You didn’t think you had school today, but class is now in session. We’re going to learn about the history of racist #housing policies in Seattle and how their history still affects communities today. /Thread
1/ Acknowledging our history, including the most ugly parts, keeps us accountable in moving forward towards achieving equity – from housing to education to jobs & beyond, we must recognize that governmental systems & laws still in place today were designed to codify prejudice.
2/ Today, neighborhoods from Wallingford to Queen Anne to the Central District are rooted in layers of systemic discrimination: from who can own land, what can be built, and whether & how it can be financed.
3/ If we want to truly understand why so many Seattle neighborhoods are still segregated, we need to dive into a few different areas – zoning, racial restrictive covenants, & redlining.
4/ First, we must acknowledge that we all live on land that is not our own. The Duwamish tribes are the indigenous people of the PNW region, reaching from Redmond to Seattle to Renton since 8000 BCE.
5/ In 1865, Seattle Board of Trustees passed a law banning Native Americans from living in Seattle. The next year, nonnative residents blocked a proposal for a Duwamish reservation. There are now only 700 living members of the Duwamish tribe. historylink.org/File/10979
6/ In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act forced Chinese residents onto steamer ships & out of the city. In 1946, Japanese American residents were taken from their homes & businesses to federally run camps under FDR’s Order 9066 during WWII. seattlemag.com/article/seattl…
7/ After the Great Fire in 1889, the city of Seattle created a 150-page document with needed building code/safety regulations. Where buildings could be placed or built was much less regulated & only depended on distance from the downtown core.
8/ This is why some Seattle neighborhoods still have older multifamily units – they are remnants of a time when growth of housing matched growth of population. Not until 1923 were zoning codes introduced into Seattle & they were rife with exclusion & racism.
9/ Enter – The Bartholomew Plan. It’s 1923 & Harland Bartholomew was an urban planner from Missouri. Many cities across the US adopted his guidelines for planning & zoning, including Seattle. The plan created single-family zoning (or “first residence district zoning”).
10/ Bartholomew created this method of zoning to “‘preserv[e] the more desirable residential neighborhoods and to block movement into ‘finer residential districts… by colored people.’” epi.org/publication/ma….
11/ Bartholomew’s plan shifted Seattle’s focus from building [safety] codes to building uses – & embedded into the ordinance coded language meant to perpetuate racial segregation. This is the foundation of SFZ in Seattle as we know it today. sightline.org/2018/05/23/thi…
12/ If the zoning code wasn’t enough to make sure that BIPOC were excluded from living in homes in certain neighborhoods, then imposing racial restrictive covenants, which became quite common, would take care of the rest.
13/ Race-based deed restrictions were common after 1926 when they were validated by the US Supreme Court in Corrigan v. Buckley.
14/ They were deemed an enforceable contract & those who violated them risked forfeiting property. Many prohibited sales to anyone of Jewish, Asian, or Black ancestry. depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenan…
15/ Covenants had language like “None of said lots shall be used, owned or occupied by, any person not of the White race” or this loathsome one from a subdivision in Clyde Hill, “This property shall not be resold, leased, rented or occupied except...by persons of the Aryan race.” 
16/ Frequently, these covenants not only barred non-white people from owning property in certain areas, they also barred property owners from renting to anyone except whites, keeping neighborhoods insular & white. depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenan…
17/ Legal enforcements were not the only means of upholding these covenants – social enforcement also played a large role. Neighborhood residents would intimidate & threaten BIPOC to keep them from moving into communities. depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenan…
18/ Some neighborhood residents took social enforcement a step further by developing their own restrictive deed covenants for their communities. Their exclusionary efforts were successful.
19/ In Capitol Hill in 1927, residents of Madison Ave undertook an effort to change all deeds in their area. This required convincing homeowners to amend their existing deeds to include covenants barring sale or occupancy to Black people. depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenan…
20/ Real estate agents also boosted the social enforcement of racial restrictive covenants, playing gatekeeper to who they would show and sell certain dwellings to in certain neighborhoods.
21/ The way that we “socially enforce” racial covenants today lies in neighborhoods resisting zoning changes. Whether that’s through design review or fighting inclusive #zoning laws, the Social Enforcers of the 1920s, 30s & beyond are the NIMBYs of today. depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenan…
22/ The message of social enforcement using terms like “neighborhood character” remains clear – We don’t want you in our neighborhood.
23/ Thankfully, racial restrictive covenants met their end (though you can still find recorded deeds that contain this unenforceable language).
24/ In 1948, the US Supreme Court in Shelley v Kraemer, changed its mind & found racially restrictive covenants unenforceable. It wasn’t until the Fair Housing Act of 1968, though, that discrimination on the basis of race would become illegal.
25/ And while those 1930s-era race-based exclusions are no longer enforceable, other vestiges of these same covenants are. For example, many of these neighborhood covenants allow only one home per lot, ensuring that only the wealthy can live there.
26/ If you thought Shelley v Kraemer was the end of racist housing policies, more followed. While the SCOTUS found private, race-based covenants unenforceable, other systems still existed to achieve the same exclusionary goals. Redlining was one frequently used system.
27/ The system was designed by the Federal Government & utilized by banks to determine who got loans to buy property & by the federal government to determine if they would insure a loan. Many communities of color were designated with a red line showing a “high risk of default.”
28/ What does “high risk”/hazardous mean? Risk was based on the age & condition of housing, transportation access, closeness to amenities such as parks or detractors like polluting industries, the economic class & employment status of residents, & of course…race.
29/ Redlining created segregation between neighborhoods which drew racial boundaries. In 1960, Seattle, a 92% white city, pushed 90% of Black residents into the Central District.
30/ And the result wasn’t just segregation—which already existed to some degree. The result was the inability of people who wanted to buy property in the redlined area from getting federally guaranteed loans.
31/ This meant no traditional loans were available & homes could not be bought & sold. With no institutional money to renovate, maintain, or build in these communities, physical structures deteriorated & new generations were unable to buy in to the neighborhood – disinvestment.
32/ In 1975, the Central Seattle Community Council Federation published a report called “Redlining and Disinvestment in Central Seattle: How the Banks are Destroying our Neighborhoods.” clerk.seattle.gov/~F_archives/do…
33/ Redlining affected beyond access to loans: job opportunity, wealth distribution, education, food availability, investment. These issues are still pervasive in many Black communities, where opportunity was squashed because of these housing policies. theurbanist.org/2019/10/17/how…
34/ These disparities are seen when you overlap the original zoning maps & redlined areas with maps of our neighborhoods now. kuow.org/stories/some-s…
35/ We see that disinvestment of historically Black neighborhoods lead to displacement as cities grew again. In the 70s, the Central District was a 70% Black neighborhood. Now, only 14% with many residents pushed to other cities in South King County. kuow.org/stories/why-se…
36/ The whispers of those segregationist government systems and their impacts persist across our region. Which is why we come back to current zoning ordinances.
37/ Single family zoning is a direct descendant of The Bartholomew Plan— and its thinly veiled systemic racism and single family zoning continues to thrive in our housing policy.
38/ Currently, only single-family homes are allowed on 75% of Seattle’s residential land. (And single-family zoning is the norm for most cities in our region).
39/ To create a more equitable & inclusive future in Seattle’s housing policy, we need to focus on creating all types of housing for all people close to jobs, good schools, great healthcare & other amenities.
40/ We need to build more multifamily housing, townhouses, ADUs, du-, tri- and quad-plexes, and beyond. We need to boost community investment where disinvestment was once rampant.
41/ We need to create more affordable housing, easy access to transit, build more homes in Urban Growth Areas close to jobs, & remove redundant and expensive processes that make it more difficult to create homes for people.
42/ We cannot ignore the deep and hurtful history of Seattle’s (and region's) raced-based housing practices. We must acknowledge and understand them, and let them guide us towards building more inclusive neighborhoods, where equity and inclusion is possible for everyone.
