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María B. Vélez, UMD CCJS

Countering the Legacy of Redlining: Latino Immigrant Revitalization and Neighborhood Violence
When May 05, 2025
from 12:00 PM to 01:00 PM
Where 2208 LeFrak / Online
Contact Name
Contact Phone 301-405-6403
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About the Presentation

The government-sponsored Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) graded and mapped the credit-worthiness of neighborhoods across many US cities in the 1930s. To determine risk, local realtors and appraisers graded areas on an A-D scale. Places graded “A” were shaded in green and “greenlighted” for bank investment, while on the other end, those graded a “D” were colored red, and “redlined”, discouraging banks from investing in these areas. An important body of work ties this gradient to inequitable trajectories of investment, development, and well-being for communities. Recent work extends the legacy of redlining to neighborhood crime, and especially violence. But can neighborhoods counter the historical footprint of these grades? Building on the revitalization thesis, we argue that Latino immigration helps disrupt the tendency for redlining to set neighborhoods on trajectories of disadvantage and disinvestment, and potentially violence. Using San Antonio, Texas as our case study, we investigate the homicide trajectories of graded communities from 1950 to 2011. We find that not all redlined areas face the same fate over time. Specifically, redlined neighborhoods with the greatest amount of immigration along with a sizeable share of co-ethnics experienced much less violence over time than redlined places with less Latinos and immigrants. While it is important to highlight the role of institutionalized, government-sponsored housing policy interventions in making or breaking the well-being of neighborhoods, exploring heterogeneity in the fortunes of redlined communities cautions against structural determinism in light of the potential for Latino immigrant revitalization.

About the Speaker

Maria Velez

María B. Vélez is an Associate Professor in the department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland-College Park.  Her general interests are to understand how stratification along racial-ethnic, political, and economic lines shapes and is shaped by the uneven patterning of crime and justice outcomes.  Dr. Vélez  serves as the Co-Director of Racial Democracy Crime and Justice Network (RDCJN) with Dr. Rod Brunson (UMD). She recently served on the consensus panel sponsored by the National Academies, "Reducing Racial Inequality in Crime and Justice: Science, Practice, and Policy." 

 

Seminar Format

Location IN PERSON: 2208 LeFrak Hall. We are requesting advanced registration so that we can track capacity. Please use this link to RSVP for in-person attendance.

Location ONLINE VIA ZOOM: Zoom Registration Link.  Upon registration, you will receive an automatically generated email with the direct link for the seminar

If accommodations are needed, please send request to meeting organizer (mprc-support@umd.edu) at least 72 hours prior to the event, if possible, to allow time to discuss and implement alternatives.

COVID-19 Information

MPRC public events for Spring 2025 will be a mix of in person and online via Zoom.  For in person events, all event attendees must follow current protocols.

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