Super Blog 3 Kevin Francisco Pena

 


The map displayed above depicts the redlining procedures that took place in the 1930's to split Los Angeles into 239 districts which were graded from A-D. The "new deal" which set this in motion allowed the Federal Housing Administration to grant permission to the Home Owners Loan Corporation to draw out a map which would set boundaries in certain areas of Los Angeles and deem them great investments with houses in the A and B areas and in the areas ranked C and D would be the worst possible place to invest. Apart from investments the loan practices also differed depending on the area where A and B got the best and most affordable interest rates and C and D getting the worst and therefore the minority communities living there were forced to rent since they could not afford to own homes. 


The picture taken in 1938 shows the city of South Gate which was considered a blue collar place outside of Los Angeles. It was soon became a middle class community with FHA mortgages being good investments for homeowners and was considered on the rise due to the expanding industry that surrounded. However as time passed Latino homeowners began to buy property in the area despite opposition from the FHA and homeowners to drive Latinos out of their community. By the 1970s and 1980's South Gate had become a predominantly Latino community and continues to this day I chose this picture to show the exception there were to redlining practices but also how the FHA and majorily White communities fought to drive out other non white Americans from their areas.

This last picture is to show the main part of my research project and that is the Exide Battery plant that manufactured car batteries in the city of Vernon and resulted in contaminating the soil with lead which has affected my community of Boyle Heights and other nearby communities surrounding the area. Since 2017 the facility has been shut down and in 2020 Exide decided to declare bankruptcy walking away from any legal actions taken against them and leaving the city of Los Angeles tax payers with millions of dollars of debt to clean up the toxic spill left behind by Exide.


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