Orcharding Between the Lines: How Planting Tree Can Remedy a Redlined Past
Few metropolitan areas escaped the devastating effects of redlining. Decades later, areas deemed “hazardous” or least desirable (primarily neighborhoods with people of color) are still facing the long-term effects of redlining, such as faulty infrastructure, lack of green space, and limited access to fresh, healthy food. The Giving Grove is committed to helping address these disparities. For that reason, we recently analyzed the location of Giving Grove orchards in relation to neighborhoods impacted by redlining. In this blog, a Giving Grove intern reflects on the findings of this research.
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Kansas City’s Racial Dividing Line
Contributed by Eddie Dai, Giving Grove intern
Growing up in a suburb, I was only distantly familiar with my hometown of Kansas City as a kid. It wasn’t until last year when I took a driving tour of the city using pandemic-granted free time that I was first introduced to Kansas City’s history of racial segregation. As I made my way through the winding tree-lined streets of the Country Club District toward the East Side, the disparity in the abundance of greenery was stark. While the West Side neighborhoods were brimming with towering trees, thick canopy, and expansive manicured lawns, the neighborhoods past Troost Avenue—Kansas City’s racial dividing line—had far fewer trees, parks, and green space.
Apart from looking nice, the presence of trees, parks, and other vegetation has extensive and interconnected implications for the health of a community. Neighborhoods with less greenspace miss out on the fruit-bearing, shade-providing, heat-mitigating, air-purifying, and stress-reducing benefits of trees. Curious to understand why neighborhoods built at the same time within a few blocks of one another could have such different levels of this crucial greenery, I looked into the history of Kansas City neighborhoods. In the early 1900s, houses west of Troost were sold to white families while racial restrictive covenants confined Black, Jewish, and other ethnic minority families to purchasing houses east of Troost. Then in the 1930s, redlining began and impacted more than 200 cities across the US, including Kansas City.
In the wake of the Great Depression, the federal government established the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and tasked it with assessing the risk of neighborhoods throughout the country to determine mortgage eligibility. The maps created by HOLC cemented decades of discriminatory practices as red lines were drawn around Black neighborhoods, deeming them “Hazardous.” Neighborhoods nearby were colored yellow and deemed “Definitely Declining,” while neighborhoods predominately home to white, non-Jewish families were mostly colored green and blue, deemed by HOLC “Best” and “Still Desirable,” respectively.
1939 HOLC Map of Kansas city | Source: Mapping Inequality
Post Fair Housing Act, Racial Restrictions and Inequalities Live On
Even after the Fair Housing Act of 1968 revoked redlining and racially restrictive covenants, the effects of these practices lingered. In Kansas City, for example, houses west of Troost continue to appreciate while houses east of Troost do not see the same gains. A recent comparison by Kansas City’s public radio station, KCUR, revealed that a house east of Troost going for $16,900 in 1963 was valued at $63,493 in 2018. A house west of Troost listed at $16,950 in 1963 was valued at $273,187 in 2018. Across the country, the usage of these maps to deny families of color loans and to construct physical barriers like highways worked for decades to create segregated cities. Today, historically redlined neighborhoods are predominantly home to low-income and minority families.
While jarring differences in real estate value are easy to see and comprehend, some of the most vicious effects of housing discrimination aren’t as apparent. Many indirect effects of redlining continue to pose harm to the lives of people living in redlined areas decades later. In addition to gaps in wealth and education, a growing body of research is uncovering health and environmental injustices redlined neighborhoods continue to face. Recent reports show historically redlined areas have worse health outcomes, more air pollution, fewer greenspaces, higher vulnerability to climate change, and less access to healthy foods.
In a study from Environmental Health Perspectives, an analysis comparing HOLC grade and greenspace abundance showed that, in cities across the country, neighborhoods poorly graded by HOLC are associated with reduced greenspace today. As a result, the redlined neighborhoods of Kansas City are on average about 5ºF hotter than their greenlined counterparts on a summer day in large part due to lack of greenspace. This pattern is consistent nationwide, according to a study published in the journal Climate. Such higher temperatures have been linked to numerous heat-related health emergencies like cardiac arrest, asthma attacks, and heatstroke. As the climate crisis worsens and historically redlined communities become increasingly vulnerable, trees and their cooling effects are more important than ever.
How Giving Grove is Reinstating Greenspace
With a mission to support neighborhood orchards in the communities most vulnerable to food insecurity and the consequences of climate change, The Giving Grove is committed to helping address these disparities. The map below highlights Giving Grove affiliated orchards around the Greater Kansas City area—Giving Grove’s hometown. While the orchards are widely dispersed and serving a variety of communities, orchards are most concentrated in previously redlined neighborhoods—neighborhoods that are more likely to have sparse greenspace, have high rates of food insecurity, and continue to bear the repercussions of segregation. But for the orchards to meet their goals, tree planting must be wanted and driven by the community. Policy may create the means for more and higher-quality greenspace, but the stewards of these trees must also be their beneficiaries—a feature integral to The Giving Grove model.
Giving Grove little orchards have been invited into areas of the city that have suffered the consequences of redlining.
In cities across the country with Giving Grove affiliates, a similar story is true. Wherever redlining has created a legacy of division, there exists an impetus to plant more trees. Even with new orchards establishing roots every spring and fall, more work remains to be done.
Restrictive covenants and redlining created dividing lines in urban areas across the country, and the repercussions of those lines will not be forgotten. Many, however, are working to close the disparities created by redlining. While decades of work remain, The Giving Grove is doing its part, tree by tree, neighborhood by neighborhood, across the US. Join us in our mission to create a nationwide network of urban orchards that provide tree canopy, greenspace and healthy food for neighborhoods that experienced the injustice of redlining.