A team of Ridgewood High School students recently uncovered some unsettling history about their town.
Housing deeds that banned people of color from buying homes. Red-lined maps where government loan agents gave lower rankings to areas with more Black and immigrant residents, dooming [those] areas to disinvestment and low property values. A Ridgewood Code published by the Ridgewood Board of Realtors in 1941 that said its goal was to bring here only the kind of people who are here and thus preserve the congenial neighbor tradition.
The students found these documents while researching a paper on housing inequality that on Thursday was named a regional winner in a competition hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.