Rasheedah Phillips: Repairing injuries of space and time in Philadelphia’s housing system

Housing exclusion and discrimination are deeply baked in this county’s housing system. However, this particular form of racial violence operates not just in space, but in time.

These types of inequalities are often framed in terms of spatial inequality and displacement from location. Hierarchies of time, inequitable economies of time, and uneven access to safe and healthy futures inform intergenerational poverty in marginalized communities in the same ways wealth passes between generations in traditionally privileged families.

By inequitable economies of time, I mean that time is unevenly distributed for certain communities — how for Black communities, their life expectancy is shorter depending on what zip code they live in, for example, or because they have to work more hours at lower wage jobs, they don’t have time equity or ability to spend and use their 24 hours a day in the same way as some who has more time privilege or resources.

In his book, Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History, economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin says that “temporal deprivation is built into the time frame of every society,” where people living in poverty are “temporally poor as well as materially poor.”

Historical practices of housing discrimination has distorted time itself, stalling and stealing futures.

For example, time poverty penalizes marginalized people in the justice system, where being 10 minutes late to court can mean losing your job, kids, home, and freedom. Temporal inequities show up at every step of the eviction process — from the short or fully waivable notice requirements for termination of a lease agreement to the inadequate time allowed for an evicted family to vacate a unit that is severely out of line with the time needed to secure new housing.

Marginalized Black communities are disproportionately impacted by material, spatial, and temporal inequalities in a linear progressive society, with many Black communities forced to occupy “temporal ghettos” as well as spatial ones.

Historical practices of housing discrimination have distorted time itself, stalling and stealing futures, compressing present possibilities, and compounding historical harms and inequities.

Redlining is one practice that has historically functioned as a temporal constraint, stripping Black, brown, and Indigenous families of a meaningful ability to plan for and build toward their futures. Known as a set of spatial practices that resulted in segregated neighborhoods, redlining also manipulated experiences of time for Black people. Homeownership — a significant piece of the American dream and a cornerstone of stability and generational wealth — was systematically denied to Black, brown, and Indigenous people, creating a rupture where the accumulation of resources over time was challenging, if not impossible, for many families.

Formalized through 1930s Home Owners’ Loan Corp. (HOLC) maps, redlining reshaped the physical and economic landscape of cities like Philadelphia, while also imposing rigid structures on time and temporality. Black Philadelphians in redlined areas faced systematic neglect and a lack of access to infrastructure investments, education, and public services.

» READ MORE: Round up the real redlining culprits in Philadelphia’s ills | Editorial

For individuals, it meant a lack of access to credit and investment, locking neighborhoods in temporal stasis and preventing them from “keeping up” with developments in other parts of the city.

During the height of redlining in the mid-20th century, a single Black household in a middle-class area could make the entire neighborhood “risky” for mortgage loans. Further, Black families — prohibited from buying homes in the suburbs in the 1940s, ‘50s, and into the ‘60s by the Federal Housing Administration — gained none of the equity appreciation suburban white families gained over that period.

Instead, many were forced into the rental market, where they encountered scarcity and less affordable housing, often substandard. This systemic racism weaponized time itself, dictating who had access to a desirable future, whose present would be marked by precarity, and whose past would become erased or devalued.

In doing so, redlining restructured how time was experienced, lived, and could be imagined by Black people and communities in Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, white neighborhoods, often subsidized by federal investment, enjoyed the temporal privilege of linear growth and prosperity. This divergence created enforced temporalities for Black communities marked by waiting, delay, and precarity, while white communities advanced with momentum and security.

Hierarchies of time, inequitable time distribution, and uneven access to safe and healthy futures inform intergenerational poverty in marginalized communities in some of the same ways monetary wealth passes between generations in privileged communities.

Redlining also accelerated the pace of decline in Black neighborhoods. Once a neighborhood was redlined, disinvestment compounded rapidly: property values plummeted, infrastructure deteriorated, and public services were withdrawn.

This artificially aged these neighborhoods, marking them as “blighted” and justifying further neglect, demolition, and eminent domain in later urban renewal projects. Time, in this sense, became a weapon — a tool to erode Black neighborhoods at an expedited pace while preserving and fortifying white neighborhoods.

» READ MORE: Race should not determine where you live | Editorial

Today, more than 50 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968’s prohibition against housing discrimination, we find that exploitive real estate practices and the inequities that flow from them are not merely artifacts of history.

Instead, these inequitable practices continue to show up in our present-day housing systems.

Redlining restructured how time was experienced, lived, and could be imagined by Black people and communities in Philadelphia.

They appear as real estate agents showing Black renters fewer options (a 2012 study by the Urban Institute and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, showed that Black renters saw about 11% fewer rental units than others). It may appear as “exclusionary zoning” practices that discourage density and multifamily buildings in wealthier, whiter areas. It may take the form of tenants with housing choice vouchers unable to rent in higher-income neighborhoods, causing a concentration in so-called low-opportunity districts. These modes of temporal and spatial segregation continue the violence of redlining, ensuring Black communities remain trapped in cycles of precarity.

In Philadelphia, many of the same neighborhoods originally marked as “hazardous” on HOLC maps remain disproportionately affected by poverty, eviction, and gentrification. A report by the Philadelphia Controller’s Office in 2020 highlights the historical backdrop of structural racism through redlining and its long-lasting impacts on the community, including poverty, poor health outcomes, and limited educational attainment compared with other neighborhoods in the city.

While Philadelphia’s high poverty rate has decreased in recent years, dropping from 21.7% in 2022 to 20.3% in 2023, it still stands significantly above the U.S. average. Black and Hispanic communities are particularly hard hit, with significant disparities in income compared with white communities.

Despite what often seems like insurmountable constraints, Black communities in Philadelphia have continually resisted and redefined imposed temporalities. The path forward must reject individualistic narratives that prioritize profit over people and instead prioritize collective responsibility for housing access. Mutual aid networks, tenant organizing, and housing advocacy are forms of temporal reclamation — creating conditions where communities can envision and build bold futures.

To truly address the legacy of redlining, policymakers must go beyond spatial equity to consider the temporal damages inflicted and integrate temporal justice into housing solutions.

» READ MORE: Black Philadelphians must fight segregation with economic empowerment | Solomon Jones

Building equitable housing models requires the people who have historically been, and presently are, locked out of housing opportunities. This approach must center intergenerational stability, ensuring futures are not stolen by displacement, eviction, or disinvestment. Models such as community land trusts and other community-owned forms of housing, eviction and housing discrimination protections, and measures like rent control prioritize long-term stability over short-term profit.

By investing in and fortifying Philadelphia’s most marginalized communities before displacement occurs, we can restore temporal agency and enable families to break free from cycles of crisis.

Reframing housing as a temporal justice issue allows us to confront the lingering effects of redlining and imagine futures where time and stability are equitably distributed across communities. Only by recognizing the interplay of time, space, and race can we build a Philadelphia where all communities have the stability and ability to dream, thrive, and plan for the future.

Rasheedah Phillips is a queer housing and land justice advocate, lawyer, parent, and interdisciplinary artist working through a Black futurist lens. Phillips is the founder of the AfroFuturist Affair, a founding member of the Metropolarity queer speculative fiction collective, and cocreator of the art duo Black Quantum Futurism. Phillips’ book, “Dismantling the Master’s Clock: On Race, Space, and Time,” debuts on Jan. 28.