he wrote for the ADN, commentator Charles Wohlforth opined: “There’s no question that white leaders of the past used community planning to promote segregation, generating inequality that persists today… Just not much in Anchorage.” And while Mr. Wohlforth is correct that the municipality experienced much of its growth in the decades after the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, he understated the impact of racist housing policy and urban planning in Anchorage.
Simply put, if you were Black or Native in Anchorage from the 1920s through the 1960s, and even into the 1970s, it would have been somewhere between challenging and impossible to purchase property or own a home in the following neighborhoods: Government Hill, South Addition, Turnagain, Huntington Park, Spenard, Rogers Park, Geneva Woods and Airport Heights. Fairview , Mountain View, Nunaka Valley and Green Acres were the options left.
But by then, generational wealth had already accrued to those who secured property and home equity in Anchorage’s more established and exclusive neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the few neighborhoods where Anchorage’s Black and Native population were reliably permitted to reside had become saddled by depressed housing values, elevated levels of poverty and predatory businesses, higher percentages of renters, as well as pernicious slum and absentee landlords. These patterns persist into the present.