Welcome to a Nevada Democracy project.

Edition of nevada Week.

I'm amber Rene Dixon of Vegas PBS.

And I'm Michael Forman of the Nevada Independent.

The Nevada Democracy Project is a partnership between our two organizations, and together we're holding community listening sessions to find out what we should be reporting on.

We held our first listening session at the West Las Vegas Library, where residents told us that redlining a discriminatory practice outlawed in 1968, is still hurting them.

My name is Chandler Cooke's.

I was born and raised in this community.

I'm 29 years old.

I want to mention one thing Mr. Collins said earlier was the gift of exposure that really hit home for me, because we need that is as a younger generation, because we're going through a different way of life than you all did from coming here in our historic West Side.

My father, my grandmother, my uncles, aunts, they were able to work a single job, purchase a home, raise their family, put money aside to send their children to school.

I was a byproduct of that upcoming.

But now here I am out of school.

Nearly $100,000 in student loan debt.

I can't afford to purchase a home.

I can hardly afford to maintain a home that will one day be inherited to me.

I look at that as generational wealth.

My grandmother was a property owner on Jackson Street because of the redlining that she endured.

It wasn't.

There was no investment into the property.

Now that I'm a I'm a property manager for and that property will come to me still.

You know, I'm I'm in debt myself, you know, And how will I be able to maintain both of these things?

You know, so the trickle down, the fallout effect from the berry lining, you know, is affecting the next generation is making those opportunities far less reachable.

You know, the freedom has been cut off.

To better understand how redlining is impacting.

Chandler Cookes, we visited him in his grandmother at one of the properties.

He's expected to inherit.

That story is ahead.

But let's first define what redlining is.

For that, we spoke with Richard and Leah Rothstein.

Richard Rothstein wrote The Color of Law A Forgotten History of how our government segregated America.

While he and his daughter, Leah Rothstein, co-wrote Just Action How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law.

Redlining is a very loose term, and what it generally refers to is the reluctance of banks and realtors and developers to provide housing for African-Americans in low income, segregated neighborhoods.

Because in the 1930s, the federal government drew maps and the colored of low income areas, in particular those occupied by African-Americans.

REDD And so that's where the term redlining comes from.

But it's the maps themselves that segregate anybody.

It was the reluctance of banks and realtors, developers to serve African-Americans in segregated low income neighborhoods.

It also is sometimes used to describe the general policy of also refusing to serve African-Americans in white neighborhoods, because the only place, you know, realtors wouldn't sell to African-Americans is in white neighborhoods, and therefore banks wouldn't have the opportunity to lend to them.

I was just going to add that, yeah, the vague term of redlining is often used to encompass a lot of policies that were enacted by federal, state, local governments to not only determine where African-Americans could get loans and could acquire housing, but then what those neighborhoods looked like.

So.

So it's often used to encompass all of the policies that then made African-American neighborhoods areas of lower resource and like less investment, less government, fewer government services, closer to industrial polluting companies and factories closer to freeways.

When the Rothstein's referred to redlining as a loose and vague term, we found that to be true in the case of Chandler Cox and his grandmother, Ernestine Cox.

While Ernestine told us she had no problem getting loans to buy homes on the West Side.

That broader term of redlining, including less investment and fewer government services, would certainly impact her and her family.

And this is my daughter that's on in a way she don't she don't really know yet that I'm going to be a star.

I'm going to be on the news.

Ernestine Cooke says she began buying homes on Las Vegas's West Side in the 1950s, a place for having a family.

So I wouldn't have to be moving around because it was hard for black people at that particular time to get somewhere.

I mean, you can only on this in this area because of segregation, the West side is where all African-Americans in Las Vegas had to live in the fifties and sixties.

The area lacked services like streetlights and paved roads, a problem that's persisted, says Ernestine grandson Chandler.

This road was just recently developed.

Right.

But how long has it been in need of care?

Right.

How long has many of the streets in this area in need of care?

So I think redlining played a part in that as well.

Still, signs of progress can be seen and heard.

Renovations are underway right next door to Ernestine on a property.

Chandler says has sat dormant for six years.

You know, like for the property next door, right?

That being dormant for 16 years, you're not going to find something like that in the Rancho Bel-Air area.

All right.

You're not going to find something like that in more of growing and prominent areas of the city.

So you know that in vacant lands, all of that lowers property value, lowering the value of the property he's set to inherit from his grandmother, this four plex and a three bedroom house nearby, he says are both in need of renovations.

But with $100,000 of student loan debt, he just can't afford it.

So, you know, I just have to be innovative in how we would access capital to be able to improve the building.

But, I mean, we're warriors.

You know, my grandmother has been here for a long time.

She's maintained this building, you know, to the tee.

So, you know, I'm follow in her footsteps.