{"id":22746,"date":"2022-06-13T20:35:39","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T03:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=22746"},"modified":"2022-06-13T20:35:40","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T03:35:40","slug":"letters-why-white-suburbs-owe-a-debt-for-the-racism-that-helped-create-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/06\/13\/letters-why-white-suburbs-owe-a-debt-for-the-racism-that-helped-create-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Letters: Why white suburbs owe a debt for the racism that helped create them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>June 12, 2022  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/opinion\/letterstotheeditor\/articleComments\/Letters-Why-white-suburbs-owe-a-debt-for-the-17234387.php\">Comments<\/a>  (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s.hdnux.com\/photos\/01\/26\/11\/77\/22585342\/3\/1200x0.jpg\" alt=\"Home loan redlining by banks and racist covenants prevented people of color from buying homes in many suburban neighborhoods.\"\/><figcaption>Home loan redlining by banks and racist covenants prevented people of color from buying homes in many suburban neighborhoods.RichLegg\/Getty Images 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>People in suburbs often object to high-density housing development because it will change the character of their community. Yet we don\u2019t appreciate how we came to live in homogeneous upper-middle-class neighborhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I feel lucky to be able to own a home in the Bay Area because our parents were able to help us with our down payment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thus, we benefited from the generational wealth of our families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We need to realize the reasons that many people of color have not been able to accumulate wealth through home ownership. This is because of public policies that discriminated against non-whites. African Americans were excluded from benefiting from&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rockefellerfoundation.org\/blog\/the-new-deal-made-americas-racial-inequality-worse-we-cant-make-the-same-mistake-with-covid-19-economic-crisis\/\">New Deal<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.history.com\/news\/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits\">GI Bill<\/a>&nbsp;benefits that created wealth for generations of white people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Suburban housing developments often included racial covenants that prohibited sale of homes to people of color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Redlining by banks denied home loans to people of color.More for you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/opinion\/editorials\/article\/Editorial-No-California-didn-t-just-send-a-17228039.php\">Editorial: No, California didn\u2019t just send a message on crime \u2014 only voter apathy<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/opinion\/openforum\/article\/Chesa-Boudin-recall-17226712.php\">Chesa Boudin\u2019s recall won\u2019t change a thing. Fixing San Francisco\u2019s charter would<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So, the character of the white upper-middle-class neighborhoods many of us enjoy is the direct result of government-sanctioned discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have a moral obligation to accept changes to the character of our neighborhoods through the inclusion of lower-income housing and higher density as the price to be paid for ending America\u2019s shameful history of racist housing segregation policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Matt Metzler, Sonoma<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/img\/logos\/black\/logo.svg\" alt=\"San Francisco Chronicle Homepage - Site Logo\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/img\/core\/hearst_newspapers_logo.svg\" alt=\"HEARST newspapers logo\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a92022 Hearst<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>June 12, 2022 Comments (SFChronicle.com) People in suburbs often object to high-density housing development because it will change the character of their community. Yet we don\u2019t appreciate how we came to live in homogeneous upper-middle-class neighborhoods. I feel lucky to be able to own a home in the Bay Area&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/06\/13\/letters-why-white-suburbs-owe-a-debt-for-the-racism-that-helped-create-them\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22746"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22747,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22746\/revisions\/22747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}