A new report released Tuesday from Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas links racially discriminatory redlining practices to today's vacant and abandoned properties in Black and brown communities. To do so, her office examined the decades-old redlining maps and then compared them to the locations of properties listed in the county's scavenger sales.

"It was an 'oh my God' moment," Pappas said. "We all realized that there was a correlation between everything that happened in 1940 - redlining and legislation in 1940s that the state legislature passed about scavenger sales to try to help with these distressed properties."