{"id":134395,"date":"2023-02-01T09:27:53","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T14:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncrc.org\/?p=134395"},"modified":"2024-01-16T13:47:25","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T18:47:25","slug":"columbia-at-55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncrc.org\/columbia-at-55\/","title":{"rendered":"Columbia at 55: Creeping Segregation and Lack of Affordable Housing Threatens A Legacy of Black\/White Integration"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Columbia at 55:<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Creeping Segregation and Lack of Affordable Housing Threatens A Legacy of Black\/White Integration<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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February 1, 2023<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Image: Preservation Maryland<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Bruce C. Mitchell, PhD<\/b>, Senior Research Analyst<\/i>
Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, <\/b>Chief of Organizing, Policy, and Equity<\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Forward<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In 1974, I as a one-year-old moved to Columbia, Maryland, with my white mother and Black father from New York City. They both had seen press about this \u201cnew town\u201d launched in 1969 where the first baby born in Columbia also came from a mixed household and was publicized as a community welcoming inter-racial households. My mother from Dothan, Alabama and father from Little Rock, Arkansas were looking for a place to raise their family, and similar to thousands of others, Columbia seemed the right place.<\/p>

Growing up in Columbia during the 1970s with parents who were involved in the civil rights movements of the 1960s, I was quite aware that Columbia, particularly in regards to race, was trying to model something outside of the norm in the United States. At a very young age I understood that Columbia was a refuge from much of the more intense racism that could be easily encountered such as accidentally driving into a Klan rally in rural Maryland or not being allowed to visit my white grandfather\u2019s home in Alabama until I was in college. Yet, as Aaron McGruder\u2019s famous comic strip and even more famous cartoon The Boondocks infers there is still plenty of racial inequality to be found in the \u201cpost-racial\u201d suburb (Aaron was a Columbia high school classmate of mine). It was and is still apparent in Columbia that neighborhoods with the highest concentration of African Americans are less well-off than whiter parts of town and that schools with higher levels of African Americans are considered weaker schools. As a person who grew up in Columbia, and returned 12 years ago to raise my own family \u2013 and as someone who professionally has been studying the racial wealth divide for the last 20 years \u2013 I have long been interested in examining the history of Columbia beyond my childhood memories, and scrutinizing its challenges and progress in addressing Black\/white inequality.<\/p>

Essential to this project was the lead writer Bruce C. Mitchell, Ph. D., a senior research analyst at NCRC. Dr. Mitchell has been an author of reports such as \u201cShifting Neighborhoods: Gentrification and Cultural Displacement in American cities<\/a>\u201d and \u201cHOLC \u2018Redlining\u2019 Maps: The Persistent Structure Of Segregation and Economic Inequality<\/a>\u201d. Dr. Mitchell also has deep roots in the development and agricultural history of Howard County. Finally, we would like to thank Andy Masters, Executive Director of the Columbia Housing Center. Andy and his organization\u2019s work to strengthen \u201cracial and ethnic integration and diversity in Columbia\u201d helped inspire this report. I hope that data shared in this report helps us understand the challenges and success bridging Black\/white inequality and can help the nation as a whole address the deep inequality that maintains itself in this 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century.<\/p>

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad<\/strong>
<\/em>Chief of Organizing, Policy and Equity at NCRC<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Introduction<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\tColumbia is an opportunity for the growth of America to change course away from needless waste of the land, sprawl, disorder, congestion and mounting taxes to a direction of order, beauty, financial stability and sincere concern for the growth of all people. \t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJames Rouse, 1964<\/cite>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In 1963, Columbia existed only as an idea. It was to be a \u201cnew town\u201d set on 14,000 acres of land in the center of Howard County, Maryland. The concept of \u201cnew towns\u201d was born in the United Kingdom during the post-war period, though similar ideas in the United States had been embraced by the federal government during the New Deal, resulting in the construction of communities like Greenbelt, Maryland. Following some of the principles of these earlier \u201cgreen belt cities,\u201d \u201cnew towns\u201d were to be an antidote to the overcrowded, polluted conditions in cities, which were a result of poor planning and inadequate land-use restrictions as cities industrialized. Howard County was mostly rural farmland, and the planning of Columbia entailed land development patterns distinct from those that shaped post-war suburban developments. Columbia represented a new method of rural\/urban development, the goals of which were set out in a\u00a0<\/a>presentation to officials representing the people of Howard County<\/a>. These goals emphasized the benefits of development to the county and included:<\/p>

  1. No additional tax burden to residents of Howard County<\/li>
  2. Respect for the land, with preservation of natural amenities and open spaces<\/li>
  3. A complete and balanced community, which provided a broad range of opportunities for housing, employment, with cultural and recreational facilities<\/li>
  4. Highest possible standards of beauty, safety and convenience with strict control of signs, commercial areas, architecture and landscaping<\/li>
  5. Provision of all major utilities and services without additional cost to the County<\/li>
  6. Provision of the best possible environment for the growth of people<\/li><\/ol>

    Implicit to the third goal of building a complete and balanced community, James Rouse, who was the developer, stated that\u00a0<\/a>\u201cLike any real city of 100,000, Columbia will be economically diverse, polycultural, multi-faith and inter-racial<\/a>.\u201d But the formal goals presented to Howard County residents in fact went further than Rouse\u2019s vision of a \u201cnew town\u201d that would have the diversity he regarded as de-facto for \u201cany real city.\u201d The sixth goal established the highest possible aspirations for Columbia as a community fostering the \u201cgrowth of people.\u201d Columbia was imagined as a \u201cclean-slate\u201d project in contrast to the dirty, fixed reality of existing cities.<\/p>

    The idealism inherent to Rouse\u2019s conception of Columbia is evident when it is compared with the practices that existed in 1960. The development strategy, marketing and sales practices of the builders selling units in Columbia contrasted with those of earlier developers of planned communities, such as the prominent firm Levitt & Sons. \u201cLevittowns,\u201d as the company\u2019s towns were known, were built on massive scales, following a cookie-cutter approach to suburban development. Costs were minimized by standardized production techniques in order to provide affordable housing which relied on VA and FHA financing. But the affordable housing of Levittown was available to \u201cWhites only.\u201d<\/a> Property sales in Levittowns were restricted by racial covenants — since-banned rules about who could and could not buy and sell homes. The FHA and VA favored mortgage lending in these covenant-restricted communities under the federal government\u2019s own racist housing policies of the time.<\/p>

    Columbia had no racial covenants and there was no racial steering of buyers. It developed housing which was affordable across a range of incomes. Columbia was designed and developed during the 1960s, when the civil rights movement was making progress. However, the Federal Housing Act of 1968 had yet to be passed when the community was conceived. Columbia and the community of Reston, Virginia, represented case studies in a new era of desegregation for American housing in the 1960s. These efforts at desegregation focused on easing the division of Black and White residential neighborhoods. While there has been exponential growth of the Asian and Hispanic communities of Columbia during the past three decades, this report focuses on the economic status of the Black community since development.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    The Development of Columbia<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    In 1960, the county seat of Ellicott City was the only urbanized portion of Howard County. Some suburban development had started in the mid-1950s in the area north of Ellicott City around Normandy Plaza and at Allview Estates on the Columbia Pike\/Route 29 corridor. The remainder of the county consisted of agricultural land. It was a striking rural setting, dotted with large tracts of orchards and farms. However, the county is sited between Washington and Baltimore, and is bisected by major transportation routes: Interstate 95 and Route 29 running north-south, and Interstate 70 running east-west (Figure 1). These factors favored development, and the Rouse Corporation envisioned Columbia as the new center of population growth in the county.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    Figure 1: <\/strong>Columbia, Maryland’s location between Baltimore and Washington<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    Columbia was planned by a team with expertise in many different fields: urban planning, economics, real estate development, mortgage lending, education, health and recreation. Their goal was not just to build housing, but to create a community. A central part of the design of Columbia was the construction of clusters of housing organized into village centers (Hoppenfeld, 1967<\/a>). The village centers were envisioned as providing a range of services within a short distance of their residents: schools, shopping, libraries and recreation (Figure 2). The Mall at Columbia and nearby Town Center were the first areas developed, followed by five villages between about 1966 and 1972: Harper\u2019s Choice, Long Reach, Oakland Mills, Owen Brown and Wilde Lake. These villages conformed closely with Rouse\u2019s original design goals. Developers built considerable mixed housing (rental apartments, townhouses and single family homes) in these areas. The remaining four villages of Hickory Ridge (1974), King\u2019s Contrivance (1977), Dorsey Search (1980), and River Hill (1990) did not adhere as closely to Rouse\u2019s vision. The last village of River Hill is both the most isolated from the Town Center, and\u00a0the most exclusive<\/a>. The largest proportion of single-family homes were sited in River Hill during its development, consequently, it has the highest median household income and median home values (See appendix tables A-1 and A-2).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    Figure 2:<\/strong> Columbia Maryland\u2019s ten villages<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    Once established, Columbia rapidly increased the development of Howard County. Population quadrupled from 1960 to 1980, by which time nearly half of the county\u2019s residents lived there (Figure 3). Since 1980, development of the areas adjacent to Columbia has reduced its share of the population, so that it was about a third of the county total in 2020.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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