Housing Mobility

In an episode of the popular HBO series, The Wire, two mid-level drug dealers debate the recent demolition of a Baltimore public-housing high rise. While one reminisces about the good times and lucrative drug-dealing that took place in “the towers,” his companion dismisses this romanticism. The towers, he says, are mere sticks and bricks built without concern for human beings.

You don’t need to watch The Wire to know that inhabitants of public housing have conflicted opinions about these structures. Many families yearn to see their public housing complex revitalized; others want to exercise their right to move to a more desegregated environment.

Leaving public housing, however, is harder than it may sound. Executive Director john powell of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity explains structural racism as “a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with ‘whiteness’ and disadvantages associated with ‘color’ to endure and adapt over time.”

Just months after Brown v. Board of Education denounced the separate-but-equal doctrine, 3,500 public housing units were built in West Dallas next to a lead smelter. Initially the project housed blacks, whites, and Hispanics on a segregated basis, but alternative housing opportunities allowed white and Hispanic public housing residents to move out of West Dallas. Public and private discrimination trapped their African-American former neighbors, who were stigmatized for living in the ever-worsening conditions. A revealing analysis by the Fair Housing Justice Center in New York, Increasing Access to Low-Poverty Areas by Creating Mixed-Income Housing, shows that, half a century later, access to housing opportunity remains color-coded: poor whites are much more likely to live in communities with low concentrations of poverty than poor people of color.

Segregation has left a legacy of social and economic inequities that will require many years of commitment and hard work to dismantle. The Inclusive Communities Project (ICP), a Dallas-based non-profit organization where I work as director of advocacy and education, pursues a vision of a country where equality is created and sustained in communities with full access to good schools, affordable housing, safe neighborhoods, and economic opportunity.

ICP approaches “housing mobility”—the opportunity for anyone, regardless of race or class, to find a safe, stable neighborhood—in a number of ways. We provide counseling to low-income families of color who seek housing in higher opportunity areas. Finding accessible rent levels in such areas, however, does not guarantee that units are open to persons of all races and ethnicities, or families with children.

Fair-housing enforcement is thus a key component of an effective housing mobility program. Although the law does not compel Texas landlords to accept Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers (a federal government program that helps low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford decent, safe, and sanitary housing in the private market), federal fair housing laws can protect those who are denied a rental unit for racial or ethnic reasons. In addition to assisting with housing searches and connecting families to their new communities, ICP counselors advise families of their fair housing and civil rights. All of ICP’s clients, from the introverts to the go-getters, need to understand these rights in order to assert them.

The organization uses a number of other tools to make communities throughout the Dallas region more inclusive. ICP engages in policy advocacy, and it seeks collaborations between developers and local and state government in areas where land value is usually higher than that of most affordable housing sites.

Segregation has left a legacy of social and economic inequities that will require many years of commitment and hard work to dismantle.”

However, from Illinois to New York, from Maryland to Minnesota, alleging and effectively prosecuting discrimination has historically generated some of the most lasting results. Last year, ICP, with the assistance of outside counsel, filed suit to ensure that HUD paid sufficient rents under the Section 8 program to give housing-mobility families access to non-racially-isolated, high-opportunity areas, particularly in the suburban housing markets. During fiscal year 2005, HUD had drastically decreased its appraisal of fair market rents. HUD also combined the Dallas housing market with remote rural housing markets where rents are much lower, thereby depressing the maximum amount of subsidy available to voucher holders—a policy that chains poor black families to their original low-rent, high-poverty, racially-isolated neighborhoods.

Litigation can also help undo structural racism harbored by local zoning laws. As part of a larger effort to scale back housing mobility barriers, for instance, ICP intervened in a local zoning case (Dews v. Town of Sunnyvale) against Sunnyvale, a Dallas suburb without any significant population of blacks (2.6 percent according to the 2000 Census). A 2000 court decision determined that the town had established its minimum acreage requirement for single-family housing development, and failed to zone for multi-family homes, with discriminatory intent. A settlement has required the town to set aside land for affordable housing development by mid-2008, which we hope will increase housing choices for Dallas-area low-income families of color.

Recently, some affordable housing advocates and policy makers have discussed reenacting HOPE VI, a federal program that sought to demolish severely distressed public housing, replacing it with vibrant mixed-income communities and wider housing opportunities for former residents. They argue for a national policy that would place new housing units outside areas where people of color have been historically segregated. Too many local jurisdictions do not provide their fair share of affordable family housing, but until Congress finally reauthorizes the program, it’s up to ICP and other likeminded organizations to improve low-income African-American families’ housing choices.