Redlining was a government-sanctioned discriminatory policy that designated most urban minority-majority neighborhoods as places banks should not offer home mortgages. The term originates in color maps developed in the late 1930s by Homer Hoyt, an economist with the Federal Housing Administration, to direct mortgage loans made by the Home Owner’s Loan Corp. Redlining refers to the map’s color-coded neighborhood types: red zones indicated high-risk investments; yellow zones medium risk; and green zones low risk.