Season 6, Episode 4
This week, Nikki interviews Jasmin Shupper, the CEO and Founder of the Greenline Housing Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to close the racial wealth and homeownership gaps and reverse the effects of systemic racism in housing by granting access to home ownership for people of color. Jasmin talks about the history of housing, economic and racial justice, as well as her journey from working as a financial analyst for a Fortune 500 company to real estate, and eventually non-profit work confronting the generational harm of discriminatory redlining practices in the 20th century.
You can learn more about the Greenline Housing Foundation here.
Follow their work on Instagram @greenline_housing.
20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action.
Host and Producer: Nikki Toyama-Szeto
Edited by: David de Leon
Music: Andre Henry
Transcript
[00:00:00] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Hello, this is Nikki Toyama-Szeto. I’m the executive director of Christians for Social Action and your host for today’s episode of 20 Minute Takes. Today we talk with Jasmin Shupper. She’s the founder and CEO of Greenline Housing Foundation, based in Southern California. She talks with us about the ways that her faith inspired her to engage with housing issues and economic justice issues, particularly for black and brown communities. Join us on this episode of 20 Minute Takes.
Jasmin, thank you so much for joining us here on 20 Minute Takes.
[00:00:58] Jasmin Shupper: Yeah, absolutely. It’s my pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
[00:01:02] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Now, we invited you on because we wanted to talk about your foundation, the Greenline Housing Foundation. And I have to admit that when I’ve heard about issues about housing, when I’ve heard about economic justice issues, I feel like I’ve heard things about microloans or accessible housing, but you all are doing work in an entirely different space.
Can you tell us just a little bit about what Greenline Housing Foundation does?
[00:01:28] Jasmin Shupper: Yes, absolutely. You are absolutely correct. Greenline Housing Foundation is a nonprofit organization, and our mission is to close the racial wealth and homeownership gaps and reverse the effects of systemic racism that have happened through practices such as redlining. And so from that standpoint, Nikki, you’re absolutely correct in that we are more reparative as we seek to pursue economic justice, acknowledging the significant history of discrimination and many policies and history that have culminated to create huge disparities that we see today and access to home ownership and wealth [along race lines]. And so Greenline is working to eradicate that. And we’re doing it specifically by giving people down payment grants, home maintenance grants, and financial literacy to qualify black and brown people to purchase or maintain a home. And then that grant actually becomes a form of lost equity almost intended to repair what centuries of legal housing discrimination have broken for this demographic.
[00:02:29] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Now, for some people, this idea of legal housing discrimination and redlining is a little bit new. What do you think Christians need to understand about what redlining was and its lingering effects today?
[00:02:42] Jasmin Shupper: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it’s really important for all people, and Christians especially, to understand, because I feel like our faith needs to inform our worldview in such a way that will compel us to act and pursue justice in all of its various forms. Right? And so I think what’s important to understand is that the gaps and the statistics that we see about racial wealth gap and home ownership gap by race are not just abstract concepts or ideals, right? Those are real life implications of very specific history, and redlining is just one component of how legal discrimination manifested itself. But redlining was basically the refusal of lenders and insurance brokers to make loans in areas whose ethnic populations were non-white.
And so those areas were deemed risky, high risk, and so there was significant disinvestment from those areas. Banks would not go there. Insurance bankers would not go there. And so it had significant effects on communities and on people’s livelihoods in terms of where they were able to purchase, if they were able to purchase, and the instruments and the tools that they needed in order to be able to purchase.
And so that’s kind of a snapshot, a micro snapshot of what redlining was, but the length of housing discrimination spans generations, really hundreds of years—and there are significant moments going all the way back to the end of slavery, right? And the chance of economic independence that the formerly enslaved would have needed in order to start building some type of legacy that was removed from them through policy. Right after President Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson became president, and he was a known Southern sympathizer and racist. And he overturned an order called “40 Acres and a Mule,” which had mandated that hundreds of thousands of acres of land go to these newly freed slaves in various Southern states, because it was widely understood that in order to have a shot at economic independence, property ownership was a fundamental component for this formerly enslaved population.
But in an act of political quid pro quo, he overturned the order and returned all of that land back to the Confederate landowners. And that’s just one example, because it’s estimated that that land today would be worth somewhere near 64 billion dollars had those formerly enslaved been able to keep it.
And there are significant moments like that, Nikki, all the way, like I said, back from the Emancipation Proclamation at the end of slavery to zoning laws that were enacted during the Great Migration when you saw hundreds of thousands of Black people fleeing the South when federal protection ended because there was so much racial terror.
It was very unsafe, literally, for them to be there. And, anecdotally, my family fled the South as part of the Great Migration. So my family has origins in Mississippi and Louisiana, and went to Chicago in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
[00:05:35] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I see.
[00:05:36] Jasmin Shupper: But then that’s when you started to see policies created to segregate neighborhoods, because you had this increasing black population, and white people were like, “We don’t want to live next door to them.” And so zoning laws were created as a means or as an instrument to segregate and keep those populations separate. Anyway, and I don’t want to give you an overblown history lesson, Nikki…
[00:05:55] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: It’s super helpful, because the thing that to me is sort of shocking, but it’s helpful as you’re talking about it, is that these were racial biases and prejudice that were legal, like they’re actual policies, right? And as I understand it, as I’m listening to you, if someone wanted to buy a house in a predominantly black neighborhood, the mortgage lender could say, “No, it’s too much of a risk,” or “We’re going to charge you three times as much interest,” and sort of make it impossible.
And so that meant that who was able to buy in these neighborhoods was really, really disproportionate. You tossed out some really interesting statistic; cause it’s one thing to say, “Oh, wow. You know, that happened then, but realtors have to say this now, and there are new laws in place. And isn’t that just a history thing?” But you mentioned something about the statistic. I believe it was something maybe related to housing equity and growth. Over the last like five or 10 years in certain communities, in contrast to, I don’t know if it’s maybe homeownership levels or was it equity?
And that, that was something very recent, like 10, 15, 20 years.
[00:07:05] Jasmin Shupper: Yeah. I mean, I have no shortage of statistics, so anything you need, but one thing that’s particularly glaring to me is that since the Emancipation Proclamation, Black people have gone from having 0.5 percent of all wealth to only 1. 5 percent of all wealth today, which basically means in the past 150 plus years, Black wealth has grown very slowly.
And part of that is because of the amount of time it takes for wealth to accumulate. And part of it is the intentional obstacles created to prevent access to that wealth creation and wealth building.
I mean, the homeownership rates even today are staggering, because reporting agencies realized that the homeownership rate for Black people lagged significantly behind the homeownership rate for Hispanics. And our non-white, non-Hispanic Asian brothers and sisters and our white brothers and sisters. And so then it kind of, it’s like, “Okay, well, why is that? Why are these gaps so big with homeownership rate for Black people being 45 percent for white people being 74 percent?” And, 30 plus points might not seem like a lot, but it is huge. It is a huge gap when you consider the time it takes for these statistics to be compiled and also various coefficients that go into measuring these. But that’s huge. That’s staggering. And the racial wealth gap tells a similar story as well.
[00:08:39] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Well, the thing that I really appreciate is on the website for Greenline Housing Foundation, on your website, you have all these different tools and maps so that if folks want to understand some of this information in this history. It’s really like living history. And to see some of the effects of it.
So I really appreciated all of the different resources that you have that really address how this racialized housing system has really resulted in significant economic impact, particularly for Black and brown communities. One of the things that I’ve heard your team say is that “Race-based damage requires race-based repair.” And so I just think that’s so fantastic about how the organization is really focused on helping Black and brown families step into home ownership.
[00:09:27] Jasmin Shupper: Yeah. I appreciate that. It’s not popular, Nikki. I will say it’s not popular and it’s much more complicated, to be honest… it’s such a deep-seated value of our organization. If we are going to make the impact that we’re trying to make, which is to close gaps, because so many of these issues are systemic, Nikki, to not have race-based benefits or to not solve this problem from a race-based lens will just exacerbate the problem or it just won’t solve it. Right? Like, sure, we can try to increase homeownership for everybody because, don’t get me wrong, it is hard for everyone, irrespective of your ethnicity, oh, my goodness, it is hard for everyone.
But statistics tell us it’s harder for Black and brown people, and history tells us why. And so from that standpoint, it is crucial that we address this problem and repair it based on the way that it was created, which is race-based, in order to make any significant difference.
[00:10:25] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I love that. I love also the pairing of the grants with this financial literacy. It’s just really building the capacity of the families and the recipients of those to both get into the housing market and also to keep their houses and to learn other things that are related to that.
I understand that you have both a background in real estate as well as work within the church… it’s really interesting to me, it feels like Greenline sort of brings those couple halves together. Can you tell us a little bit about that combination?
[00:11:00] Jasmin Shupper: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ll give you the long story of that, Nikki, without going too long, of how my professional and personal experience kind of culminated and then Greenline was born and just the providence of God, right? And working in ways that we have no idea until we have an idea of what he’s been doing.
But yeah, I’ve always loved real estate as a little girl. I would ride my bike to open houses in my neighborhood, just because I just loved it. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know if it was just what homeownership means. The memories that can be created and just the opportunity, right?
I just saw it all as like an opportunity, like somebody is going to move in, and they’re going to create these memories. So I’ve always loved real estate, from a very early age. I was born on the South side of Chicago into a home that my paternal grandmother owned that she left to my father when she passed away.
And as a Black woman in the ’60s, the fact that she was able to purchase a home anywhere was no small feat, but because of redlining, she was relegated to that area of the city as so many Black people were, right? That was kind of where she was able to purchase because of redlining and racially restrictive covenants, which we haven’t even talked about yet.
So anyway, she purchased this house, left it to my dad when she passed away. That was a house that I was born into. The sale from that house and those assets is what helped fueled all future purchases for me and my family that allowed me things like access to quality education and adequate health care and so many other social determinants of well being that are tied to place.
And so then, as I got older, I started to realize that I was the exception and not the rule in that. So I studied international business at Pepperdine University. And so as part of my business courses was a lot of finance and wealth building and business and all of these things, assets, and really gained a fundamental understanding of financial markets and knowledge of finances.
And then after I graduated, I worked for many years as a corporate credit risk underwriter, financial analysis for credit risk decision making. And our clients were large home builders, developers, and Fortune 500 companies, and so I spent extensive time combing the balance sheets and income statements of these organizations.
And one thing that always struck me, Nikki, was that there were very few people who looked like me in that field, while I was in corporate America. I can count on maybe one hand the other Black people that I saw in my decade-plus of working in that field. And so that kind of got my wheels to turning a little bit as well.
And these are all seeds, right? Planted along the way. And so then, after my first daughter was born, I took a little bit of time off work, but I got my real estate license in my spare time.
And while I was studying for that, I was struck by a fact that—I think maybe conceptually I knew but maybe not factually—it wasn’t until 1968 that it became illegal everywhere to discriminate on the basis of race among other protected classes in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
And so drawing on everything that I knew about wealth accumulation and compound interest in time—just the whole concept of time and accumulating wealth—I was like, “Well, wait a minute. That means that in 1967, somebody could deny someone on the basis of race, and it was legal.” And so then I just started to think, “Oh, my goodness!” It was kind of like an aha moment of just how far-reaching those implications are for Black people, for all discriminated classes. But, from my standpoint, for Black people specifically and the economic impairment that reality created.
And so I was doing real estate, and then I started working at my church full-time (or part-time turned into full-time, as it so often does), in their business department. And this was a large church, $8 million budget. So I really learned the ins and outs of nonprofit management in that, because I was overseeing the entire business department. I was the business director, head of business, had multiple departments under me. So I really learned just technically how to run a nonprofit and what that means and what that looks like and budgeting. I was responsible for the entire budget of the organization and just really concrete skills. But the most important thing that I learned there at the church that I think was an awakening to me, even as a Black person, Nikki, was the gospel imperative to pursue justice.
We have as people of faith a gospel imperative to pursue justice. And that’s what really was brought home to me during that. And it really represented what I’d been looking for my whole life and maybe not realizing it was this opportunity for my faith and my deeply held convictions to converge with my professional skills and background and just this heart that I’ve always had for economic justice, because our church at the time had a center for racial reconciliation, and they took us as a congregation and as members through this from a biblical lens, right? And what that means for us as people of faith. And so then the last part of the evolution of this journey was in 2020 with the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. And I remember I was just so heavy. I was so grieved. I have a Black brother and a Black father and just, I just felt so heavy, not only obviously for those families but for what that meant for race relations in our country. And what I knew from my lived experience to be the experience of Black people in this country that, that sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s very, very challenging. And so I just remember lamenting, and I was angry, and I was crying out to God in a moment of like, “I just feel like I need to do something, but I am so small. I am one person. And this is just such a big issue that touches every area of our society.” ‘Cause God sometimes speaks audibly. And then sometimes he doesn’t, right?
[00:16:51] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: (laughter)
[00:16:53] Jasmin Shupper: Sometimes it’s clear that he’s speaking and other times it’s like “That leaf fell right at that moment. Was that you God?” But this was one of the few times, and I’m so thankful that I heard God speaking audibly and he was like, “Well ,do something.” And I said, “Well, what am I supposed to do?”
I mean, I literally responded back. I said, what am I supposed to do? And he said, “Just use who you are and what you have with where you’re at.” I was like “Okay?” And he took me to Psalm 82 which part of it says, “Uphold the cause of the fatherless and oppressed.” And you know, I was journaling, and I came to that and I was like, “Oh my gosh. Okay. All right. Well, what can I do, like, what do I have? What do I got?” And then that’s when the seeds of Greenline were planted and really started to germinate. And looking back, like I said, just God’s providence of spending time as an underwriter so knowing how to underwrite risks to make sure that our clients get into a home that they can afford. Because the last thing we want is for them to lose a home. And just nonprofit management and what that looks like, and honestly, just faith as a driver recognizing that I am up against a very, very big system of oppression that I am trying to dismantle, doing my part to dismantle.
And just being reminded that we have a God who is familiar with defeating Goliaths. And each one of those elements of my story is really important.
[00:18:18] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I love this picture of one house after one house, the intimacy of the one by one, as well as the engagement with the systemic and the historic. To me, that just really sings the gospel and it sings of Jesus, right, who. can interact on the one-on-one and at the same time turns tables and upend economic systems.
Jasmin, I think as I’m listening to your story and the work that you all do, I know that folks are probably recognizing maybe similar dynamics in their own communities. Do you have any recommendations of what people can do?
[00:18:56] Jasmin Shupper: That’s a great question. What I find sometimes in doing this work is that when confronted with this reality and this history and the present-day implications of all of that, people are often like, “Oh, what can I do?” There’s this kind of desire for mobilization in some way.
And one thing that I will say that’s really important is to localize it, contextualize it. You learn the history of housing injustice in your community, in your city, in your state, significant moments in history, and that will help create a wider lens through which to view how we interact with others in the Imago Dei and how we how we approach others in our community.
So that would be one thing I would say, first is just to learn and be willing to open and seek knowledge, not to feel bad or ashamed, because it’s not great, right? But what it is is an opportunity for redemption.
And that’s what I think it’s important that we hold fast to. You know, especially as people of faith, that there is an opportunity to demonstrate the love of Christ here. How do that? And I think one of the ways is absolutely by learning about this locally and in your local context, because the reality of housing discrimination and housing injustice is that it was kind of replicated the same way just in different cities, right? And so there is a specific history that each city has, and it will most likely inform the neighborhoods of that city and the ethnic makeup of some of the neighborhoods of that city. So that’s what I would say first is learn.
And secondly, pray about how it might look for you to participate in this specifically. And then I would say, seek out grassroots organizations and nonprofit organizations that are trying to do this work. Because it’s hard work.
And see if there’s a way that you can plug in or get engaged or make a connection or make a donation or introduce someone to someone; those are really, really crucial ways to participate in this movement. I firmly believe we have everything we need for life and godliness through him who has given his own glory and goodness, right? And so, we have everything that we need if everyone participates. People of faith and people who believe in Jesus Christ can really change the world for his glory if we work together.
[00:21:17] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Thank you, Jasmin, so much for the work that you do. It’s inspiring to see a picture of repair and restoration; thank you so much for joining us here on this episode of 20 Minute Takes.
[00:21:30] Jasmin Shupper: Thank you for having me, Nikki, and for the work that you’re doing.
[00:21:39] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: 20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action. We’re edited by David de Leon. I’m your host, Nikki Toyama-Szeto, and the music is done by Andre Henry. You can find us on the web at christiansforsocialaction.org. Give us five stars, write a review, and share about the podcast with your friends.
