Analysis of MLK Addresses Shows Redlining Is Still at Work in U.S. Cities
Martin Luther King Jr Blvd. in Dallas, TX. (Source: Google Maps.)
A research study published in September of 2020 revealed that the areas around streets named after Martin Luther King Jr. are more highly segregated and poorer than the United States average. As an analyst at Urban3—where we have access to property tax data from across the country—I wanted to see if these patterns held true across not just income levels, but property values, as well.
Dr. King was killed more than 50 years ago. In the years since then, one particular form of memorial has become prevalent throughout America: street renaming in his memory. According to an analysis by Apartment Therapy earlier this year, “There are more than 1,000 streets across America named after Martin Luther King Jr., and over the last 20 years, the number of streets named after King has nearly doubled.”
Streets named in Dr. King’s memory have become so commonplace in America that they have become, ironically, almost easy to overlook. Almost every city of any significant size, particularly across the South, has an MLK Boulevard or similarly named thoroughfare. What is also prevalent, however, are some sad trends in the data around these same streets: property values with an MLK address are consistently and steeply lower than anywhere else in a city.
Every city's form follows its finances. Decades of pernicious federal policies that created economic privation in these communities—what we often now generally refer to as “redlining”—didn’t disappear with the passage of the Civil Rights Act or Fair Housing Act, as unquestionably important as they are. Redlining changed form; in many ways, it is still very much at work.
As Bloomberg reported in 2015: “[T]he AOL Real Estate blog found that home values on [Martin Luther] King streets had fallen 12.5 percent from 2010 to 2011. The nationwide median housing price also fell over that period, but only 4.7 percent.”
How cities value property and what they do with that value are fixations for the staff of Urban3. As part of our preparation for the most recent Congress for the New Urbanism, I took a deeper look at these data around the so-called “King streets" (exact names vary from city to city, such as ML King Boulevard, Martin Luther King Boulevard, MLK Drive, and so forth).
This work primarily revolves around three key terms: market value, appraised value, and assessed value. Market value is the price a home is bought or sold for; appraised value is its evaluation by a bank for a loan; and assessed value, the public market figure, determines the taxes paid.
When you examine these figures closely, an undercurrent of racial bias emerges. Homes in majority-Black neighborhoods in Buncombe County, North Carolina, for instance, were appraised 21–23% lower than equivalent homes in non-Black neighborhoods. Not only does this mean that Black homeowners can borrow less against their homes, but they are also 1.9 times more likely to have their homes appraised under the contract price, leading to upfront costs they might be ill-equipped to handle.
The problem doesn't stop there. Small business relief, lending, and mortgage approvals also bear the brunt of these biases. So, while in the private market, homes owned by people of color are undervalued, meaning less financial support and opportunity, the public market paradoxically requires these homeowners to pay more than their fair share in taxes. This is a twofold burden shouldered exclusively by homeowners of color—primarily Black homeowners—in the United States.
To study this more visually, I mapped King streets across 12 American cities, which revealed three generally standard scenarios. Some cities, like Atlanta, showed a clear dip in value around Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Others, like Shreveport, Louisiana, or Kansas City, Kansas, were located in highly segregated areas of the city.
In the third scenario, a city’s King street was located in an area with a disproportionate amount of non-taxable municipal and non-profit uses—for example, community centers, public works buildings, and civic centers. While this gesture may be aimed at honoring Dr. King on a street whose uses support residents, it removes the opportunity to make the King street a thriving economic center in a way that celebrates the memory of Dr. King.
By filling the street with public sector properties—which don’t pay taxes—cities essentially lock up otherwise very developable land in very inflexible buildings, often for decades. In addition to simply being poor urban planning, this sidesteps the question about why values there remain persistently low.
Ironically, many King streets border their city’s downtown or the main commercial thoroughfare for a district near the city center. In other words, areas that are far and away the most productive and valuable in your entire city. This makes it even more baffling that property values here may be artificially suppressed simply because of the street’s name.
To that point, however, some ideas already exist for how these unfortunate trends could be reversed. In many respects, the same tactics that have worked to catalyze the revitalization of disinvested districts and underperforming corridors anywhere could be deployed along the country’s King streets.
First, look more closely at what is happening in your own community. See if you can map property tax values around a street named after Dr. King in your own community. Find local leaders and community members engaged in this work and see how you may support their efforts.
Second, use these wins to hold your local leaders to account. Your city government has a capital improvement budget for things like sidewalks, street design, lighting, and other kinds of infrastructure. How much of it is being spent on your local King street neighborhood? How does that compare with the attention given to other parts of town? Also, banks must obey something called the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, which legally obligates them to meet the banking needs of low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Which banks have a retail presence in these neighborhoods? Who does the most lending to businesses in these areas—and which, if any, are willing to go further to bring more catalytic capital to these districts?
Third, start small and iterate. Is there a public park along the King street that could be activated in some way? A temporary crosswalk or some other modification that might make it safer for pedestrians, regardless of mobility? An empty commercial building that could house a short-term tenant? Our friends at Better Block, Street Plans, and YARD & Company have a wealth of resources that may give you some ideas; if your city has a public art authority or united arts fund, they may also have funding to prototype these kinds of projects. Whatever you do, allow the voice of the neighboring community to lead this work, and make sure to spread the word!
Dr. Martin Luther King Drive in Shreveport, LA. (Source: Google Maps.)
Last but not least, while taking any action, be prepared for economic conditions to reverse themselves quickly. Downtown areas that have been systemically stripped of value and opportunity are prime locations for the gentrification and displacement that often accompanies redevelopment. Understanding the data and getting ahead of this change may aid in mitigating these effects, but only if someone in a local leadership role takes responsibility for doing so.
In an ideal scenario, longtime residents and other stakeholders of these districts will be able to participate in this financial upside if the property they own begins to appreciate. When residents and policymakers are unprepared for a real estate market to overheat, however, gentrification can wreak havoc on a community.
In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the words, “Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man.”
At the time, Dr. King was commenting broadly about incidents of violence that were erupting in urban centers across the United States as Black Americans and their allies grew increasingly dissatisfied with the country’s economic and political trajectory. Now in the 21st century, we can see that the racism that Dr. King fought against has shapeshifted into different forms of prejudice.
Naming a street after a fallen civil rights icon might feel like a step forward—or the very least we can do, given the circumstances of his death. The gesture loses its significance, however, when the communities along these corridors continue to face financial discrimination. Unconscious bias is still bias, and needs to be addressed more fully by our financial and policymaking leaders so that they are no longer perceived as literally or financially “unsafe.”
Until and unless this happens, the conditions that Dr. King spoke out against so frequently and forcefully, and the economic violence against people of color that so disturbed him, will only repeat themselves, and many of the American streets which bear his name will be dead ends.
Taylor Schenker is an Analyst at Urban3, a land use economics and data analysis firm based in Asheville, North Carolina. Academically trained as both an Economist and Urban Designer at Clemson University, her work focuses on financial assessment through climate and social lenses, and data visualization. Schenker is also a professor of the Urban Foundations course in the Master of Resilient Urban Design program at the Clemson Design Center in Charleston, South Carolina.
Seth Zeren, a neighborhood developer and founding member of Strong Towns, returns to The Bottom-Up Revolution to talk about the political side of incremental development and how to deal with issues like balancing needed development with increased property taxes.