But I, like, split my childhood, basically.

So we'll start with where I first grew up,

so I'm really excited to show you guys this.

- So this is my hometown. - Wow, that's cool.

We were the only black family on the block.

I was the only black kid in my grade.

One of three black families in my school.

And if we look, folks are in the 99th percentile

who grew up here when it comes to average income.

Less than 1% are incarcerated.

We can look at teenage birth rate-- less than 1%.

Around high school, my folks got divorced and we moved into the city.

It's the exact opposite.

It wasn't till I got to D.C. that I actually had a benchmark

for understanding everyone didn't grow up the way I did.

And it took, you know, my parents getting divorced

and us moving to the city for me to actually

understand how fortunate I really was.

Zip code influences so much that we have got to make sure

that those neighborhood conditions

aren't setting people up for failure.

We are keeping people of reasonable means out of neighborhoods.

While I was doing some research, I came across this,

which is the Opportunity Atlas.

And it's a map that shows you the average life outcomes

for people who grew up in a given census tract.

It's just crazy to think that I may have only

become as successful as I am

because I spent the majority of my childhood here

instead of in D.C.

But why don't we take a look at where you guys grew up?

Dun, dun, dun.

( theme music playing )

- Lee: So, you're, like in the Bay area. - Christophe: Oh, yeah.

- I must have grew up in Cupertino, California. - Lee: Okay.

Christophe: Majority Asian. Definitely fairly wealthy.

- A lot of, like, tech, Silicon Valley employees. - Lee: Right.

All right. So I'm gonna put in my zip code where I grew up.

So I just took you guys to Brooklyn, New York,

Crown Heights, and immediately traveling here,

it's just completely red.

Yeah, so, $30k, that makes a lot of sense to me.

But is also just-- this shows how segregated

Brooklyn is and was at the time.

Fabiola: Yeah. So right here at Grand Army Plaza,

it just looks so different from the blocks

where I grew up in Brooklyn.

And so that was out Saturday activity.

Let's go to the library. Let's go to the park.

And that was kind of escaping

a lot of the segregation in Crown Heights

to go to this area where the amenities were better.

Did you notice those neighborhoods being cleaner?

Absolutely. And I think the biggest thing was trees.

- Right. - Just like how many trees do you have on your block?

I think it does something to your psyche where it's like,

oh, I feel like I can breathe better.

I feel like someone cared enough to beautify this area.

Well, guys, thank you for taking the time out to come look at this with me

- and showing me where you grew up. - This is so cool.

I want to talk to this professor at NYU

to see if I can get some information and some insight into how we actually got here.

Jacob: So I think the overarching important message to take away

is that segregation was intentionally designed.

- There are a number of-- - Designed by who?

By a wide range of policy makers on the local level

all the way up to the federal level.

When did we start to see the government

actually leading a lot of these programs when it came to segregation?

So the federal government instituted these

massive housing programs during the New Deal

to save a housing market that was in severe distress.

Their first policy was called the Home Owner's Loan Corporation,

or H.O.L.C. or "hulk."

Part of H.O.L.C. was sending appraisers,

real estate appraisers to hundreds of cities across the country.

And these appraisers would grade neighborhoods in these cities,

and this is where the term redlining comes from.

Lee: In your lease it would say,

"You cannot resell this house to a black family."

- Jacob: Yeah. - So, let me explain.

As these appraisers surveyed cities across the United States,

they created maps that they distributed to banks.

And the banks used these maps

to decide how risky it would be to provide loans

or mortgage assistance to different neighborhoods around the country,

and each of these maps was assigned a color.

So green indicated this was the most desirable area,

and the map we're looking at right now is an area

in the northern suburbs of Chicago.

And along with these maps,

we were given documents that described

the neighborhood that was being surveyed.

If we take a look at the top, we can see the class and occupation.

We can also see the number of black families in this area,

and the preferred nomenclature of the 1930s was Negro.

There were zero.

Moving on to the next classification

were blue neighborhoods.

And blue neighborhoods were considered

to still be desirable.

So as we take a look at the description

of this blue area in Chicago,

the percentage of foreign families is still zero.

The percentage of Negro families, still none.

And as we come down to the description, we see the area is well laid out

and the improvements are attractive,

but the proximity of Negro families on Spruce Street

at the southern edge precludes the district from a better rating

and is retarding its development.

The proximity of Negro families. That's so crazy.

So as you can see, these maps didn't ignore race.

In fact, they were heavily dependent on it.

Race played a key factor in determining the value of these neighborhoods

and their ratings to the banks.

The yellow neighborhoods were listed as definitely declining.

This one had 50% foreign families,

those foreign families being Polish and German.

Race wasn't the only determining factor

in whether or not these neighborhoods had value.

Immigrant families heavily impacted whether or not

it got a favorable evaluation.

And as we move on to the last designation of these neighborhoods,

we come to red neighborhoods.

And this is actually where we get the term redlining from.

These neighborhoods were defined as hazardous.

And when we look at the description of the area,

the number of foreign families-- 5%.

They were Italians.

But the percentage of Negro families-- 90%.

And as we make our way down the description sheet,

we see "This concentration of Negroes in Evanston

is quite a serious problem for the town,

as they seem to be growing steadily

and encroaching into adjoining neighborhoods."

These maps are how the federal government institutionalized segregation,

and they used race to determine the value of all of these neighborhoods.

So I want to understand how all of these red lines

are impacting people's lives today.

H.O.L.C. was passed in 1933, and before that time,

places where H.O.L.C. made those red-lining maps

and places that didn't have those maps

were about the same level of segregation.

And the measurement that we use is a fairly common measurement of segregation

called Black Isolation.

Then by 1950, 1960, we see that cities

that were where the redlining maps were created,

there's this huge jump here.

This one sort of moment, they were collecting the data and published the data

and it vastly impacted millions of American lives from that point on.

Yeah. This gap emerges especially as the Federal Housing Administration

and the G.I. Bill kick in after H.O.L.C.,

and then we're layering on schools, highways, et cetera.

Suburbanization. And then all that gets locked in place.

So I would say that the gap that we see today

is a result of structural racism,

which includes the wealth gap,

it includes this history of exclusion.

It includes the intentional segregating of neighborhoods.

What impact did this have on our economy

and the ability for people to participate in it?

Housing segregation has all these other layers on top of it,

including education and employment opportunities.

So the isolation of people of color,

in this case specifically African-Americans,

has dramatically limited the ability of African-Americans

to kind of achieve what we generally consider to be kind of middle class status--

home ownership, wealth stability,

the ability to pass on resources to the next generation.

Any other interesting takeaways from this?

It didn't have to be this way.

So we just learned about how the government has historically

segregated neighborhoods across America,

but I wanted to understand how these problems

are affecting people today.

I'm getting ready to meet up with two former testers

from the Fair Housing Justice Center.

So, tell me exactly what a tester is.

What did you all do in that capacity?

It's a way of finding out what landlords or real estate agents

are saying to people when they think no one else is listening.

If you're a real person going out looking for a home to rent or to buy,

you provide your information and you're given certain information

about what's available in what neighborhoods at what price levels.

You have no way if knowing if someone of a different race or ethnicity

or any of the protected characteristics is being told the same thing as you.

What are the ways that we're seeing housing discrimination play out right now?

Any time I hear somebody say, "Oh, white supremacy,

white privilege is just a myth in this country," I say,

"Come do my job for half an hour and you'll see the way the doors get opened for me."

I actually had this very nice woman in Brooklyn showing me an apartment.

We're always instructed to convey disinterest.

She said, "Tell you what I'm gonna do.

Let me write down the number for the entry code for the lobby door.

If I'm not here, you just let yourselves in. Go up to the fourth floor.

Show her around the apartment because I'd really love to see you guys in here."

Most of my experiences are not like Craig's at all.

I don't want to paint the picture that every time I'm sent out to test

I'm discriminated against,

but I have been involved in cases

where very clear discrimination happened.

At times, I am shown the apartment, but I'm quoted a higher rent.

$300 over my white counterpart.

At times, not shown amenities in the building.

Not encouraged to apply where my white counterpart was encouraged to apply.

Lisa, what is-- what do some of those experiences that you've had,

what do they tell you about what regular folks might be going through?

When you're a tester, we're-- as an African-American,

I'm representing all the African-Americans that went and inquired at that building

and were lied to, so I represent so many other people of color

who are experiencing this while just looking for housing,

and housing is a basic need.

So, when my dad sold our house in D.C.,

we had to get it appraised twice.

And the first time it was appraised, the value was set at about $800,000.

But my dad knew that our neighbors on the same block

were selling their houses for much more that that.

So we spoke to a realtor who told him

to take all of the family photos off the walls,

leave them bare, and get it appraised a second time.

And that second appraisal,

the value was set at about $1.2 million.

And at the time, I didn't think that was motivated by race,

but now after talking to these testers,

I'm starting to think that race

maybe played a role in the home's valuation.

- Toby? - Yeah.

- Hey, man, I'm Lee. - Good to meet you.

Tell a little bit about what you guys do at Open New York.

So we are a pro-housing group.