"The Impact of Highway Relocation upon the Housing Market" by Robert A. Rothbard

“The Impact of Highway Relocation upon the Housing Market,” by Robert A. Rothbard discusses the effects of relocation due to Interstate-496 on the local housing market. He also suggests the increase in segregation in the areas surrounding the new I-496. Rothbard takes the time to discuss statistics for white and nonwhite residents before, during and after relocation. Statistics include number of vacancies, persons per room, number of houses on one block, average monthly rent, value of home, home owners and home renters. He divides the city area surrounding the highway into thirty seven tracts, which is how he categorizes his data.

It is very interesting to see how segregation took an even greater roll after relocation. Nonwhite families were moved into heavily populated nonwhite neighborhoods where as whites moved into white neighborhoods and out of the city. The heavily populated nonwhite neighborhoods (tracts 15 and 18) had less square footage per house and had less land that white areas. These areas were overcrowded before the relocation and even more overcrowded after the relocation. Before the relocation and construction of I-495, there were 707 houses that stood in the way. In the 1960’s there were 863 houses and by the time of relocation there were 904 homes. It was surprising to me to see how quickly this area had overpopulated.

One of the most interesting things that I came across was the total number of homes that the state was actually responsible to move and the number of whites that occupied them. There were 940 homes that needed to be relocated in which 668 of them belonged to white families, therefore leaving 272 homes occupied by nonwhites. There were 208 of these families that moved outside of the city limits and 107 of these families didn’t give a forwarding address. Therefore the State of Michigan only had to relocate 625 families out of the 940 homes in the way of the construction. They shoved all of these people into basically the same area of the city but segregating them into certain areas. The map on page 69 was the most helpful thing for me in the whole thesis. This map reinforces the idea of segregation and shows where white and nonwhite families were relocated due to the construction of the highway. I found this thesis to be very informative and interesting to read. This thesis will be helpful to refer back to for facts and statistics when moving forward with our project.