DENVER – Residents in Denver’s most polluted ZIP code have long since recognized the problem of breathing dirty air, but new research out of CU Boulder published this week proves how historically racist housing practices have pushed people of color to live in more polluted areas for decades.
“This is a facet of systemic racism,” Bradley told Denver7 Thursday. “These people don't necessarily choose to live in these places. It's dictated by historically racist practices" like redlining, racial covenants, real estate steering and other exclusionary zoning laws, he said. The outcome, his co-authors wrote, adversely impacts communities of color"with worse conditions while preventing them from leaving for better housing.
He said the research wasn’t surprising: People of color, specifically those of Hispanic/Latino and American Indian/Alaska Native heritage, are exposed to higher levels of air pollution than non-Hispanic whites. “We just focused on Denver and redlining practices that took place in the 1930s and 1940s,” said Bradley. “And that's important, because I think that every city has a story of why people live where they do, and that affects who is affected most by pollution.”
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