Chicago Black Belt: Overcrowding and Rent Exploitation During Great Migration

During the 1920s, Chicago's South Side 'Black Belt' — a narrow corridor of racially covenanted neighborhoods — housed hundreds of thousands of Great Migration arrivals in severely restricted space. Landlords charged Black renters 25–50% more than white renters for equivalent apartments in a phenomenon documented by the Chicago Commission on Race Relations (1922). Buildings were subdivided into 'kitchenette' units — single rooms with hotplates — generating triple the rental income per square foot. Overcrowding rates were three to four times higher than in comparable white neighborhoods.