Introduction
Despite the sweeping achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, American communities are still highly segregated. A recent study from UC Berkeley found that between 1990 and 2019, 81% percent of neighborhoods became more segregated.¹ That same timeframe saw a considerable rise in wealth inequality among American households, which has reshaped the socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods and cities. Shared with rising costs of housing and stagnant income levels, the barriers to home ownership have made once-mixed communities more distinct and homogeneous. While this shift can be accurately summarized through a class-based lens, the backsliding of neighborhood diversity (racial and ethnic) is worth exploring. Pushing the "why" and "how" back even further, we land in post-war America and the rapid construction of suburban housing. Simulatenously, as the Civil Rights Movement took off, new initiatives from the federal government aimed to give African Americans an equal footing in the booming real estate market. Did Black households come close to overcoming housing road blocks?
Predatory Inclusion
Predatory inclusion, as coined by scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, points to a time in post-war society when African Americans gained access to traditional real estate markets and mortgage finance at a higher cost and on more unbalanced terms than White households. As congressional laws and judicial rulings aimed to dismantle the nation's racialized structures, many housing advocates rightfully believed that racial inclusion would bring a wave of social stability and market expansion. The “American dilemma”, termed in 1944 by Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, would finally come to a close if African Americans were extended a piece of the nation's ideals. The American Dream of home ownership could be realized by all. As Taylor makes clear in her work, the housing market was bound by racist ideals and economic exploitation, and the inclusion of African Americans came with impractical contingencies. In fact, predatory exercises increased: “The FHA’s guaranteed mortgage, the subsidized interest rates, and the captured segregated housing market incentivized market actors to speculate that the poverty and desperation of Black urban residents, especially Black women, would drive them toward the low-income home ownership market”. While the removal of racial considerations from housing ordinances is laudable at face value, and certainly a progressive move at the time, inherent contradictions came to the surface that proved their ineffectivness. With no actions targetting speculators, they continued exclusionary and racist practices. An alternative framework should have been considered. Focusing on equity could have brought about upward mobility for disenfranchised groups. With an even playing field, equality among races could be realized in the housing market.
Philadelphia
One example of an inclusionary policy that led to an exclusionary outcome was the case of Janice Johnson, a single mother who lived in a Black working-class neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia. With a lack of real estate investments, her community underwent urban decay. The city condemed Johnson's apartment building, and soon after she applied for a lease elsewhere in the community. A landlord she encountered would not accept her application due to her status as a welfare receipent. He recommended that she pursue home ownership instead. With the help of a FHA mortgage, Johnson became eligible to buy her first home in 1970. Mr. Zade, a landlord and real estate agent, assured Johnson that the house was in fine condition, given it the stamp of approval from the FHA. Zade called Johnson several weeks before her move-in date and informed her that the house was taken off the market. The floor had collapsed. He found her a new home, but like the previous one, it was structurally unsound. The sewer line broke just days after she moved into her new residence, which spilt wastewater throughout the basement. The house had inconsistent and inadequate electricity. Especially concerning was the home's foundation, where Johnson found holes and more causes for a potential catastrophe. The windows were fastened shut and inaccessible. The floor of the dining room had damage; she worried that the kitchen table would fall through.
Chicago
The debate over the location of public housing in Chicago is another stark reminder of how inclusionary policies led to the exclusion of African Americans households. Richard Rothstein’s work Color of Law details how the Chicago Housing Authority (CWA) unconstitutionally hand-picked the locations of public housing to maintain the status quo of racial homogenity. The public housing would have been scatter site-type, meaning they would be smaller but more spread out than high rise public housing. Federal housing agencies were complicit in the matter, with Solicitor General Robert Bork stating, “There will be enormous impact on innocent communities who have to bear the burden of the housing…”. While the CWA did at times select sites for public housing that would racially integrate White communities, nearly every time (99.5%, to be exact) it was vetoed. After the Supreme Court ruled this practice discriminatory, high rise public housing was developed. The trends that followed were commonplace throughout the US. In Chicago, urban White households moved out to the suburbs, and the urban centers became mostly all-Black neighborhoods.
References
Gailes et al. 2021. "The Roots of Structural Racism Project" https://belonging.berkeley.edu/roots-structural-racism.
Rothstein, Richard. 2017. “Preface” (11); “If in San Francisco, Then Everywhere?” (12 pp); “Private Agreements, Government Enforcement” (14pp). In The Color of Law: The Forgotten History of how our Government Segregated America. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. 2019. “Homeowner’s Business.” In Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.