Why Are Black Homeowners Being Lowballed?

Rich Meagher: Welcome to RVA’s Got Issues, a podcast about politics and public affairs in and around Richmond, Virginia. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. On this episode, RVA’s Got Issues with modern day redlining. Today, it’s illegal to draw neighborhood lines on maps that discriminate against black homeowners. But we’ll talk to a couple of experts about how housing discrimination today is redlining in another form.

Then, RVA’s got questions about utility bills. If you’re paying for water in Henrico County, then why send the bill to North Carolina? Finally, for our community spotlight, we’ll talk with salsa impresario America DeLoach about RVA’s only Latino farmers market. Guess which one of us gets a little spicy? All that coming up on RVA’s Got Issues.

On this episode, RVA’s got issues with modern day redlining. Redlining was a longstanding practice among banks and governments to withhold bank services from folks in black neighborhoods. These institutions would literally draw a red line around the neighborhood and say, no loans here. Today, redlining is technically illegal, but black families in RVA and elsewhere still encounter discrimination.

We’re joined today by two experts. Regina Chaney is Senior Community Outreach and Engagement Specialist with the nonprofit group, Housing Opportunities Made Equal, or HOME, of Virginia. Laura Dobbs is HOME of Virginia’s Director of Policy. Regina, Laura, welcome.

Laura Dobbs: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Rich Meagher: Laura, let’s start with you. Your organization, Home of Virginia, produced a report that found homes in predominantly black neighborhoods are worth significantly less than homes in majority white neighborhoods. So what exactly did you find in this report?

Laura Dobbs: Sure. This report, I think, reveals some of the scars of racial segregation, a legacy of government backed policies that created separate areas for black and white people.

Laura Dobbs: People, even today, areas that were formerly. And the hazardous quote hazardous areas have a much lower home values than other areas of the city.

Rich Meagher: And these hazardous areas weren’t actually hazardous. It meant there’s code word for this is a black neighborhood. Is that right?

Laura Dobbs: Exactly. Yeah. So the redlining maps, as I think a lot of people have heard of the term redlining, But to buy some historical context on that, after the Great Depression, as part of the New Deal, the government created the Home Owners Loan Corporation to create risk assessments based on neighborhoods, and it happened to be that Areas that were graded green and therefore the best places to provide loans and the lowest risk happened to be predominantly white neighborhoods, as opposed to those colored red and graded hazardous were said to have some of the higher risk, and they encouraged you not to provide loans to those areas and so as a Localities developed its land use.

Laura Dobbs: They would cite hazardous things. The majority of Black neighborhoods have highways go through them, approximately to trash dumps, and they did not have any protective zoning for Black neighborhoods. One of the things that came out of that report we did was a number of interviews that we did with homeowners in historically Black neighborhoods.

Laura Dobbs: And there was a pretty common refrain of my property taxes keep going up every year. And yet I am not seeing those tax dollars come back to my community. I have to go to the bus stop and mow it myself. Or I don’t have a sidewalk, there’s poor lighting, there’s not enough tree cover. Those basic amenities that we all want to see in our neighborhood.

Laura Dobbs: We have such thriving communities in Richmond and we need to see that reinvestment direct to the places that have historically been denied it.

Rich Meagher: Like what kind of numbers are we talking about then? You have a majority black neighborhood, you have a majority white neighborhood. What kind of difference between home values are we talking about?

Laura Dobbs: It’s about a 30,000 difference between neighborhoods and that’s significant. I mean, this is. This is building your family’s wealth.

Laura Dobbs: You know, credit is the underpinning of economic inclusion and wealth building in the United States. And so when you have an equal opportunity to not only owning a home, but then the valuation of that home, that’s going to affect everything from, you know, what you can leave to future generations, but also the ability to pull out a loan on your house to start a business or, you know, do other repairs on your home.

Rich Meagher: And Regina, you kind of got into this work in part because you experienced that, right? That’s what launched you into this career and home of VA, right? That’s correct. Tell us about that.

Regina Chaney: I live in Churchill and in the late seventies, when I, wanted to rehab a house. The amount of money that I wanted was probably one fourth of what the house was worth.

Regina Chaney: And so, um, me and my thinking that everything’s fine. I started getting the house, right? So I started already getting the hammers out, right? You know, I had, um, gut parties and have people come over and Take out this, um, plaster. And I applied for the bank that I actually worked for the time full time and could not get money.

Regina Chaney: And I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. I got all kinds of things like, well, if you were married, if you had children, you know what I’m thinking really? Because I recently graduated from VCU. I had a full time job. I had excellent credit. I had good income. And. Nobody would give me money, right? And I’m like, what in the world?

Regina Chaney: And so because, um, now I have no walls. Remember that, right? I had to actually end up getting money from a finance company. We’re talking about 9, 10%, 8, 9, 10 percent finance company, but I needed the money. And so I went on to do that. Right. There were many people who were having that issue, and I knew folk in my community that were having issues with their property, wanted to do something, couldn’t afford it, because there ain’t no way to find the money.

Rich Meagher: Let me bring this back to today. Mm hmm. Laura, the report. Talks about some options of things we should be doing like what

Laura Dobbs: it’s going to take. Pretty significant investment and proactive steps. Richmond is already in a path to really reckon with its history. It’s about to embark on a two year process is completely rewriting its zoning ordinances.

Laura Dobbs: And this is an opportunity to take a look at how racialized zoning and then single use zoning. Reinforced degradation, but also where we’re directing investment in the future.

Rich Meagher: Well, zoning is such a big issue. We’ll need to save that for a future episode, but we will hear more about housing discrimination as well as home of Virginia’s unique methods to expose it, including going undercover. When we come back. On RVA’s Got Issues.

Rich Meagher: This is RVA’s Got Issues. We’re back with Regina Chaney and Laura Dobbs of the nonprofit housing group Home of Virginia, talking about redlining and housing discrimination, past and present. Um, there is a method that you folks use to try to figure out exactly what’s happening on the ground here, right?

Rich Meagher: You call it testing. Can you explain how that works?

Regina Chaney: Basically, you’re going to send out paired individuals. So, depending on what the issue is, or it doesn’t have to be, um, it doesn’t have to be a bonafide. Meaning somebody doesn’t have to come to us to complain about something. It’s something that we either saw on social media, something that we believe, we might go on that.

Rich Meagher: You get a sense that maybe a bank isn’t being fair, or somebody who’s a landlord is not being fair about who they’re renting to.

Regina Chaney: Absolutely. And so if someone feels like they’ve been unfairly treated, then you’d send out, um, uh, a tester to this particular property. And I did participate as a tester years ago.

Regina Chaney: Um, I remember one that I went on and it was, it was terrible. I mean, I went to this porch, it was a trailer park and the property manager for this lot, his place was in the front. And I remember him just looking at me and saying, um, you probably do better across the street. And I’m like, across the street?

Regina Chaney: I mean, if so, he never even addressed the fact that he had anything. He just said, you, you’ll do better across the street. Because across the street, there’s, uh, it was, it was predominantly black.

Laura Dobbs: Yeah. And I think that’s why having the match fair is important because so much discrimination these days happens behind a smile or handshake or no response at all.

Laura Dobbs: To give another example, we did some testing with lending discrimination. We’d have one tester that had like a Latino sounding last name, call a loan officer, did not get a call back. And at first, like, oh, maybe they’re just busy, but then we had a white tester with a white sounding name call. Immediately got a text message, a phone call to schedule a follow up.

Laura Dobbs: So it’s when you have that comparison that you can really see the discrimination.

Regina Chaney: And you can do that on open houses. I’ve even done that myself. I wasn’t testing. I’m just going in to look, just to see how I’m treated, right? Because, you know, when you do this for so long, you just Jump in, right? And this has happened to me in the last five years where I go to open houses, particularly if I’m in Northside or Churchill.

Regina Chaney: And there’s an open house. There are white people that are either coming in or already there. And the agent is all engaged with them and talking about all the features and just having conversation. And It was one place. I remember being in there for at least 30 minutes and I walked upstairs, downstairs around and never acknowledged me at all.

Regina Chaney: No one’s offering you the cookies or the little forms. Nothing. I mean, as if I wasn’t there, which is one of the things that I do and outreach is to help people understand their rights. And how fair housing law works, because as long as I keep my notes, the date, the time, where I was, what happened, who I met with, I have a year to file that complaint.

Regina Chaney: So just because I didn’t get that place, that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything about what happened to me. And I think that’s an important thing that people need to know. You know, you can walk away, but you don’t leave it back there.

Rich Meagher: So let’s talk big picture a little bit. What? Would you say narrowing this racial gap in homeownership, what would that do for the city and the region, Laura?

Laura Dobbs: I mean, I think it would be transformative. You know, Black people have created Richmond to be the vibrant place it is. And now the secret’s gone out that Richmond is a great city. And so people are flocking to it, particularly from Northern Virginia and California as comparatively affordable. And people have been living here and who built this city are getting priced out and getting pushed out and areas that were at one time, a majority black neighborhood, we’re seeing pretty massive transition of black people being priced out and white people moving in.

Laura Dobbs: And so we need to seriously address those displacement risks as well to make sure people who have always called this place home can continue to live here.

Regina Chaney: And also, um, programs or assistance for when you talk about the folk who’ve been in the community for years and being priced out. A lot of that has to do with taxes.

Regina Chaney: Right. And oftentimes when you have people, particularly as you age there and your income changes and you can’t afford it, there are some programs in place with the city for tax credits for people who are elderly, but your income has to be really low in order for you to get that benefit. So we really have to be creative about, and I know there’s some council people who have been working hard to work on.

Regina Chaney: Creating something, you know, such as if you’ve been in your property for 25 years or more, you know, then you get a certain percentage or something. Anything would be helpful because I do know people who are my age who are struggling and trying to figure out how am I going to stay here?

Rich Meagher: That’s a wide array of solutions here.

Rich Meagher: Now, what can listeners do to help?

Laura Dobbs: Everything from supporting advocacy around these issues. Obviously, advocating at the state legislature is important to get something like this property tax relief across the line, reaching out to your representative, support it. But also your local government. I mean, our local officials.

Laura Dobbs: Meet year round and they have a very direct hand in the shape of our neighborhoods economic opportunities are attracted to the city and really Hold the keys to shaping our community and we need to be speaking with them every day and showing up Particularly as Richmond engages in this rezoning process.

Laura Dobbs: There’s going to be a pretty large Community outreach effort so just show up And lend your voice and share a vision of what we want our community to look like. And then there’s also dealing with actual examples of discrimination when they happen through things like becoming a duster.

Rich Meagher: Laura Dobbs is home of Virginia’s Director of Policy.

Rich Meagher: Regina Chaney is their Senior Community Outreach and Engagement Specialist. Regina, Laura. Thank you so much. Absolutely.

Laura Dobbs: Thanks for having us.

Rich Meagher: On each episode of RVA’s Got Issues, we’ll answer a question from listeners like you. Something you want or need to know about government or community. On this episode, RVA’s Got Questions. about utility bills and Amber Coles, our producer is back. Hey, Amber. So, uh, we’ve got a question.

Amber Coles: Hey, Rich. We do. And this is actually from one of our social media listeners, Tara Richardson.

Amber Coles: Tara asks, why are Henrico County residents sending our payments out of state to process? Shouldn’t we keep the money and jobs in our own

Rich Meagher: community? That’s a good question. Amber, you’re a homeowner. How do you do the fun thing of paying bills every month?

Amber Coles: Actually, I pay bills with checks. Like I physically write checks.

Amber Coles: Oh my goodness. So you

Rich Meagher: do mail them out in envelopes. I do. And have you ever noticed these weird addresses?

Amber Coles: Yes, I’ve noticed some of them. I think I had to send a bill to like Ohio, North Carolina. Maybe Florida, Michigan, and I’m like, but this is a Virginia based company. So I’m always very confused. Thank you, Tara, for

Rich Meagher: this question.

Rich Meagher: Yeah, it’s a good one. And it does happen a lot. And the big term for this is outsourcing. Businesses do it like the other bills you’re paying, but governments do it too. So you take a basic business function like your payroll, your time sheets or cleaning the bathroom, and you could hire someone to do that for you, or you contract with an outside company and that’s outsourcing.

Rich Meagher: So outsourcing and government was a really hot idea in the 1990s. There was this guy named Stephen Goldsmith, who was mayor of Indianapolis, who said, outsourcing is going to solve a lot of local government problems. And so governments do this. And so what Henrico is doing here for Tara. Is they’ve hired an outside company to process their bills for these utility payments.

Amber Coles: Well, I think the deeper question now is like, is this a good thing and why not just do it in Virginia?

Rich Meagher: Yeah. So that’s the question. Officials like Goldsmith, the people who love outsourcing says. It’s always better. It’s always more efficient. It always saves money. But the actual data on outsourcing is a mixed bag.

Rich Meagher: It’s often more expensive or it provides worse service. We see this with prisons all the time. State and federal governments, they sometimes send money to private companies to run prisons and the results have been pretty bad. And we don’t want that for everything. Like, I don’t think as, as much as people might criticize police departments, I don’t think we want to like a private army, uh, running our, our traffic stops and things like that.

Rich Meagher: Right.

Amber Coles: So in theory, because you’re not paying people or hiring people, training them, paying benefits, all of that good stuff that kind of goes into like creating this organization for a bill pay process, you’re saving money. But does this cut into like our economy? Does it cut into jobs?

Rich Meagher: Right. So you could say, well, why are we then if we’re paying, we’re not paying for all those jobs and stuff.

Rich Meagher: Well, why don’t we keep those jobs here? But but it’s not just the jobs, right? First of all, they’re not super high paying jobs like managing bill payment. But it’s also. You don’t have to pay like millions of dollars. It would take to set up the whole infrastructure to track all the bill payments and, uh, you know, create all this software to do it and things like that.

Rich Meagher: So yeah, you may be giving up a job or two, but you’re also not having to pay those millions of dollars to bring those jobs in. So Henrico uses a company called Paymentus. It’s this big payment corporation in Charlotte and the city of Richmond also outsources. Now Hanover has done the math and Hanover keeps it in house.

Amber Coles: But they’re much smaller operation and they don’t have that many people doing kind of behind the scenes things.

Rich Meagher: Yeah. So if it makes terror or listener feel better, it makes you feel better. Every locality has some staff in house to handle questions, set up new accounts. Somebody’s got to go out and check the meter.

Rich Meagher: Right. And that’s not going to be a payment is person from Charlotte. That’s going to be a Henrico person from here in Henrico. So the bottom line here is that we don’t outsource everything in local government, but bill paying seems to be one of those things that’s pretty well accepted to, it’s okay to send it out of state.

Amber Coles: Eh, I mean, I guess.

Rich Meagher: Okay. So hopefully at least Tara has an answer. Amber, what should listeners do if they have another question?

Amber Coles: If you, like Tara, have a question, you can email us at [email protected] or you can go to our website and click on the ask a question button or you can interact with us on social media.

Rich Meagher: Yep. All the way. Send us your questions. Thanks.

Rich Meagher: People in RVA love their farmers markets, but there’s only one with Latino founders and theme, the Latino farmers market in Chesterfield County. We’re shining our community spotlight on the market’s co-founder, proud Venezuelan American educator and entrepreneur, America DeLoach. Welcome, America.

America DeLoach: Thank you so much for inviting me.

Rich Meagher: Of course. Uh, this market happens every Saturday morning in Rockwood Park. It’s like Courthouse Road, just off Hall Street.

America DeLoach: Correct.

Rich Meagher: So let’s say I go down there. Paint a picture for me. What am I seeing? Who do I meet when I go to the market?

America DeLoach: So when you go to the farmer’s market, you’ll see a bunch of tents, a bunch of traffic, like in a good way, like, you know, busing.

America DeLoach: Uh, the community is all involved, kids, you hear the sound of the ice cream man, you know, from La Michoacana, the dingdingding. It is called Latino farmer’s market because it is Latino food. Okay, so if you want to go and eat some good empanadas, arepas, tamales, salsa, tacos, you know, you got it all there. And you

Rich Meagher: talked to our producers about correcting also some of the imbalances and misunderstandings in among farmers markets around the area that sometimes Latino vendors would be pushed to the back or maybe their music is too loud or some kind of sense like that.

Rich Meagher: And so does this market kind of help correct that as well?

America DeLoach: Absolutely. Absolutely. Some farmers markets, I noticed that it was an imbalance, meaning. Um, in farmer’s markets, only one Latino vendor or two Latino vendors. And I’m like, why we’re so many. And I know that we can, I can find more vendors. Um, in Facebook, we have a bunch of like marketplaces where you see all the Latinos making food in their home, you know, and I’m like, why don’t we bring these people that are making food at home and bring them to light, meaning getting all the permits that they need to do, you know, in order for them to sell.

America DeLoach: Formally, instead of just selling from home. So, in this case, this will be a place where you want to have your music, you want to sell your food, you are welcome to our farmer’s market, no problem.

Rich Meagher: Yeah, I saw the application even for your farmer’s market, right? There’s a lot of paperwork. There’s the health permits.

Rich Meagher: There’s the insurance certificate, right? It’s a lot of stuff. I imagine that can be a barrier for some folks who participate, particularly if they’re either new to the country or they’re like new to the community. And they’re just starting out like you were back in the day, you know, making salsa in your kitchen.

Rich Meagher: And do you have ways of helping? These vendors grown and come along to do all that stuff, all that paperwork.

America DeLoach: So, uh, currently I don’t, unfortunately, it will be very nice to have, like, maybe Chesterfield County that could have like a bilingual team that could help these people to get their paperwork. But I do feel like they do get a little bit discouraged, you know, because of the amount of paperwork that they have to do,

Rich Meagher: but you’ve been successful, right?

Rich Meagher: How many vendors did you have?

America DeLoach: So right now we have 30 vendors. Yeah, we started with 20 and now we have 30 vendors and we have more. We could have more. But again, it’s a process.

Rich Meagher: So let’s roll back to you a little bit. How you got started with food. You were a University of Richmond grad. You were a teacher in Chesterfield County public schools for many years.

Rich Meagher: So why the switch to food?

America DeLoach: So my husband was making salsa at home all the time. And I was so interested, you know, I’m like, what don’t we buy it instead of just making it? And he’s like, Oh no, no, no, no, no. You, you don’t, you don’t buy that, you know, you make it because it’s just fresh and just so good. So back then I was a teacher, um, in actually Providence Middle and I said, well, teach me the recipe.

America DeLoach: I want to see if I can, you know, so he taught me the recipe. I was selling it at my co workers at Providence. I was, then I started selling it in my neighborhood and then I started in a farmer’s market. My business kind of grew so big and so fast. And then after that, it was a customer at a farmer’s market.

America DeLoach: And he said, America, I buy your salsa on Saturday. By Sunday, I don’t have anything. Is it possible that you can put your product in a grocery store so I don’t have to wait another week, you know? So I’m like, Oh, that could be awesome. But. There was a gig back then, you know, I was a teacher, but I did approach Elwood Thompson and Elwood said, yes.

America DeLoach: So after that, I reached out to Levy, I reached out to Outpost, I reached out to all the grocery stores, local grocery stores. And the breakthrough was when I approached to Wegmans and that’s when I quit my job.

Rich Meagher: So what made you want to start a market?

America DeLoach: For that same reason, I started in a farmer’s market and I said, this is an opportunity to other Latino vendors.

America DeLoach: So if a Latino vendor has those aspirations or those ambitions of getting to a grocery store or to go bigger, this could definitely be the first step.

Rich Meagher: And, and Chesterfield County has been pretty supportive of, of making the market work.

America DeLoach: I have to admit, I, I am in the best. Sorry, I have to say it.

Rich Meagher: Sorry to the other counties out there, right?

America DeLoach: Um, I am in the best county because when I approach just to feel administrator, uh, Dr. Casey, he loved the idea and he gave me the support that I needed. Then I reach out to Jessica Schneider. She’s the, uh, Clover Hill supervisor. Um, they’re in Chesterfield immediately. I got her support and she got all excited.

America DeLoach: It’s like, Oh my gosh, this is awesome. I love this idea. And then Dalila Medrano is also the multicultural liaison for Chesterfield. She immediately, any opportunity, anything that I can do for you, America, I’m here for you. So yes, they have done everything and beyond.

Rich Meagher: I’m sure our listeners can help by going to the market, like you say, and, and, and buy stuff. What else can they do to help?

America DeLoach: You know, um, just go, go eat, take, you know, feel the vibe that we have there. It’s a great vibe. We put music. It’s funny. You know, I put, uh, I put some salsa and I put some merengue there and, uh, I bought, I had to buy a bigger speaker because they wanted to dance a little bit.

America DeLoach: And I’ve seen customers that they just want to dance and they dance right there. Kids love the vibe. We have to have pinta caritas, like a girl that, you know, paint the face for the kids. I even asked Chesterfield County, can we have, uh, like a bouncy house? I got the bouncy house. Everything is being amazing, you know, to make it happen. The support has been amazing.

Rich Meagher: America DeLoach, the owner and founder of Salsa’s Don Sebastian and co founder of Chesterfield County’s Latino Farmers Market every Saturday in Rockwood Park. Thanks, America.

America DeLoach: Thank you for having me.

Rich Meagher: That’s our show. Thanks to our guests, Regina Chaney, Laura Dobbs, and America DeLoach.

Rich Meagher: RVA’s got issues, but we need you to tell us what those issues are. Submit a question or tell us about something exciting going on in your community at our website, rvasgotissues.vpm.org. Something I’ve been thinking about is that now that most of the monuments are gone, what do we do with Monument Avenue?

Rich Meagher: If you’ve got an idea or know someone who does, drop us a line. Join us next time when RVA’s Got Issues with Well, if you want to know subscribe to us, wherever you download podcasts, while you’re at it, tell a friend about us, share a social media post, or even leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform.

Rich Meagher: Let’s get everyone in RVA listening. RVA’s Got Issues is produced by Max Wasserman and Amber Coles and edited by Steve Lack. Our theme music was composed by Alexander Hitchens. Meg Lindholm is our executive producer. Steve Humble is VPM’s chief content officer. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. Thanks for listening.