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Black Housing, White Finance: African American Housing And Home Ownership In Evanston, Illinois, Before 1940 - Statistical Data Included

Journal of Social History, Winter, 1999 by Andrew Wiese

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Like racial transition on hundreds of city streets, racial change on Ayars Place was rapid, and it occurred without forceful resistance by local whites. Rather than resisting or staying put, aging white residents sold their homes and moved elsewhere. What is notable about the process, however, was the level of participation by Evanston's white real estate elite. Rather than shunning the market on Ayars Place as homes changed hands, formal lending institutions and prominent businessmen played an active role in the process. In fact, men who lent money to African American home buyers on Ayars Place (and they were all men) included future presidents of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce and the North Shore Real Estate Board, elected officials, and executive officers from three local banks.

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The most active of these individuals was John E Hahn, who was Evanston City Clerk from 1899 to 1925 and president of the Commercial Trust and Savings Bank of Evanston. Hahn lent first or second mortgages to a third of black home buyers on Ayars Place (eight of twenty-five) in the early 1920s. [38] Other individual mortgagors included Christian Golee, founder of the Evanston Trust and Savings Bank and, later, president of the Chamber of Commerce (1930--31), who made four individual mortgage loans on Ayars Place, and Clyde D. Foster, a founder of the short-lived Central State Savings Bank of Evanston, who made three loans as an individual and oversaw several others as treasurer for the real estate firm, Quinlan and Tyson. [39] Altogether, individual mortgage lenders from Evanston furnished 40 percent of the loans to African American buyers on Ayars Place between 1918 and 1931. Individual lenders from Chicago provided an additional 25 percent, and the Chicago Title and Trust Company, one of the largest mortgage lenders in Cook County, lent most of the balance, about 32 percent. [40] Although local banks generally avoided Ayars Place as it underwent racial transition, members of the local real estate elite and one large Chicago firm made up the difference. [41] In contrast to the image of lenders in racially changing neighborhoods as loan sharks of the mortgage world, mortgagors on Ayars Place included well known public men with real estate investments all over town.

Although white elites lent money to African Americans in a housing market on Ayars Place undergoing racial change, evidence suggests that they charged a premium for the service. Although mortgage records are inconclusive sources regarding the actual cost of credit (mortgage documents do not reveal administrative charges that may have inflated the cost), the printed terms of mortgages recorded for homes on Ayars Place suggest a pattern of discrimination against black borrowers. [42] For example, the average first mortgage loan on Ayars Place was $3,060 at 6.25 percent interest payable in 3.78 years. Second mortgages were typically smaller ($1,991 on average) for a shorter period (2.3 years) at a higher interest rate (6.44 percent). By contrast the average first mortgage loan to a sample of white home buyers in Chicago during the same period was $4,160 at 6.1 percent interest, payable in 3.8 years. Although there is no way to separate differences related to race from effects related to income, occupation, or o ther factors, evidence suggests that Evanston lenders took a bite out of their black clients.

Black Housing, White Finance: African American Housing And Home Ownership In Evanston, Illinois, Before 1940 - Statistical Data Included

Journal of Social History, Winter, 1999 by Andrew Wiese

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