Youth in Richmond’s redlined communities at high risk of being victims of violence: study

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) -- The impacts of "redlining," or the discriminatory mapping practice that largely denied loans and other important services from minority communities, are still alive and well in Richmond, a new study finds.

On Wednesday, Aug. 20, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) issued a press release regarding the connection between historically redlined neighborhoods and the risk of violence towards youth. VCU conducted this research in collaboration with Virginia State University (VSU).

What is redlining and when did it occur?

“Policies that may might be unjust, or even discriminatory, have a very far reach into the future in terms of their impact,” said Samuel West, an assistant professor at VSU and an affiliate faculty member at VCU Health, in the release. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

In 1934, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration began to use demographic information to both identify and map out neighborhoods based on lending risk. Communities were considered "desirable" with a perceived low lending risk or "undesirable," with a perceived high lending risk.

"While the program was outwardly intended to smooth the path to homeownership in the wake of the Great Depression, white homebuyers were given better lending terms than Black and other minority homebuyers when purchasing homes in majority-white neighborhoods," researchers said in the release.

Redlining gets its name from the typically-red highlighting used to designate these so-called "undesirable" neighborhoods.

The practice of redlining formally ended in 1968 when the Fair Housing Act was passed. However, the impacts of this discriminatory practice can still be seen today. For example, researchers have found that historically-redlined communities experience poorer health outcomes and shorter life expectancies than their non-redlined neighbors.

The University of Richmond (UR) found that only two of Richmond's historically-redlined neighborhoods aren't predominantly Black.

Redlining and youth violence risk are connected, researchers found

VCU's new study tested the impacts of historic redlining on violence -- specifically, violence aimed towards youth -- in Richmond.

“The effect of redlining on violence has never been tested in the city of Richmond,” West said in the release. “And it’s important to find the effects here in Richmond, since it has quite the history of being the epicenter of racist policy, the center of the slave trade and the capital of the Confederacy.”

VCU examined data associated with 261 patients admitted to VCU Health in 2022 and 2023 who were intentionally, violently harmed. These patients were between the ages of 10 and 24 and were pulled from a data pool that encompasses 148 Richmond neighborhoods.

More than half of these patients were Black (62%), according to VCU. About 18% identified as mixed race or "other," while 17% were white. The remaining 3% were either Asian or could not self-report their race. Approximately 13% of patients further identified as Hispanic or Latino.

Redlined neighborhoods -- from modern-day public housing communities to historic ones -- made up 86% of the violence hotspots researchers identified throughout the study.

"One formerly redlined neighborhood, Carytown, currently has low rates of violent injuries among youth," researchers said -- though they added that many areas in Richmond were never graded by the Home Owner's Loan Corporation, especially south of the James River.

“What we’re seeing now is this pattern in present-day Richmond, nearly a century after redlining began, where adolescent youth that live in these communities are still at this tremendously elevated risk of incurring violent injuries and experiencing violence in their community,” West said in the release.

Females also disproportionately impacted by violence

Researchers found other trends within the data, including that 70% of these patients were female.

“People may be surprised by the large proportion of females injured by violence, as most studies," said Nicholas Thomson, a forensic psychologist in the VCU School of Medicine. “However, when we look at all violent injuries, a different picture emerges. In our study, about 70% of those injured were women and girls. This shows the need for prevention strategies that build community resilience to protect women and girls, especially in neighborhoods with higher risk and fewer resources.”

Further, about 72% of all patients were covered by Medicaid, while 1 in 4 were victims of child abuse. Researchers added that less than 2% of all injuries involved guns.

In the release, VCU and VSU researchers said violence against youth should be addressed with violence prevention strategies that "go beyond traditional measures and seek to undo the harm caused by centuries of oppression and discrimination."