Journal Article
The spatial logic of racial devaluation in the home owners' loan corporation
Social Forces, 1–23 (2026)
Abstract
While scholars highlight the racial legacy of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) residential security maps, less is known about how race shaped HOLC appraisers’ perceptions of the neighborhoods they assessed. Drawing on racialized organizations theory, this study examines how racial schemas within the housing industry became institutionalized in appraisal practices. Using the case of Chicago and a mixed-method approach, it interrogates the racialized discourse in HOLC neighborhood area descriptions, revealing how appraisers used a racialized geographic imagination that positioned Black residents as inherent threats to property values, even when they were not physically present in a neighborhood. Content analyses reveal appraisers’ acute spatial awareness of where racialized groups lived and their engagement in anticipatory devaluation. Regression analyses confirm that appraiser discussion of Black residents, rather than actual demographics, primarily shaped risk assessments, underscoring the interpretive role of appraisers as they transformed neighborhood demographics into racialized valuations. This study shows how race structured the institutional habits of thought on which places held value in the city. Findings have broader implications for residential segregation, stigma, and institutional racism, as the racial-spatial ideology around neighborhood value would shape and legitimize decades of racially unjust norms in the US housing market.