Mortgage receipt and photo

This mortgage receipt and photo show the work of the home owners’ loan corporation (HOLC), an agency created in 1933, as part of the New Deal, to refinance mortgages for those at risk of losing their homes due to the financial and economic crisis. Racial segregation and inequality in 20th Century US cities was reflected by a practice known as ‘redlining’. The HOLC identified ‘low quality’ city areas deemed risky for lending – areas where the majority of the urban Black populations and many white immigrants lived – coloured red on a series of HOLC maps. Redlining echoed other discriminatory practices that drove the concentration of Black poverty and depopulation in poorer areas of US cities.