[BOT report]
Every building, street, and town held a story about who was allowed to live there and who was forced to move away. That simple reality became the foundation of my life’s work. To understand how our towns and cities became so divided today, we have to look closely at the laws that shaped our housing, the money taken from families, and how communities organized their lives long before modern systems emerged.
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For most of human history, people did not live under one central economic system. Five hundred years ago, before the mid-1400s, no single continent or nation controlled global trade. Instead, different parts of the world traded with one another as equal partners. West Africa had major trade networks connected by bustling market towns. Cities across the Indian Ocean traded goods like spices and cloth without needing permission from a single ruling empire. Power and business were shared across many different regions rather than concentrated in one place.
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In those earlier societies, land was usually treated as a shared resource to support everyone rather than something bought and sold for quick private profit. Wealth was not measured only by how much money one person had in the bank, but by whether a community could feed its families, care for its older residents, and keep its history alive. When local people control their own land, farms, and businesses, they create stability that protects them from outside shocks.
That balance changed when European nations expanded across the oceans in the 1400s, turning land into private real estate and people into human cargo. This new global system replaced shared trade networks with strict rules about who could own property. In the United States, town leaders and developers used these rules to decide where different racial groups could live. Throughout the twentieth century, white families received government support to buy suburban homes that grew in value over time. At the same time, Black families were blocked from buying homes, forced into specific neighborhoods, or evicted when cities decided to build new highways.
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I saw this pattern repeatedly in my research. Whether studying small towns in New Jersey or the destruction of the Rondo neighborhood in Saint Paul to build Interstate 94, the outcome was the same. A community would build its own local economy with home ownership, grocery stores, churches, and schools. Then, city planners would bulldoze those blocks for a highway or commercial redevelopment. Destroying a neighborhood’s main street does more than tear down buildings; it destroys the personal connections and small businesses that allow parents to save money and pass it down to their children.
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We cannot rely on the same rules that caused the damage. Standard economic theories often claim that housing markets treat everyone fairly and that poor neighborhoods are simply the result of personal choices. My research uses historical records, property records, and economic data to calculate the exact financial loss when a neighborhood is destroyed or denied investment. By putting a clear dollar figure on what was lost through segregation and displacement, we have the evidence needed to design fair policies and return lost wealth to those communities.
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