jammed into narrow lots on crowded streets, inhabited in some cases by immigrants or, increasingly, African-Americans. Houses like these were losers from the FHA point of view and the agency wouldn’t guarantee mortgages on them. Worse, the evaluation policy tended to disqualify whole neighborhoods, in effect to draw a line around them on the map and say, “Don’t even think of buying here because this part of town is heading down the tubes, and we don’t back losers.” The process came to be called red-lining. It had self-fulfilling consequences.
