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The last few years have
witnessed a quantum leap in the enforcement of fair housing and fair
lending legislation. The 1988 Fair Housing Amendments Act gave new
enforcement powers to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) and the Department of Justice. For example, HUD
can now initiate complaints against housing agents who discriminate
(Kushner 1992). The Clinton Administration has been learning how to
put these new powers to use, and the budget submitted by the Clinton
Administration in January 1998 called for doubling the resources
devoted to fair housing enforcement. Moreover, several events,
including release of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, which
show wide disparities in loan acceptance rates between whites on the
one hand and blacks and Hispanics on the other,(2)
have led financial regulatory agencies such as the Federal Reserve
Board and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to increase
their anti-discrimination enforcement.
Some scholars have argued,
however, that these commendable enforcement efforts may fall short
of the mark because they are likely to have little impact on one of
the principal sources of discrimination by real estate brokers and
landlords, namely residential segregation.
Residential segregation, the
physical separation of racial or ethnic groups, is a principal cause
of continuing discrimination in housing;
Enforcement efforts directed
toward people who commit discriminatory acts are unlikely to have
much effect on segregation;
The federal government needs
programs to attack segregation directly, that is, to support
integration, as part of its anti-discrimination arsenal.
Because of this
argument, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has
begun an investigation into alternative policies for promoting
residential integration.
Evidence of Residential Segregation and
Discrimination
Residential segregation is a
particularly striking feature of most urban areas in the United
States. Blacks and whites, and to a lesser extent Hispanics and
non-Hispanic whites, tend to live in different neighborhoods.
The best known measure of
residential segregation is the
dissimilarity index
(Massey and Denton 1993). A value of 100 for this index corresponds
to complete segregation of the two groups from each other, and a
value of zero signals an even distribution of the two groups
throughout all neighborhoods. Intermediate values indicate the share
of the population of either group that would have to move to obtain
an even distribution.
Black-white segregation indexes
have been quite high, above 70, for many decades, with a slow
downward trend beginning in 1970. Among the 23 urban areas with the
largest black populations in 1990, which contain about 46 percent of
the nation's black citizens, the average segregation index dropped
from 78.8 to 74.5 between 1980 and 1990 (Farley and Frey 1993;
Farley 1993). Even with the segregation declines in these areas,
therefore, three-quarters of the blacks (or the whites) would have
to move to achieve an even racial distribution. Hispanics are
considerably less segregated from non-Hispanic whites than are
blacks, but Hispanic-white segregation is moderately high and
growing in many places. In the 20 urban areas with more than 200,000
Hispanic residents, which contain 59 percent of the nation's
Hispanics, the average segregation index increased slightly during
the 1980s, from 48.0 to 48.9 (Farley and Frey 1994).
Recent evidence of
discrimination in the sale or rental of housing is based on a
technique called a
fair housing audit.
Two teammates, one white
person and one person from a minority group, who have been closely
matched to be equally qualified for housing, successively visit a
landlord or real estate broker in search of housing. Each teammate's
treatment is then recorded. Because teammates differ only on
minority status, discrimination exists whenever minority auditors
are systematically treated less favorably than their white
teammates.
National audit studies conducted
in 1977 and 1989 and dozens of audit studies conducted in individual
cities during the 1980s and 1990s find clear evidence of
discrimination (Wienk et al. 1979; Turner, Struyk and Yinger 1991;
Galster 1990b, 1990d; Yinger 1986a, 1995). Housing agents limit the
information minority households receive about available housing and
take actions that add annoyance, complexity, and expense to
minorities' housing search process. The 1989 national Housing
Discrimination Study, for example, found that between 5 and 10
percent of the time, all information about available
housing units was withheld from black and Hispanic customers; that
black and Hispanics home buyers and black renters were informed
about 25 percent fewer housing units than comparable whites; and
that whites were significantly more likely than blacks or Hispanics
to be offered assistance in finding a mortgage, to receive a
follow-up call from the housing agent, or to hear positive comments
about an available house, apartment, or apartment complex (Yinger
1995). This study also found that real estate brokers sometimes
practice racial or ethnic steering, which is defined as directing a
customer toward neighborhoods in which people of his or her racial
or ethnic group are concentrated (Turner, Mickelsons and Edwards
1991). Other recent research has uncovered discrimination in real
estate advertising and marketing (Turner 1992; Galster, Freiberg and
Houk 1987).
Several recent studies also document
discrimination in mortgage
lending.
One study based on 1990 data for the Boston area finds that, after
accounting for all the applicant, property, and loan characteristics
that lenders say they consider, minority applicants are turned down
80 percent more often than comparable whites.(3)
Additional evidence indicates that some lenders discriminate in
advertising and outreach, in pre-application procedures, and in loan
terms, and that their discrimination is reinforced by the
discriminatory actions of insurers and appraisers (Yinger 1995).
The net effects of all this
discrimination are severe constraints on the ability of many
minority households to buy houses and a lack of access to credit in
many minority neighborhoods.
The Role of Segregation in Supporting
Discrimination
It is well known that
discrimination in housing and mortgage markets is a key cause of
segregation. After all, segregation results when minorities are
denied access to housing in white neighborhoods. What is not so
widely recognized, however, is that segregation is also a key reason
why discrimination is so hard to eliminate--an outcome that becomes
a cause.
Racial and ethnic prejudice, defined as
irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, thrives in a
world in which different racial and ethnic groups rarely live in the
same places.(4)
Without widespread, stable opportunities for different racial and
ethnic groups to live and work together, the stereotypes and
ignorance that feed prejudice are unlikely to disappear.
Segregation also shapes the
behavioral responses that accompany prejudicial attitudes.
Prejudiced white households flee racially or ethnically changing
neighborhoods in part because they have almost no examples of stable
integration to observe and in part because they have so many stable
all-white areas to which they can flee. If groups were distributed
evenly (that is, if the segregation index were close to zero), then
no white household would have an incentive to move away from people
against whom it is prejudiced.
This white prejudice and these
white actions in turn give landlords, real estate brokers, and
lenders an economic incentive to discriminate in relatively stable
white areas or to encourage racial or ethnic transition once it has
begun. A housing agent whose office or apartment building is located
in a white neighborhood is likely to derive most of his business
from white clients and have an economic incentive to protect his
reputation with whites. This agent's reputation, and hence his
business prospects, may be damaged if he sells or rents to a black
or Hispanic household. In the sales market, this type of action also
may damage his reputation among other brokers and thereby undercut
cooperation from them. Because so many houses are now sold through
multiple listing services (MLS) and other cooperative arrangements,
this lack of cooperation can harm an agent's income. See Yinger
(1995).
However, if an agent draws business from a
neighborhood where racial or ethnic transition is taking place, he
may expect most of his future customers to be black or Hispanic and
his incentive to discriminate against these groups disappears. In
fact, because a real estate agent's income is derived from
commissions, he may encourage turnover by selling to minority
households in neighborhoods where racial or ethnic transition has
begun or is anticipated.(5)
Thus segregation plays a key role in giving
housing agents an incentive to manipulate the racial and ethnic
composition of neighborhoods by discriminating in some cases and
encouraging transition in others.(6)
Even with active fair housing enforcement, many housing agents will
find a way to discriminate if they have a strong economic incentive
to do so. An effective enforcement system therefore must address the
extent of racial segregation and not simply leave it in the hands of
the discriminators themselves.
Markets'
Failure to Provide Integration
Housing markets have not been
very successful in generating stably integrated neighborhoods. Many
neighborhoods are integrated for a brief period of time, usually
when blacks or Hispanics first move in, but the vast majority of
these neighborhoods then undergo transition from largely white to
largely minority.
Neighborhood Preference and Prejudice
At one level, there is widespread
agreement about the mechanics of neighborhood racial and ethnic
transition (Schelling 1972; Yinger 1986b, 1995; Downs 1992). In
particular, stable integration cannot be maintained unless the
preferences of whites and blacks (or whites and Hispanics) meet
certain conditions.
Consider an existing all-white
neighborhood. No racial integration will take place there unless at
least one black family is willing to be a pioneer. Moreover, once
blacks move in, integration cannot be maintained at any given racial
composition unless enough whites and blacks are willing to live
there to make that composition possible. If an insufficient number
of whites is willing to live there, the neighborhood has passed what
is called a tipping point, and it will "tip" from all-white to
all-black.
Survey evidence indicates that
the neighborhood preferences of blacks and Hispanics do not
constitute a major barrier to integration. A 1992 Detroit survey
found, for example, that most blacks prefer to live in an integrated
neighborhood where blacks make up at least 50 percent of the
population and that almost all blacks would be willing to move into
an integrated neighborhood where the black population share fell
between one-third and three-quarters (Farley 1993; Farley et al.
1993). Moreover, 28 percent of blacks are willing to be pioneers,
that is, to be the first black to move into a white neighborhood. A
survey of black attitudes in 1990 by the National Opinion Research
Center (NORC) paints a similar picture for the nation as a whole
(Farley 1993). The limited available evidence indicates that
Hispanics' attitudes toward integration with non-Hispanic whites are
similar to those of blacks (Clark 1991).
In contrast, the neighborhood
preferences of whites pose a serious obstacle to stable integration.
The 1992 Detroit survey reveals that 4 percent of whites would move
out of a neighborhood that was 7 percent black, 15 percent would
move out of a neighborhood that was 20 percent black and 41 percent
would move out at 33 percent black. The 1990 NORC survey gives
similar results. Therefore, with an average set of whites from
Detroit, integration could be maintained in the short run at 7 or 20
percent black, but not at 33 percent black. The limited available
evidence suggests similar, but somewhat weaker, white aversion to
living with Hispanics (Farley 1993; Clark 1991).
Because many people move for
non-racial reasons, stable integration in the long run requires
whites to choose to move into an integrated neighborhood. On this
point the Detroit survey results are even less encouraging.
Twenty-seven percent of whites said they would not be willing to
move into a neighborhood that was 7 percent black, and this
percentage increased to 50 percent at 20 percent black and 73
percent at one-third black. Based on these attitudes, integration
cannot be sustained in the long run at any racial composition.
Discrimination Past and Present
Some observers conclude that
white prejudice is sufficiently high to make stable integration
impossible (Clark 1991; Downs 1992). This assertion goes too far.
White preferences as expressed in surveys certainly constrain the
opportunities for stable integration but they are not, by
themselves, sufficient to prevent integration altogether. In fact,
white preferences are only one part of a discriminatory system that
magnifies and reinforces the dynamic in the tipping model. Without
the other elements of this system, stable integration would surely
occur in many neighborhoods.
To see why white preferences
alone are not sufficient to rule out integration everywhere, one
must first recognize that surveys identify average preferences, not
universal preferences (Yinger 1986b). The Detroit area, for example,
contains over one million white households. According to the Detroit
survey, 30 percent, or over 300,000 households, are willing to move
into a neighborhood that is 53 percent black and 44 percent, or over
440,000 households, are willing to move into a neighborhood that is
one-third black. There are enough willing white households to
integrate many neighborhoods.
In addition, one must recognize
that whites' neighborhood preferences are not innate but are rather
a product of past discrimination in housing and other markets. The
distinction between blacks and whites (or between Hispanics and
non-Hispanic whites) has no intrinsic power but has gained power in
American society because of a long history of discrimination against
blacks and Hispanics and the resulting disparities in social and
economic outcomes. Whites who prefer white neighborhoods do so
because they believe that blacks or Hispanics are inferior, find
support for this view in the relatively poor average outcomes for
these minority groups, and, because of extensive segregation, rarely
experience the kind of interracial contact that breaks prejudice
down. The fiction of black or Hispanic inferiority that is at the
heart of white prejudice is thus supported by a powerful vicious
circle: Prejudice builds on observed disparities in social outcomes,
is protected by the lack of contact that goes with segregation, and
then supports the continuing discrimination by which these
disparities and this segregation are preserved.
Stating that white prejudice is a cause of
segregation is equivalent, therefore, to stating that past
discrimination continues to promote segregation through its legacy
of white prejudice. The common conclusion by scholars that
segregation is caused by both prejudice and discrimination provides
a way to separate the role of past and current discrimination, but
the scholarly literature gives no support to the claim that
segregation is inevitable because whites "simply" do not want to
live with blacks or Hispanics.(7)
Neighborhood, market, and
government institutions also play an important role in neighborhood
transition. The actions of real estate brokers, lenders, and
government officials can magnify or minimize the forces that cause
racial or ethnic transition. For example, many dramatic cases of
blockbusting, in which whites are encouraged to flee so blacks can
move in (and profits can be made), have been documented (Ginsberg
1975; Goodwin 1979). As we will see, however, community groups, real
estate brokers, and public agencies in a few places have acted
together to break the vicious cycle and maintain integration.
In short, without active
intervention by community groups and local government, past and
current discrimination--not neutral market forces and innate
preferences--virtually eliminate integration as a option even for
families who prefer it. Although ongoing efforts to attack current
discrimination will undoubtedly weaken somewhat the forces that
promote neighborhood transition, these forces are powerful and
self-reinforcing, and current fair housing enforcement efforts
probably will have little impact on overall levels of residential
segregation.
What the Federal Government Has Done to
Support Integration
Neighborhood integration has
never been high on the list of federal priorities, and the
contributions of the federal government to neighborhood integration
have been both positive and negative.
On the negative side, federal
public housing provides many of the most segregated neighborhood
environments in the country. In 1993, 69 percent of the tenants in
federal public housing were black or Hispanic. This figure is even
higher, 90 percent, in large cities (see HUD 1995). In fact, it is
pretty clear that the level of segregation is even higher in public
housing projects than it is in the private housing market.
On the positive side, for the
past two decades, the federal government as provided rental
certificates or vouchers that subsidize rents for low-income tenants
and, in principle, enable recipients to search for housing in a wide
range of neighborhoods. By 1997, about 1 million households received
subsidies of this type, mostly in the form of Section 8
certificates, named after the legislative clause that authorized
them. For two reasons, however, these housing subsidies have had
little impact on neighborhood integration. First, most recipients do
not have information about housing options in neighborhoods far
removed from the one in which they live before receiving the
subsidy. As a result, black and Hispanic recipients of these
subsidies rarely search, let alone move, very far from the
low-income, minority neighborhoods where they start out, Second,
these housing subsidies are administered by individual public
housing authorities, or PHAs, and until recently the subsidy
received in the jurisdiction of one PHA could not be used for
housing in the jurisdiction of another PHA. Thus, city residents who
received housing subsidies could not move to the suburbs. Thanks to
reforms over the last few years, this lack of portability is now
largely a thing of the past, but it was a formidable barrier to
mobility for many years.
The positive and negative
elements of federal policy came together in a famous lawsuit against
the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and HUD that was filed in 1966.
The plaintiffs, led by Dorothy Gautreaux, were black public housing
tenants who argued that the CHA discriminated both in the selection
of sites for public housing, with a strong tendency to put projects
in largely minority neighborhoods, and in the placement of tenants,
with a strong tendency to place minorities only in minority
projects. The courts agreed with the plaintiffs, and on various
appeals, HUD and CHA were ordered to cooperate and to find a
metropolitan solution to the racial segregation in Chicago's public
housing. This approach was ratified by the U.S. Supreme Court in
1976.
These court decisions led to the
so-called Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program, which is administered
by a Chicago fair housing group. Under this program, Section 8
rental certificates were offered, on a first-come, first-served
basis, to CHA tenants and to people on the CHA waiting list. People
who receive these certificates are then given assistance in finding
housing throughout the metropolitan area, particularly in white,
suburban neighborhoods. The assistance takes the form of searching
for landlords willing to accept Section 8 tenants and providing
counseling to participants.
Since its inception in 1976, the
Gautreaux Program has assisted about 6,000 families, virtually all
of them black, in finding housing, at a cost of about $1,000 per
family per year (plus the cost of the certificates). About half of
the participating families end up moving to the suburbs. The program
is very popular and appears to have many desirable outcomes. A
recent analysis of the program (Popkin, Rosenbaum, and Meaden 1993)
reveals that the participants who moved to the suburbs were more
likely to have a job than those who stayed in the city. Another
study (Rosenbaum, et al 1993) that tracked children in Gautreaux
families found a higher likelihood of attending college, higher
employment rates for those not attending college, higher wages, and
higher job benefits for children in families that moved to the
suburbs than for families that moved within the city.
Additional court cases have led
to similar programs in Cincinnati, Dallas, Hartford, Memphis, Omaha,
Parma (Ohio), and Yonkers. A demonstration program, called Moving to
Opportunity (MTO), which was designed to implement and study the
Gautreaux model around the country, was proposed during the Bush
Administration, passed by Congress in 1992, and initiated in five
cities in 1994. The five cities are Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los
Angeles, and New York. Unfortunately, however, MTO ran into
community opposition in the Baltimore suburbs, the second year of
funding was cut off, and the Clinton Administration's proposal to
extend the program beyond the original five sites was killed in
Congress. This episode demonstrates the challenges facing programs
that promote integration: the opposition in Baltimore came from
communities that were not even eligible to receive MTO participants
because their poverty rate was too high! Moreover, the experience
with the original Gautreaux Program reveals no sign of serious
problems in neighborhoods receiving program participants.
Although the future of so-called
mobility programs is in doubt, the problems with MTO have not buried
the approach totally. The Clinton Administration has taken some
steps to add housing counseling for Section 8 recipients, which
could greatly increase their options now that Section 8 Certificates
are portable. Moreover, in 1993 former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros
proposed transforming public housing subsidies into tenant
certificates, a proposal that would have greatly boosted the
mobility of public housing tenants.
What Communities Have Done to Support
Integration
(and What the Supreme Court Says about Their Efforts)
Oak Park and Park Forest outside
of Chicago and Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights outside of
Cleveland are examples of communities that have remained integrated
for a long period of time (Goodwin 1979; Keating 1994; Helper 1986;
Saltman 1990). These communities have used a wide range of programs
in their efforts to maintain integration (Polikoff 1986; Smith
1993).
Many of these programs are
designed to improve the flow of information in the housing market.
Race-conscious housing counseling by a private or government housing
center encourages homeseekers to consider moving into neighborhoods
where their own racial or ethnic group is not concentrated.
Affirmative marketing by cooperating real estate brokers informs
customers about housing possibilities in such neighborhoods.
Collection and dissemination of racial or ethnic information about
neighborhoods, such as the racial and ethnic composition of current
residents and current homeseekers, by a private or government
housing center is used to prevent rumors and misperceptions that
often arise in unregulated episodes of racial transition.
Another set of programs attempts
to boost neighborhood quality and thereby offset the widespread
perception that neighborhood quality inevitably declines when racial
or ethnic transition occurs. (This perception primarily reflects the
fact that racial and income transition often go hand in hand.) Some
programs maintain housing quality in changing neighborhoods, often
with strict code enforcement. Other programs maintain or even boost
the quality of public services, especially schools, in changing
neighborhoods.
A third type of program is aimed
at preventing behavior that fosters neighborhood transition. Some
programs attempt to combat racial and ethnic discrimination in
housing, especially racial and ethnic steering. Steering and other
forms of discrimination by real estate agents have the opposite
impact of affirmative marketing; that is, they promote segregation.
Programs to combat housing discrimination therefore can play an
important role in promoting integration. Anti-blockbusting
ordinances, such as bans on unwanted solicitation of homeowners by
real estate agents and bans on the posting of for-sale signs in
front of houses, also have been used to prevent some of the worst
kinds of blockbusting behavior.
Finally, some programs make
payments to individuals to support pro-integrative behavior. Shaker
Heights, for example, has made low-interest loans to families
(mostly white) who move into areas where their group is
underrepresented, and Oak Park has provided home equity insurance to
ease fears of declining property values.
The legality of integration was
first addressed in the debate over the 1968 Fair Housing Act. During
this debate, sponsors of the legislation clearly identified racial
integration as a goal, but were not clear whether the government
should do more to promote it than to attack discrimination. The
courts generally have sided with those who claim that integration is
a legitimate federal objective under the Fair Housing Act. In a 1977
case the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged "the vital goal this
ordinance serves: namely promoting stable, racially integrated
housing." The Court went on to say, "There can be no question about
the importance of achieving this goal. This Court has expressly
recognized that substantial benefits flow to both blacks and whites
from interracial association and that Congress has made a strong
national commitment to promote integrated housing" (Polikoff 1986).
Although the Supreme Court has
affirmed integration as an objective, it also has set tough
constitutional standards, a three-part "strict scrutiny" test that
must be met by any race-conscious policy, including one to promote
integration. Such a policy must "further a compelling government
interest," it must be "necessary and effective for dealing with the
issue and designed" specifically to address it, and it "must not
stigmatize the minority group as inferior" (Smith 1993). Even if it
meets these standards, an integration policy also must not violate
the Fair Housing Act.
These tests, which place severe
constraints on any policy designed to promote or maintain
integration, have been applied to several types of integration
maintenance policies. Courts have ruled, for example, that quotas
are acceptable only under very limited circumstances. Starrett City,
a large housing development in New York City, attempted to prevent
racial tipping by placing a ceiling on the share of minorities in
any building (and indeed on any floor). As a result, minorities
spent much longer on the waiting list than did whites--a form of
discrimination (Yinger 1986a). The Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that
this ceiling quota was not permissible.
Some other integration
maintenance policies have been accepted by the Supreme Court. In a
1973 case the Court accepted a municipal ban on for-sale signs on
the grounds that the signs "had caused panic selling and white
flight" (Smith 1993). In other cases, the Court accepted a municipal
ban on solicitations by real estate agents and ruled in favor of a
private, nonprofit housing assistance center that gave free advice
only to people who wanted to make pro-integrative moves. Moreover, a
recent appeals court decision concerning race-conscious counseling
by the South-Suburban Housing Center in Chicago "affirmed the
legality of affirmative marketing techniques and stated that any
activity that serves to increase competition among all racial groups
for housing is precisely the type of robust multiracial market
activity that the Fair Housing Act intends to stimulate" (Freiberg
1993). The Supreme Court refused to hear this case, thereby
ratifying the use of race-conscious counseling, at least under some
circumstances.
HUD's Dilemma: How to Support Integration?
Programs to support integration
are an important component of an overall strategy to combat
discrimination, and the U.S. Supreme Court clearly has ruled that
such programs are acceptable if they meet certain conditions. So
what is an appropriate federal policy to support integration?
The federal government clearly
cannot, and should not, force anyone to live in an integrated
neighborhood. Blacks or Hispanics in a particular urban area have a
right to remain in minority neighborhoods and not take advantage of
incentives to integrate, just as they have a right to live in
integrated neighborhoods if they so prefer. Whites have a right to
remain in largely white neighborhoods--as long as they do so without
discriminating--and a right to choose integration. Even given these
constraints, however, the federal government could promote
integration by promoting the mobility of low-income, black and
Hispanic households or by supporting integration efforts that
originate at the local level.
One group in HUD strongly
supports the expansion of housing mobility programs, despite the
political obstacles they face. The extensive evidence from the
Gautreaux Program and it successors that these programs help
participants without harming their new neighborhoods convinces the
people in this group that this is the way to go.
Anther group strongly supports
programs to support community integration efforts. One program,
first proposed by Professor John Yinger of Syracuse University,
appeals to some people in this group (see Yinger, 1995). This
program uses as a model the Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP),
which was passed in 1986. This program supports the enforcement
efforts of private fair housing groups and a few local public fair
housing agencies. It has funded, for example, several effective
"testing" programs, which use fair housing audits for enforcement
purposes, as well as programs for fair housing education and
outreach. The Yinger program, called the Stable Neighborhood
Initiatives Program (SNIP), builds on the FHIP approach to support
efforts by state and local governments and community groups to
promote integration without discriminating.
SNIP would provide grants to
state and local programs according to the following rules, which are
designed to maximize effectiveness while meeting the tests
constructed by the Supreme Court.
No money would be given to
organizations that maintain integration through either ceiling or
floor quotas, even if those quotas are not part of the program for
which funding is requested.
Programs that provide
race-conscious counseling would be eligible for funding, but only if
they were accompanied by a commitment to prevent
discrimination--that is, only if they expand choice instead of
restricting it.
The maximum grant size would be
greater in neighborhoods (i.e., census tracts) with more balanced
integration. In particular, the largest grants would available in
neighborhoods in which at least 40 percent of the population is
white and at least 40 percent is minority. Lower levels of funding
would be available in neighborhoods in which both whites and
minorities make up at least 20 percent of the neighborhood. The
symmetry in these rules is important to send the signal that both
white and minority neighbors are equally valued.
Community groups, local
governments, and coalitions between them could compete for the
grants, but only one award would be made in each jurisdiction. The
maximum grant within one jurisdiction would depend on the number of
neighborhoods in the jurisdiction that fell into each category
defined above.
SNIP funds would be focused on
programs that have proven to be effective in other communities,
including:
(a) housing centers that collect
and disseminate information about neighborhood change, provide
housing counseling, and prevent rumors from spreading,
(b) programs to provide extra
housing maintenance in changing neighborhoods,
(c) programs to boost public
services, such as education or police and fire protection, in
changing neighborhoods and
(d) police, recreation, or other
programs that promote inter-group understanding.
New types of programs also would
be considered for funding, however.
No money would be provided for
integration-enhancing payments to individuals, such as the Shaker
Heights loan programs or the Oak Park equity assurance plan,
although agencies running such programs would not be prohibited from
applying for funds for other purposes.
These types of programs have two
important weaknesses. First, the payments go largely to whites,
which makes them a curious method for attacking the system of
discrimination. Second, they appear to reward people for their
prejudice. Thus, even though these programs may be acceptable in
some communities, Professor Yinger believes that these flaws make
them inappropriate for federal support. Not all scholars agree. For
example, DeMarco and Galster (1993) propose federal income tax
credits for people who make pro-integrative moves. See also Galster
(1990a, 1992a).
Maximum possible funding should
be higher for programs that cover more people or that coordinate
with programs in other nearby communities. Bonuses should be
provided for metropolitan-level organizations that work with several
integrated communities. Although SNIP funds could not be used for
fair housing enforcement activities, such as testing, coordination
with local or FHIP-funded enforcement programs would enhance an
organization's chance for SNIP funding.
This program would not force
anyone to live in an integrated community, but it would, Professor
Yinger argues, expand opportunities for both white and minority
families. Thus, the program should be judged, he says, on whether it
expands choice, not on whether it literally maintains integration
for a long period of time in every participating community. Some
communities may be able to sustain integration through
SNIP-supported activities, others may be able to prevent rapid
racial or ethnic transition and inter-group conflict, and still
others may be able to open up neighborhoods for minorities.
According to Yinger, all such outcomes would be desirable.
The Assignment
It is the spring of 1998. You
work in HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research and have
been asked to investigate the best way for HUD to promote
integration, if indeed it should promote integration at all. If you
do not think HUD should do more to promote integration, you must
explain why not, with explicit attention to the importance of
segregation in our society. If you think HUD should promote
integration, you should decide which type of policy would be best
and develop a specific policy proposal. This policy should be as
detailed as the one proposed by Professor Yinger (and could of
course be his proposal, or a variation of it, if you are prepared to
defend it.
The current Secretary of HUD,
Andrew Cuomo, has taken a great interest in this topic and convened
a conference to discuss it. You should be prepared to present and
defend your proposal to the Secretary at this conference.
References
Carr, James
H., and Issac F. Megbolugbe. 1993. "The Federal Reserve Bank of
Boston Study on Mortgage Lending Revisited." Journal of Housing
Research 4 (2): 277-313.
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Endnotes
1. This case was written by Professor John Yinger
solely for the purposes of class discussion.
2. This case uses the terms "African American"
and "black" as synonyms, and uses the term "Hispanic," which is the
term used by the U.S. Census, to designate people who can trace
their ancestors back to Spain (or Portugal), usually through Puerto
Rico or some country in South or Central America or the Caribbean,
such as Cuba or Mexico. According to the Census usage, Hispanics can
be of any race.
3. Munnell et al. (1996). This study is
controversial, and its methods and data have been criticized.
However, its methods are conservative (see Yinger, 1995) and a
detailed reexamination finds no evidence that its conclusions are
driven by data problems (see Carr and Meglougbe, 1994).
4. Extensive evidence supports the link
between segregation and prejudice. Between 1958 and 1972, for
example, when many school desegregation orders were implemented in
the South, the share of Southern whites who said they would not
"have any objection to sending your children to school where half of
the children are black" rose from 20 to 66 percent (Schuman, Steeh
and Bobo 1985, Figure 2.4). Moreover, many studies support the
"contact hypothesis," which says that equal status contacts between
groups tend to lower inter-group prejudice (Simpson and J. Milton
Yinger 1985, ch. 17; Jackson and Crane 1986).
5. Several studies provide evidence for this
view. Analysis of 1981 audit data from Boston revealed particularly
high discrimination against blacks in stable, white areas and no
discrimination against blacks in several changing neighborhoods into
which whites were no longer moving (Yinger 1986a). Another study
based on sales audits conducted in Memphis and Cincinnati during the
mid 1980s found that if the initial request was for a house in an
integrated neighborhood, the white auditor, but not the black, was
shown other houses in white areas (Galster 1990c). These two results
are confirmed by Yinger (1995).
6. This role of segregation is supported by
Galster and Keeney (1988), who find that urban areas with more
segregation have a higher incidence of housing discrimination.
7. Most scholars have listed three principal
causes of segregation: prejudice, discrimination, and income
disparities. (Income disparities are another part of the legacy of
past discrimination.) For recent discussions, see Farley and Frey
(1994), Galster (1992b), Massey and Denton (1993), Turner and Wienk
(1993), and Yinger (1995).