Restricted Zoning and "Redlining"

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Map showing proposed zoning use districts from the 1928 Austin City Plan. The "recommended district" for Black residents is zoned for multi-purpose use (“Industrial” residency units) and surrounded by industrially-zoned districts.
Pages 52 and 53 of the 1928 Plan explaining the zoning use map, with “A” residential districts as entirely single-use and “Industrial” districts as being zoned for every possible use. From “A” to “Industrial” districts, more and more types of non-residential structures became possible to build.
Pages 52 and 53 of the 1928 Plan explaining the zoning use map, with “A” residential districts as entirely single-use and “Industrial” districts as being zoned for every possible use. From “A” to “Industrial” districts, more and more types of non-residential structures became possible to build.

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While white residential areas were often zoned as single-use, the 1928 plan zoned East Austin, the "recommended district” for Black residents, as almost entirely mixed-use. Mixed-use zoning meant that commercial and industrial development skyrocketed in East Austin, since it was cheaper and easier to do so– the area was already zoned for it and the permits would be approved automatically. Not only was the area made unhealthier via zoning for industrial uses, often ecologically and medically damaging, homeownership was made more difficult: single family residency units were often prohibited in these areas and public zoning restrictions paved the way for private zoning restrictions, almost all of which prevented Black Austinites from owning or even using land outside of East Austin.

A residential security map made for mortgage lenders in Austin, Texas. Residential neighborhoods were graded from A to D (“best” in green to “hazardous” in red). Austin’s security map shows East Austin was “redlined.”

The Home Owner’s Loan Corporation, a branch of the federal government, created maps that described how safe certain areas in major cities were for mortgage lenders. A neighborhood with a grade of “A,” colored green on the map, indicated that mortgage lenders should consider this area “safe” and low-risk for loans, while “D” neighborhoods were considered unsafe for loans and colored red. These maps were distributed to mortgage lenders in every major U.S. city, and encoded the practice of redlining where residents of predominantly minority neighborhoods were denied or overcharged on loans and other financial services, preventing home-ownership and investment in Black neighborhoods and other communities of color.

Austin’s security map shows that the area between East 1st Street and Manor Road, east of East avenue, was “redlined–” the same area that the 1928 plan had suggested moving Austin’s Black population to and the same areas the 1940 census showed were almost entirely Black. Not only did this deliberately and severely limit the agency of people of color, it also allowed discriminatory housing practices to prevent wealth-accrual for people of color and slash private investment in these districts by labeling them as unsafe for lenders.