open housing. The NAACP, Midpeninsula Citizens for Fair Housing and the city's own Human Relations Committee had all joined the fight. Still, a 1971 survey by the Mid-Peninsula Citizens for Fair Housing revealed that racism in housing was still widespread. One study showed that 58 percent of the city's large apartment complexes showed evidence of discrimination when black and white middle-class professionals inquired for apartments in sequence.

And two decades later, not enough had changed. The Palo Alto Weekly reported that the Mid-Peninsula Citizens for Housing found racial bias when testing with control subjects. The Weekly reported that "blacks who want to live in Palo Alto report they sometimes have trouble finding housing because the apartment or house is 'no longer available' ... (but) a white person arriving just a half hour later often finds the apartment available."

Today, middle- and upper-class black residents are scattered throughout largely white and Asian neighborhoods in the city. And although recent newspaper reports paint a picture of openness in Palo Alto toward black residents, the legacy of years of housing discrimination is still with us. Despite the massive migration of blacks to the Peninsula following World War II, Palo Alto's black population still stands at just 2 percent, as it has since the Great Depression. And if Palo Alto's population does not entirely look like America today, it's clearly because the city shut its doors to some Americans in the past.



For more of Matt Bowling's articles go to www.paloaltohistory.com.

To read the entire story visit www.paloaltohistory.com/african

americans.html.