Redlining gets its name from "residential security" maps drawn by agents of the Home Owners Loan Corporation, a federal agency, between 1933 and 1940. On these maps neighborhoods would be grouped into four color-coded categories, with highly desirable neighborhoods shaded green and the least desirable neighborhoods shaded red.
HOLC agents very often made decisions on neighborhoods based on race, class, and ethnic composition. Financial institutions would use this information to decide who was a good lending risk; people from the "redlined" neighborhoods were considered too risky to loan to simply because of where they lived.
In the 1937 map to the right, the red neighborhoods were home to the city's Black community and recent immigrants to the United States--mainly Italian and Polish.
Redlining contributed to racial segregation and concentrations of urban poverty, among many other problems. The legacy of redlining is visible in cities all across the United States to this day.
Redlining Maps Online
Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America is an interactive map created through a collaboration between four universities. Warning: most maps include comments about each neighborhood from HOLC agents--many using language we would find offensive and racist today.
The project includes maps for several Connecticut cities and towns, including Hartford, New Haven, Waterbury, New Britain, Darien, and Stamford.