Here now to further help us understand the modern day impacts of redlining are Shantay patent galore, a director of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, and Jennifer Young, director of Community Engagement at UNLV's Kirk Kerkorian Medical School.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I want to start with you, Shawn Tay and that story we just watched.

What's missing from it, What might need to be further explained?

I think it's it encompasses so much.

The black history is so rich.

And a lot of what we forget is how we got here.

And Richard did a great a great job of explaining that in his book.

But what we have to understand that this same government that attempted to save us and help us along is the same government that suppressed us along the way.

How so?

So one of the things is when it comes to appraisals.

Right.

So there's only certain people who can become an appraiser, but it really stops black people who want to become appraisers from being able to do so.

Since when it's when it's said and done, you need to be an intern for an appraiser.

But the majority of all appraisers are white men.

And in order to do that, they need to be able to take you on.

So it's a rope block for a lot of black people and black professionals who want to get into that field.

That typically will bring us down to the part where we are buying high in communities, but we are selling low because of appraisal bias and you have to explain appraisal bias.

So typically appraisal bias is when appraisers will come in and they will value black homes and black communities lower than they would for a white community.

And that follows with the trend of redlining as well.

All right.

Okay.

And Jennifer, can you speak to how redlining impacts one's health?

Sure.

One of the things that we can certainly see right now is we think about social determinants of health.

And so according to the CDC, the definition is social determinants of health are the things that the place where the environment and conditions where we live, work and play.

So thinking about that, thinking about our physical environment, our neighborhood development, our social mobility, employment of such access to food safety, social contacts, and then your health care systems.

So as we saw in some of the segments, if you're thinking about an area, a geographic region that has disinvestment or has not been invested in over time, as we think about generational wealth building up, if you've had disadvantages and there's no investment coming in, these things become concentrated.

And so all of these things have an impact on people's health outcomes.

Okay.

And can you explain the link between cardiovascular disease and redlining, something that came up in our conversation?

Sure.

Yeah.

A study came out this summer and it was published in the Journal of American by the General American Medical Association.

And what's really great about the study is that the sample size is 80,000.

That's who access the VA system.

So that's a really great study because it kind of has a population that had health care access.

Now, what they found is in looking at these veterans who had cardiovascular issues such as stroke or cardiovascular disease, what they were able to see were that veterans who were living in typically historically redlined areas had higher risk factors for cardiovascular disease, so such as chronic kidney disease, hypertension, diabetes, and also then an increased factor and risk for cardiovascular disease itself.

For some people who may be struggling to understand the connection, can you break it down?

How one's environment can lead them to not being as healthy as someone who lives somewhere else?

Sure.

Absolutely.

So we think about your environment and just the conditions in which we live, work and play.

Thinking about green space, thinking about if you're living somewhere close to pollutants, so such as, say, a freeway or industrial areas, train tracks or such.

If you don't have transportation, that there are a heavy reliance upon public transportation.

And those things impact your social mobility as well.

If you're thinking about your economic stability, if you are living somewhere that does has disinvestment, there may not be a major grocery store, there may be some restriction or access to health, food, healthy foods.

So we always think about, say, this term, food deserts.

But there's also another term such as food swaps, where there perhaps there's a lot of food present, but it may be fast food, it may not be healthy options.

And so things like this all compact over time, and they do impact people's access to health care, but also their health outcomes.

Back to what you were talking about with the bias in appraisals.

When we had spoke on the phone prior to this interview, you mentioned the efforts you go to when you are selling the home of an African American family, and they were shocking to me.

Will you explain what you do to our viewers?

Absolutely.

So it's actually a term called whitewashing.

And essentially we whitewash the homes, so we remove all aspects that would give an appraiser an indication that someone black lived in this home.

That might mean removing black art, you know, black family photos.

It could be books on this shows it it encompasses what you call a home.

We would literally take that from being a home and turn it into a house in order to secure their equity in the property.

Why is that necessary?

Well, I think that comes back to appraisers being predominantly older white men, which can typically come with some sort of bias.

And our job is the best that we can do is to try to prepare the home to look less like there is someone black.

There to combat what we can do.

Right?

There's policies and all sorts of things that need to be fixed.

But from the standpoint of a real estate agent, what we can do is to try to remove the culture essentially out of the home so that there is no indication one way or the other, what type of family lives there.

Shanti, That can't sit well with you.

It does not.

It does not.

But there has been such a loss in the black community because of appraisal bias and an all out discrimination, that we have to do what we can do to preserve that equity because that is the same equity that will be used to think it's the college that will be used to open new businesses, become entrepreneurs.

So there's such a bigger picture and there's so much in a black community that is weighed on their ability to get a home as well as their ability to sell it at its highest dollar.

That that leads me to my question for you, Shanti, about gender generational wealth in affording college.

How did that show up in Chandler's story?

When you talk about building generational wealth, taking equity out and putting it in other places?

Well, that comes down to our wealth gap is specifically to the gap between black homeownership and white homeownership.

So as of 2022, our black homeownership rate nationally is at 45%.

That's just slightly higher than it was in 1968 when the Fair Housing Act was put into place.

And it's actually lower than the 50% that was in place in about 2003.

So as you could see, we've declined from that.

But we know in general, nationwide homeownership is how people begin to have, you know, other things like businesses and being able to send their kids to college.

Now, without us being able to have that aspect, our children have the highest level of social of student loans.

And sometimes we'll skip college altogether because they know it would be a burden on themselves or their family.

We also know that that is typically a reason why they can't get equal fee for loans.

Now, what I will say is a small win is before lenders would have to assess 1% of whatever their loan amount was.

So if they had $100,000 in student loans, they would have to assess 1% of that towards a payment.

Now, that has been reduced down to half.

So those who could not afford it because they were being dinged $1,000 a month for student loans, even if their payment was only $200, they were still required to have a payment of 1%.

That has now been reduced to a half a percent.

And that makes a major difference when it comes to black millennials who are purchasing the majority of homes by black people.

It helps them when it comes to student loans, just like it did.

Okay.

And a follow up question.

How is Chandler's situation different from someone who may not be inheriting property?

Typically, in white communities, they have plans set up to send their kids to college, but they also have the ability to pull from their equity to do something like that.

But if you come from a household that doesn't have generational wealth through homeownership, you're having to find other opportunities to do that.

And when you bring that back to appraisal bias, like Chandler, who would potentially be able to use the equity in the home to pay off his student loans.

But if his appraisal was coming in lower because of the people who live in there, because of the area, like the historical Westside area, he could be getting far less for the home even if he was to refinance.

Jennifer, I want to go back to the health impact of redlining.

We talked about the lack of access to grocery stores, to parks in historically redlined neighborhoods.

What about access to health care?

that's pretty significant.

So this becomes a burden for the residents that live there, that are traveling further.

You're also further from providers that may know what your situation is.

It's a very important, I think, particularly in medicine, that physicians have a an understanding of what their patients are going through, what life is like beyond that exam room.

So when you think about having health care that's accessible right in your neighborhood, this means that you're having providers that know what's happening to you and know what your life is like when you step outside that door.

So quickly, I think, you know, we can often hear in medicine that patients are noncompliant.

And so thinking about instead of noncompliance, they're unable to adhere.

And it's maybe because of transportation or lack of transportation challenges with transportation.

If someone is working a job that they may not have the time to take off work or taking off work is really very costly to them.

Then are you able to make up all these follow up appointments?

If you have a transportation issue where you don't have your own vehicle?

Are you then on the bus for several hours to make appointments, to go to appointments, even pharmacy?

So when we think about health care in a lot of low income neighborhoods, having a pharmacy that's local is challenging as well.

So are you then able to have to take a special trip just to get refills on your meds?

And that may be monthly?

You know, one of the things that we talk about, you know, previously and I and I was just having a conversation of like what a bus pass costs.

So, you know, a bus pass for a month is about $60.

And if you don't have it, you don't have it.

That's that's a lot of money.

But it may be cheaper then to be like, okay, $2 a day.

But taking a bus takes a lot of due time and out of the day.

And so having health care locally is is significant.

So as part of the city's revitalization plan for the historic West Side, the plan there are plans for a health care center, a wellness center.

Richard Rothstein, though, brought up in our interview with him an important point that I'd like both of you to respond to.

And he said, well, that's great.

A health care center will certainly help.

However, they're just going to be treating the symptoms of living in that neighborhood.

The real solution is when you are getting people to move to healthier neighborhoods, is that the case, do you think, Jennifer?

I think it's a compound thing.

So when we think about I would say concentrated disadvantage is the term I would use.

So if we have an area that's concentrated disadvantages, whether it be lack of grocery store transportation, health care, access, economic opportunities, as we think about generational wealth building up, we think about this and then the complete other end of the it gets more challenging to come out of this.

To his point, I would agree with him when we think about spreading that out throughout the city.

And when you're thinking about, say, economic mobility opportunities, even exposure to things, so you don't want he could speak more to this, but affordable housing being distributed throughout the city.

When we think about opportunity now, on the other end, not everyone can leave their neighborhood.

And this doesn't mean that we should be giving up on neighborhoods.

It doesn't mean that we should continue down the road of disinvestment.

I think places do need to have their own local grocery stores, their own local health care access and, you know, good quality public transportation.

But simply having people leave and be distributed throughout the city does nothing for the place that's left behind and the residents that are there.

Shantay, what do you think?

I think it would be very disheartening to say, you know, make it out.

And I know we've talked about that before, about the goal of black communities sometimes just being able to make it out of that community as if the only way for you to live healthy, to gain wealth, you know, to live like others, is to completely leave the neighborhood.

So I think that's the difference between equality and equity, because just because every neighborhood has a grocery store doesn't mean that every neighborhood's grocery store is equal.

And so that's why I think it's so important that you fix the community as well, so that no matter where you are in your life, you have the ability to get the same thing, whether you live in Summerlin or the historic West Side.

In Jennifer, I want to talk about the mental health impacts of redlining.

There's been rumors that people on the West Side or who have roots on the West side might have PTSD.

Can you speak to to that?

So mental health in historically redlined areas is definitely there is some alignment.

So there's some research that's come out of family medicine.

There's some research has also come out of behavioral health, looking at specifically, you know, areas that are historically redlined.

So when you think about these areas, these are areas that, you know, may have high crime rates.

So when you think about social context, you think about safety.

You think about community.

You know, are these communities fractured or how these communities have they been exposed to or endured a lot of trauma and violence?

Have individual even at the individual levels, have members in that community been exposed to a lot of trauma and violence?

When you think about the access to behavioral mental health services, so we all know that Nevada is ranks pretty low in this area.

And this is a challenge for the state as a whole.

But when you start looking at areas where folks have health disparities, where folks are in historically redlined areas or are living in concentrated areas of disadvantage, there's even less access to one physical health care, but also to mental behavioral health care as well.

And we're running out of time.

Just a couple more questions.

Shanti, I want you to explain the impact of gentrification on redlined communities and how much is that happening in the historic West Side?

It's happening a lot.

And the problem with gentrification is in order to renovate, you know, restore an area they typically will bring in.

I always say as soon as you see a Starbucks gentrification is coming, you know, because there's certain certain fast foods and different things in that area that are supposed to revitalize it.

But the problem with that is once this revitalize the prices and the value go up in that area, and then it displaces people's grandmothers and aunts and uncles who have lived there on their homes for 40 years, it displaces them because they can no longer, longer afford to live in the area that they grew up in.

And you also had talk to me about people coming in, buying homes and then renting them back to people who live there.

How does that work?

Why would that be the case?

So a lot of times, just as he mentioned, they have homes that they haven't been able to maintain.

And the issue with that is now predatory.

You know, to come in, knock on a door and say, hey, you won't even need to leave.

We'll come and we'll buy it from you, give you ten or $20,000 for you to have it in your pocket, and we will fix it up for you.

You know, you can rent it back.

Well, now we just took a homeowner with equity generation and or wealth, and we've now taken that from them and put them in a situation where now they're just a renter.

We could go on and on, but we've run out of time.

Naoko Foreman will have extended coverage in this for the Nevada Independent.