By Catherine ReagorMegan Taros | Arizona Republic
Housing discrimination, including disastrous government-supported redliningis hurting south Phoenix neighborhoods more than 50 years after it was struck down as illegal and predatory.
Neighborhoods across south Phoenix still have low homeownership rates among Black and Latino people after areas south and east of downtown were redlined by the federal government in the 1930s.
That designation, the only one given to an area in Arizona, meant banks wouldn’t lend to people trying to buy homes there.
That government action, as well as deed restrictions on where people of color could buy homes and other unfair practices, pushed many Black and Latino families south of downtown Phoenix and across the Salt River into substandard housing and neighborhoods with no sidewalks, public lighting or trees.
