The Story of Segregation in Charlotte

From 2013 to 2019, the percentage of Charlotte ZIP codes that were affordable for the median Black household in terms of rent dropped below 20 percent. Meanwhile, corporate investors bought a quarter of all homes sold in the city during 2021, most of which were purchased in Black and Brown neighborhoods.

The pressures that these changes have created for Black and Brown Charlotteans affect everyone in the Charlotte area, no matter their race.

As corporate investors continue to buy up Charlotte’s dwindling stock of naturally affordable housing, the fact that few Black and Brown households can afford to live in most areas of Charlotte points to how Charlotte is generally becoming unaffordable: From 2013 to 2019, regardless of race, the percentage of ZIP codes that were affordable for low-income renters dropped significantly, from 34 percent to 10 percent.

Charlotte is increasingly becoming a place where only those with the ability to outbid these corporate investors can afford to own their own homes. With each home these investors buy, they accumulate more capital to buy up additional homes in other low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Given how housing affordability has played a major factor in Charlotte’s growth up to this point, such a shift places the viability of the city’s future growth into question.

The costs of segregation and housing inequality in Charlotte must be redressed to ensure that all Charlotteans reap the benefits of growth instead of experiencing diminishing affordability and displacement. To begin that process of redress, this StoryMap will track how we got to this point. It begins by taking us all the way back to see how Jim Crow development shaped neighborhoods that emerged in early 20th century Charlotte, and tracks how segregation forged the city’s landscape and its banking system from then to now.

The move to Brooklyn represented  a complicated mixture of coercion, celebratory community-forming, and hard-won concessions.  Black Charlotteans were banned from the ballot box in many cases, and due to Jim Crow restrictions, their businesses were either removed or severely curtailed from locations downtown. Still, they successfully lobbied the city to create the first Black high school (Second Ward High School) and its first library for Black patrons (Brevard Street Library) in Brooklyn.

These efforts provided the city’s African American community with the institutional scaffolding necessary to face growing racial oppression through future activism, advancement, and organization. They also complemented the new Black commercial district in Brooklyn that included the first Black-built and Black-occupied office building in Charlotte,  the landmarked Mecklenburg Investment Company building  (this still stands on South Brevard Street). Both those institutions and that commercial clout would serve as crucial resources for blunting segregation’s advance in Charlotte over the decades to come.

With the newfound homeownership gap also came  the destruction of Brooklyn . Charlotte leading realtors and homebuilders manned a slum clearance committee for the city as early as 1948, and their push for housing code enforcement precipitated the city’s decision to clear swaths of the city of “blight” through urban and freeway renewal. Ironically, this “blight” had been created by many of those same industry leaders through their racially discriminating practices.

During the late 1940s, the construction of Independence Boulevard cut a gash through Brooklyn, which  accelerated building neglect by white property owners , whose negligence had already been incentivized by the city's 1947 rezoning of Brooklyn from residential to industrial use. After a city commission set out in 1958 to study the extent of blight in the neighborhood,  Brooklyn was declared slated for demolition in 1960 .

Between then and the mid-1970s the Brooklyn renewal project  displaced 1,009 families , all of whom were Black. The project did so without providing any relocation resources, effectively wiping Charlotte’s most important Black neighborhood from the face of the city and uprooting its families at the cost of millions to the public.

Brooklyn was just one place: In total,  the city tore down over 11,000 houses between 1963 and 1975 , a majority of which were located in Black neighborhoods.

The construction of the Brookshire Freeway (I-277) during the 1960s further sliced up historic west-side Black neighborhoods  such as Washington Heights and McCrorey Heights , where some of those displaced families would move. Others, meanwhile, would either purchase homes in formerly all-white mill neighborhoods on the downtown fringes from  blockbusters like Mayor Stan Brookshire’s brother  or rent homes from white-owned, low-income housing projects like  Brookhill Village  and  Double Oaks  that had been subsidized through cheap land leases from the city and forgivable, low-cost Section 608 FHA loans.

When Charlotte embarked on building its new light rail transit system during the 2000s, it failed to follow-up on an intended goal of ensuring that affordable housing would be built along its transit lines. Of 6,200 new housing units built along the city’s first Blue line through 2019, o nly 100 of them are below-market units, which is less than 2 percent .

The result is that what could have been a potential avenue to racial equity in the city has instead turned into a tool of continued inequality and displacement. While the city of Charlotte actually saw a decrease in its white population from 2010 to 2020, adjacent tracts to its original Blue Line saw a  61-percent increase of white residents and a 6 percent decrease in Black residents .

Even as Charlotte’s  rents become increasingly unaffordable  and home prices continue to climb, Black and Hispanic loan applicants in Mecklenburg County were denied mortgage loans at double the rate of whites. This continues to push a number of home-seeking residents of color further and further away from the ability to secure places in the city.

In addition,  corporate investors  are buying up the city’s dwindling mid- and lower-priced housing stock in order to transform it into rentals, placing all-cash, above-market offers on homes that would outbid many moderate-income Black and Hispanic residents.  One analysis  found that more than 25,000 single-family homes in Mecklenburg County are owned by Wall Street-backed interests, with a disproportionate number of those homes located in historically Black neighborhoods such as  Pottstown .

As you can see, the story of segregation in Charlotte is not just a story of the past but one of the present. If you are interested in learning more about how this is also true of other cities in the U.S., check out our other stories of local segregation in  Denver  and  Milwaukee , or read through the various  research resources  available on our website. You can also get involved in the Redress Movement's work by signing up for our email list, following us on social media, or reaching out to our field and digital organizing teams. Thanks for reading, and be sure to check up on our various feeds for further news and research updates!