Reflections on the Past, Looking to the Future:  The Fair Housing

Act at 40

john a. powell

Executive Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity &

Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, Moritz College of Law

Have we achieved fair housing?

African American homeownership growth…but continuing residential segregation

African American suburban growth…but suburban poverty climbing

Steering/discrimination dropping…but still significant

Challenges & consequences

FHA’s anti-discrimination orientation

Bellwood v. Dwivedi

Exclusionary zoning & localism

Arlington Heights Segregated housing →

segregated schoolsMilliken v Bradley

School Segregation and Student Performance 2003

83.981.2

70.7

58.4

37.6

14.0%

10.0%

15.0%

22.0%

32.0%

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15.0%

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Segregation:DissimilarityScore

Percent Exceeding or Excelling at Reading (4th)

Integration vs. Desegregation “The word segregation represents a system that is

prohibitive; it denies the Negro equal access to schools, parks, restaurants, libraries and the like. Desegregation is eliminative and negative...”

“Integration is creative, and is therefore more profound and far-reaching than desegregation. Integration is the positive acceptance of desegregation...”

“Integration is genuine intergroup, interpersonal doing. Desegregation then, rightly, is only a short-range goal. Integration is the ultimate goal of our national community.”

Source: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “The Ethical Demands of Integration.” December 27, 1962.

True Integration

Creative and respective of inter-group relations based on mutuality, equality and fairness

Transformative rather than assimilative

(cf. desegregation, at best, attempts to assimilate “minorities” into the mainstream)

Integration into Opportunity

Segregation is more than just the physical isolation of people

Segregation is isolation from opportunity or opportunity structures

Integration into opportunity

LIHTC

State-by-state administration Variation in placements Across all U.S. large metro areas between

1995-2003, only 22% of LIHTC units in low-poverty neighborhoods

Is LIHTC providing access to opportunity? LIHTC not required to report racial and ethnic

data of occupants

New Threats: Predatory Lending & Foreclosure

The result of the sub-prime & foreclosure crisis in the US may significantly erode fair housing gains and further isolate inner city neighborhoods• 2 million foreclosures expected

in the next two years

Source: United for a Fair Economy

The Miner’s Canary…

• Nationwide, nearly 55% of all high cost loans went to African American borrowers

• Experts estimate that the loss in home equity to African American and Latino homeowners will exceed a quarter of trillion dollars

• Direct asset loss (foreclosure) and loss in home value due to the geographic concentration of foreclosures in minority neighborhoods

Capital Market ‘Credit crunch’

Affected neighborhoods are being reduced to ‘ghost towns’

Reduced spending and retail flight

Families lose their homes, wealth and safety

Banks, police and courts saddled with foreclosures

SUBPRIME LENDING: We didn’t care about the canary...

Predatory Lending and Race: Cleveland, OH

Maps produced and adapted from Charles Bromley, SAGES Presidential Fellow, Case Western University

Foreclosure and Race: Cleveland, OH

Communities of Opportunity

Everyone should have fair access to the critical opportunity structures needed to succeed in life

Low Opportunity neighborhoods limit the development of human capital

A Community of Opportunity approach can develop pathways that result in increased social and economic health, benefiting everyone

Thompson v. HUD: Proposed remedy• Submitted expert reports in

both the liability and the remedy phases of the litigation, on behalf of plaintiffs

• Used GIS to analyze current conditions of segregated public housing (liability phase) and frame solutions for desegregation (remedy phase) in a regional context

Baltimore: Challenges continue….