From the Washington Post:

By Emily Badger May 8 at 8:15 AM

According to new research, migration patterns set in motion by the foreclosure crisis slowed declines in segregation across metropolitan America between blacks and whites by 19 percent, and between whites and Hispanics by 50 percent. It’s well-documented that minorities were hit particularly hard by foreclosures. But this work, published in the American Sociological Review, suggests that those racial disparities were compounded by what happened next: Minorities who lost their homes moved to more distressed neighborhoods, while white homeowners who could leave appear to have been the first to pull out of places hit by foreclosure.

Over time, these parallel trends made many neighborhoods more segregated than they likely would have been if the housing crisis had never happened. The most troubled neighborhoods in particular grew less white and more heavily minority. And these changes in individual neighborhoods added up so that segregation increased during this time across whole metropolitan areas.

“My general worry is that the progress we’ve been making toward racial integration has been partly derailed,” says Cornell’s Matthew Hall, who conducted the research with Kyle Crowder at the University of Washington and Amy Spring at Georgia State.

Racial segregation between blacks and whites in the U.S. has been declining for decades, but very gradually, and in some places less so than others. The recent uptick in segregation that Hall, Crowder and Spring measured is small but still significant. It was also particularly large in Western cities heavily hit by the housing bubble like Las Vegas and Sacramento.