Perspectives on Fair Housing PDF
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Perspectives on Fair Housing THE CITY IN THE TWENTY- FIRST C ENTURY Eugenie L. Birch and Susan M. Wachter, Series Editors A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. Perspectives on Fair Housing EDITED BY Vincent J. Reina, Wendell E. Pritchett, AND Susan M. Wachter FOREWORD BY Marc Morial UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS PHILADELPHIA Copyright © 2021 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www . upenn . edu / pennpress Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Reina, Vincent J., editor. | Pritchett, Wendell E., editor. | Wachter, Susan M., editor. Title: Perspectives on fair housing / edited by Vincent J. Reina, Wendell E. Pritchett, and Susan M. Wachter. Other titles: City in the twenty- first century book series. Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2021] | Series: The city in the twenty- first century | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020019214 | ISBN 978-0-8122-5275-0 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: United States. Fair Housing Act. | Discrimination in housing— United States. | Housing policy— United States. | Discrimination in housing— Law and legislation— United States. Classification: LCC HD7288.76.U5 P47 2021 | DDC 363.5/5610973— dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020019214 CONTENTS Foreword vii Marc Morial Introduction 1 Vincent J. Reina, Wendell E. Pritchett, and Susan M. Wachter Chapter 1. The Long History of Unfair Housing 9 Francesca Russello Ammon and Wendell E. Pritchett Chapter 2. Sociology, Segregation, and the Fair Housing Act 45 Justin P. Steil and Camille Z. Charles Chapter 3. Parallel Pathways of Reform: Fair Public Schooling and Housing for Black Citizens 74 Akira Drake Rodriguez and Rand Quinn Chapter 4. The Economic Importance of Fair Housing 104 Vincent J. Reina and Raphael Bostic Chapter 5. The Fair Housing Act’s Original Sin: Administrative Discretion and the Per sis tence of Segregation 132 Nestor M. Davidson and Eduardo M. Peñalver vi Contents Chapter 6. A Queer and Intersectional Approach to Fair Housing 154 Amy Hillier and Devin Michelle Bunten List of Contributors 187 Index 191 FOREWORD Marc Morial Let me tell you a story about the city I love. New Orleans, like all American cities, was segregated in the mid- twentieth century by discriminatory policies like racial zoning and redlining. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), in par tic u lar, was known to insure loans exclusively for white house holds. In 1954, Mayor deLesseps S. Morri- son asked the FHA to make an exception. There was a shortage of housing units where Black h ouse holds were allowed to live, and Mayor Morrison wasn’t about to let them move into white neighborhoods. So he made a deal with the FHA: if the FHA insured a construction loan for a new Black hous- ing development, he would make sure it remained completely segregated from the FHA- insured white development next door. The NAACP protested the mayor’s segregationist plan, but it only made Morrison proud that he had angered them. An FHA spokesman likewise bragged that this segregated proj ect was “the type of t hing [the] FHA wanted.” He said this to African Americans. The year 1954 was also when my f ather, Ernest N. Morial, became the first African American gradu ate of the law school at Louisiana State University. He spent the next twenty years fighting segregationist policies like Mayor Morrison’s, and in 1977, my father succeeded in becoming mayor himself. If I learned one t hing from his time in the courtroom, it is the lesson that in- justice and intolerance do not dissipate without a fight. They hang on, grip- ping tightly to their power, until the almighty force of law compels them to desist. It is a lesson I have been reliving in our current po liti cal environment. The chapters in this book tell the story of the Fair Housing Act of 1968: what it is, why it was needed, how it was interpreted, whom it has helped, and where it has failed us—or perhaps more accurately, where we have failed viii Foreword it. The chapters paint a compelling portrait of a country still at war with the demons that my father’s generation set out to vanquish. We have made great pro gress since those early days. Explicit discrimination is outlawed, and by some mea sures, segregation has decreased somewhat. But the per sis tent chasm between the races—in economic opportunity, in social stature, in health and safety, in public opinion—is impossible to deny. The legacy of our nation’s sins is on display for all to see. Where my generation has fallen short, new leaders are beginning to take charge. I am inspired by the young men and women I see protesting, running for office, and demanding equality. I have always believed that a hallmark of leadership is optimism, and I see that hopeful quality in the leaders of tomorrow. But a leader also needs a roadmap. She has to know how we got to where we are, what has worked and what hasn’t, and which tools are avail- able to her going forward. This book provides such a road map, and the Fair Housing Act offers one impor tant tool kit. It may seem, from t oday’s media coverage and po liti cal statements, that “housing” ranks low on the list of priorities. Rarely does one hear the word spoken in presidential debates or posted on placards in public demonstra- tions. But I would argue— and the facts in this book would bear me out— that housing is the foundation that underlies most, if not all, of our current racial divides. As my friend Raphael Bostic likes to say, housing is a platform. It is the foundation on which we build our lives, our c areers, our communities, and our democracy. Housing is a conduit to jobs, to health care, to public safety, and to social interaction. When we segregate our housing, we cut our citizens off from one another. We splinter the bonds that move us forward as one nation. Is it any surprise, a fter fifty- plus years living in two worlds physically apart from one another, that we seem unable to find common ground, trust collective institutions, or elect politicians with compassion, with empathy, and with re spect for all their constituents? The rot of our body politic did not come from the top and work its way down. On the contrary, we instilled it in our homes, and it eroded us from within. Let this be a warning to all who seek to mend the fractures that cleave our land in two: only by living among one another can our spirits truly be joined as one. I have seen this transformation in my own city in recent years. I am proud to say I lived to see something my father never i magined, when the Civil War monuments erected to subjugate his generation and his father’s before him came tumbling down, and the people of New Orleans turned their eyes at Foreword ix long last away from Confederate ghosts of the past t oward the diverse opportunity of the future. Though we have not yet vanquished the ghosts of segregation in the same fashion, the pro gress we have made would make our ancestors proud, and they would advise us to do as they did: turn our eyes toward the future and steel ourselves for the fight ahead, until at long last the almighty force of law compels fairness, justice, and tolerance to triumph.
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