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[VOL. 42

frustrated. The housing boom of the mid-20's had been for whites
only. The economic depression had brought the housing industry to a
standstill — during 1934 only 119 houses were built in Baltimore.191
The only recent development for blacks had been Morgan Park, for the
faculty of Morgan College next to its new campus. Conventional
financing likewise was nonexistent. One nonconventional response was
known as the Homemakers Building and Loan Association. It was a
cooperative organized in the 1930's by the Interracial Commission with
power to buy, sell, lease, manage, and build. It invested $35,000 con-
verting one house into modern apartments and selling other houses to
stockholders before disappearing from the pages of history.192 But by-
in-large, the plan for segregation denied the black bourgeoisie a spa-
cious house on a quiet street.'

Hence, once the plan for segregation was in effect, Baltimore's
housing market had achieved a- dynamic equilibrium of two markets —
one white and the other black. '"Respectable" real estate dealers and
financing institutions were active only in the white market.193 Balti-
more was among the nation's leaders in white ownership. The black
market (except for the 300 houses built in Morgan Park) was second-
hand houses. Negro houses were in the older portion of the city in
"blighted districts." The city from time to time demolished black slums
if they became a nuisance. It proposed construction of public housing
for the poor, but never carried through with the proposals.194

Baltimore's housing market was to retain most of these character-
istics for the next 30 years. But one inexorable force for change re-
mained: between 1930 and 1960 Baltimore's black population grew
from 142,000 to 326,000.195 The market described above made no al-
lowance for increasing the number of black housing units. This gap
was widened by actions of the city government. Between 1930 and
1960 programs of school building, slum clearance, urban renewal, and
expressway construction displaced large numbers of households.196 Be-
tween 1951 and 1971 alone, 75,000 people were removed, and eighty to
ninety percent of them were Negroes. During this same period the city
had various public housing programs, but by 1976 only 15,000 public

191. S. OLSON, supra note 8, at 303.

192. Reid, supra note 171, at 34.|

193. See S. QLSOH, supra note 8, at 325.

194. Id. at 326.

195. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, U.S. DEP'T OF COMMERCE, ABSTRACT OF THE FIFTEENTH    
CENSUS OF THE UNITED STATES 104 (1933 ed. reprint 1976); BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, U S.
DEP'T OF COMMERCE, CENSUS OF POPULATION: 1960, PART 22, MARYLAND 178 (1961).

196. S. OLSON, supra note 8, at 377.