The Distribution of Federally-Insured Mortgages: 1935-1975 Evidence from Local Land Records

Grant description:

Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration policies are understood to have contributed to racial disparities in homeownership, wealth, and neighborhood opportunity in the United States, but systematic data on their mortgage activity is scarce. This project proposes to digitize and publicly release a dataset of FHA-insured and VA-guaranteed mortgages issued between 1935 and 1975 to assess the demographic and spatial distribution of these loans. Addresses will be geocoded, and names of borrowers matched to full-count Census data from 1930, 1940, and 1950 to identify borrowers’ demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. This project will assess who received these loans; how they were distributed across neighborhoods; and whether FHA and VA insurance accelerated White flight and exacerbated segregation.