The housing heist, the desire for generational wealth, and the great rip off
Black Generational Wealth — a Three-Part exposé
One wet Chicago morning, June 1951, a Black man determined to escape the Projects caused an uproar in Cicero.
But that’s not how trouble started brewing in a sleepy but peaceful enclave.
I’m going ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning, where the s***t hit the fan.
It all started with a certain Mrs. DeRose, a white woman, privileged owner of a reclusive property located at 6139–43 W. 19th Street, Cicero.
She had rented her property, willingly, to a soon-to-be cantankerous white family.
She got into an argument with her tenants, it was heated. After the fireworks had died down. The tenants decided to move out but not without a refund of the rent.
Mrs. DeRose wasn’t having any of it, she refused to pay up. A refund wasn’t in the tenancy agreement, she argued. The tenants insisted otherwise and took the matter to the housing tribunal.
At the tribunal’s hearing, Mrs. DeRose put her feet down, they weren’t getting a dime out of her. She was wrong.
The housing officials sided with her tenants, she was ordered to refund part of the rent. She was pissed, terribly, suddenly she had a score to settle.
Mrs. DeRose knew where it would hurt most. You see back then, long before the Civil rights movement, Cicero was a white-only neighborhood.
She decided to rent her house to a Mr. Harvey E. Clark Jr. — a Black man, theirs was a case of ‘willing owner willing renter.’
Clark, a second world war veteran, a professional, and a graduate of Frisk University was escaping the overcrowded Southside ghetto. He could afford Mrs. DeRose’s rent and had no trouble living in an all-White neighborhood.
When a housing official heard of Mrs. DeRose’s betrayal, he warned her of ‘dire consequences,’ — “there will be ‘trouble if Harvey Clark moves into the house,” he told her.
On June 8, at 2:30 pm, a moving van containing Clark’s furniture was stopped by the Police. The rental agent was ordered out of the van at gunpoint.
A White crowd who’d heard rumors of a black family invading their all-white neighborhood gathered, they jeered — Clark was nonchalant.
The Police ordered him out of the van. They threatened to put him under “protective custody.” One detective told him as it was; “I’ll bust your damned head if you don’t move.” he snarled.
Clark’s story was resplendent of a new class of Black people, professionals, and World War 11 Veterans, Black people who believed their country owed them alimony and their families better lives.
Now, before rambling on, this story is not about Black people escaping poverty in the projects — that makes excellent reading but it’s not the path I want to take.
Here’s something new — greedy and opportunistic real estate agents and building developers. Like vultures they circle, smelling blood in Black people’s desire to build generational wealth. That’s what I want to talk about.
And don’t think it’s all historical stuff, — it happened in the past sort of story — what I’m talking about is happening right now, yes, in 2022!
But first let’s go to the genesis of the problem, where it all began.
In the 60’s Black men and women like Clark, working hard to escape the ghettoes became the ‘new gold rush.’
They were mostly professional Black people who wanted to give their children a head start in life, desparate to escape the ghettoes — they were willing to pay any price to live in middle-class neighborhoods.
That desire became a multi-million-dollar business. It gave rise to a new breed of White profiteers by a new name, ‘Blockbusters’ — a crafty insidious lot willing to sell their mothers for the dollar.
Blockbusting churned dollars — It was a new game, like spinning a winning hand at the wheel, it gushed out green bucks, lots of green bucks, millions of it actually.
The game profited from fear, a new kind of fear, white fear.
This is how the script played out — but first let me explain why this script could be played out in the first place. You’ve probably heard of Redlining and Restrictive Covenants?
Here is the history;
In 1934, President Roosevelt’s New Deal to fight the great depression created Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) mandated to help homeowners facing foreclosure. Mostly White homeowners.
HOLC working with the FHA and Federal Banking Home Loan Board sent out surveyors into neighborhoods. Their job, — to determine lending risks in these neighborhoods.
High-income Neighborhoods got an excellent rating of ‘A’. Neighborhoods rated ‘D’ represented low income, they were risky investments.
These ratings were classified by color. Green was good, Red was bad.
Banks insurance companies and other financial services kept off ‘D’ or ‘Red’ neighborhoods.
Let me pause here, but here is a question for you to mull over is it by chance Red zones were mostly Black neighborhoods?
Here are some clues, the telltale fingerprints of structural racism — the questions asked when zoning;
- How old are the apartments or houses?
- Are they accessible? Are there good roads, good schools, good companies, and opportunities to work?
- Is the population or the demographics a majority-minority neighborhood? (a polite way of asking is the neighborhood White or Black?)
- Are the people mostly poor and uneducated?
Join me in the second part of this exposé as we reveal the risk faced by black homeowners — until then show some love.
