How Racism Shaped the Housing Crisis

While the single-family house is central to the American Dream, that dream, built on a foundation of racist housing policies, has never been accessible to everyone. Exclusionary zoning not only contributed significantly to huge wealth and other disparities, but it also laid the foundation for the housing crisis we face today. The Bay Area, typical of American cities, has roughly 75% of its urban land zoned for single-family homes. But across the country, the American dream is being reconsidered, and movements to densify and diversify neighborhoods are taking hold in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as at the state level in Oregon and California. Join us to explore the dark history of housing exclusion and what it could mean for solutions to the housing crisis to create a more just and equitable future.