Early last year, our research illustrated the impact of race on evictions in Richmond – and across the Commonwealth of Virginia. Over the past year, we have worked to better explain the role of race in eviction rates. We see evictions as more than just one day – but rather, it is the result of budget instability – or one bad day –  limited housing options, rent burden (paying more than 30% of your income for housing), and housing quality problems; the cause of housing instability, homelessness, absenteeism in school and work and mental and physical health challenges; and an indicator of structural issues including inequality and race-based patterns of discrimination.

This week in Metropolitiques, we argue that Richmond’s eviction crisis is not just a question of current housing policy, but a historical project of displacement and demobilization of Black communities. It is part of a longer system of inequality baked into the build environment and maintained through ongoing upheavals in the community. In short, eviction, for neighborhoods in the Northside, East End an Southside of Richmond, is just one in more than a century of collective forced moves.

The neighborhoods experiencing eviction today were epicenters of foreclosure during the height of the housing crisis. In fact, large-scale investors that bought up single-family rental properties in Richmond are evicting at a rate of almost 20%. But these neighborhoods were also impacted by Urban Renewal, slum clearance and highway projects. Further, as the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond illustrates, these neighborhoods were Redlined legally until the Fair Housing Act made housing discrimination based on race illegal. We know that Redlining prevented access to homeownership by People of Color – specifically African Americans. We also know that legal segregation propped up white property values and maintained exclusivity for homeowners. The further privileging of homeowners over renters in public meetings and community engagement therefore has significant implications for democracy. Just as importantly, the history of this dispossession of African Americans means that privileging owners has racial dimensions, diminishing opportunities to be heard.

Policy and planning practice often speaks to intergenerational poverty as a root cause of household outcomes, but we never investigate questions of intergenerational community upheaval, instability and the resultant loss of possessions, land, community and collective power. Our policy remedies must look both broad across the needs of the housing continuum – but also deep to the impacts of policies that intentionally uprooted communities over and over in the 20th Century.