James Wise and BiggerPockets Redlining?!?!?!

[Anthony Gayden]

I saw this article while browsing the web today.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/redlining-cleveland-investors-home-prices/574153/

The blog, posted on the real-estate investment platform BiggerPockets, shows how Wise grades real estate for investors, grouping Cleveland’s neighborhoods into four color-coded categories: “A Neighborhoods,”shaded dark green; “B Neighborhoods”shaded light green; “C Neighborhoods,” shaded yellow; and “D/F Neighborhoods” shaded red.

Wise’s maps ring eerily similar to redlining maps, the color-grading system used by the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), the National Association of Real Estate Boards, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in the early-to-mid 20th century to demarcate which neighborhoods were worthy of property investment. Redlining was technically outlawed by the 1968 Fair Housing Act because it facilitated racial and economic segregation in many U.S. cities, segregation that persists.