Over the past 40 years, the fair housing movement has certainly made important progress toward ensuring the rights of individuals in their search for housing. Most significantly, systemic victories against lending and insurance redlining have improved the access to these services for people of color and other protected persons. In addition, random and systemic audits of real estate companies have provided gradual improvement in the expansion of homeownership locations available to protected persons.
However, the first 40 years of fair housing advocacy has almost completely failed at improving the integration of metropolitan communities. Differing segregation measurements show that communities throughout the
This continual changing structure of segregation is due in part to the fact that in 1968, when the Fair Housing Act passed, American cities were already segregated in a way that privileged whites over people of color in nearly every quality of life measurement. Moreover, the most significant systemic victories (or their remedies) did not begin to manifest until the 1980s.
In their HUD-funded, landmark study of neighborhood diversity, Philip Nyden,
HUD and the fair housing community have largely failed to embrace the need to support community organizations that will affirmatively further fair housing in ways that foster and improve integration. The language of the most stable federal funding for fair housing activities, the Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP), makes no mention of affirmative furthering or integration efforts in its fundable activities. It focuses solely on enforcement efforts through either investigation or education and outreach. This failure makes it nearly impossible for organizations focusing on integration to receive funding via FHIP.
At the same time, HUD does little to enforce the mandate for CDBG entitlement jurisdictions and their sub-grantees (EJs) to affirmatively further fair housing. In many cases, the only activities EJs engage in are poster contests for children or leaving fliers at libraries and municipal offices – activities that are not affirmative. Cases of affirmative activities such as promoting a community to underserved populations, establishing an active commission or sub-commission, or encouraging pro-integrative policies in their planning and development processes are extremely rare.
This is all the more tragic given that the academic literature on the subject of improving regional integration overwhelmingly supports the effectiveness of intentional programs.
Keating and others come to this conclusion because they are aware of the limitations of fair housing enforcement techniques. The reactive nature of fair housing enforcement provides a number of restrictions to effective engagement in integrated communities. National estimates figure that less than 1% of discrimination complaints are reported. When complaints are reported and referred to HUD or local agencies, the extremely long time it takes to remedy the complaints deters many complainants from completing the process. Most importantly, complaint-based fair housing efforts have absolutely no effect on the most difficult obstacle to integrated communities – white avoidance of communities of color.
Racial Attitudes Toward Integration
The reluctance of whites to live in communities of color is in continuous opposition to integration through at least three distinct processes. The best known of these three is white flight, in which white residents leave communities when minority populations increase in their neighborhood or community. A second, more benign, process is white avoidance, where whites refuse to consider moves to predominantly minority communities. A third process is gentrification, where communities seem integrated for a short period as whites begin to move into communities that become newly desirable and eventually significantly displace minority residents partly due to economic circumstances.
In all these cases, attitudes toward racial integration play a primary role.
Likewise, professor Lincoln Quillian of Northwestern University analyzed data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (matched data from multiple censuses) and found that whites are very reluctant to move from a current residence to a census tract where the percentage of African Americans is higher.
In 2002, professors Evan McKenzie and Jay Ruby wrote an article chronicling their revisiting of integration strategies in
[T]he reason for its creation has not changed. White people are reluctant to rent in neighborhoods where there are a significant number of black tenants… If
The research for McKenzie and Ruby’s article included Ruby volunteering to spend time as the receptionist for the
The attitudes chronicled here are not always based on explicit racial prejudice. In many cases, they are indicative of knowledge gaps that perpetuate misperceptions and misconceptions. In 2004, UIC professors
Regardless of how these attitudes are shaped, it is important to note that the work of integration cannot be solely the responsibility of people of color and others protected by the Fair Housing Act. Moreover, accomplishing integration requires more than enforcing the limited number of complaints filed. True affirmative furthering of fair housing mandates that whites must participate in integration efforts as well.
Other Structural Factors
The lack of regional or inter-municipal programs to address segregation has also hampered pro-integration advocacy and policy. In particular, the decision in Miliken v Bradley is significant. Despite its content relating to school desegregation, the Supreme Court’s decision to limit the ability to address inter-municipal remedies to segregation played an important role in perpetuating the geography of inequality that provides the foundational structure of nearly all American metropolises today.
The geographies of housing segregation and regional opportunity/inequality correlate nearly one-to-one. This pattern was first confirmed by the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities in its 2006 report The Segregation of Opportunity and has been repeatedly confirmed in other metropolitan regions across the nation.
Another hope lost was that an increase in the African American middle class would produce greater integration and reduced discrimination. Yet, study after study shows that wealthy African Americans are more isolated than poor whites. (It should be noted that personal decisions to abandon the goals of integration and instead move to predominantly minority enclaves has also limited integration.) And, while Asians and Latinos have experienced greater success than African Americans regarding integration with non-Hispanic whites, housing professionals continue to steer Asians and Latinos to ethnic enclaves and a lack of resources for folks with limited English proficiency in many suburbs serves as an impediment to fair housing choice.
In short, the federal government and the fair housing community have had limited success in promoting integration because of a reactive strategy that fails to provide models of inclusion or leadership on affirmative measures. This is partly due to the language of the Fair Housing Act and the Community Development Act. However, it is also significantly the result of a lack of imagination and innovation in fair housing advocacy (an understandable situation given the diminutive and precarious funding and support for fair housing activities).
Proactive Models of Intentional Integration and Affirmative Furthering
In cases where integration, opportunity, and inclusion come together, an intentional effort to be proactive has occurred and in some cases continues to occur. The best known of these programs are located in the
However, similar programs exist in other communities, such as the Inclusive Communities Project in the
Essentially, these programs inform housing seekers of their rights and opportunities from the beginning of their search process rather than after housing providers have denied them or discouraged them from quality housing options. These efforts create and sustain diverse, integrated communities of inclusion and harmony. They also create environments that minimize discrimination and expand housing choices. As such, these programs work to guarantee the right to fair housing choice at the beginning of a housing search rather than after an act of discrimination.
Housing patterns form the foundation for all other geographic structures of equality and opportunity. Prioritizing affirmative – pro-integrative – measures will add a sorely missing component to fulfilling the rights of all persons guaranteed under the Fair Housing Act as well as promote a structure of equal opportunity in our metropolitan regions that will assist in ameliorating nearly all other metropolitan problems. 40 years after the Fair Housing Act, it is time we embraced the full spirit and intent of the law.
 For instance, the remedies from the Gautreaux case began their implementation in the 1980s. The major systemic lending and insurance cases were decided in the 1980s and 1990s.
 Nyden, Phil et al. (1998) Neighborhood Racial and Ethnic Diversity in
 Ibid p266
 Keating, W. Dennis. (1994) The Suburban Racial Dilemma: Housing and Neighborhoods.
 Among others see: powell, john, et al. (2007) Communities of Opportunity: A Framework for a More Equitable and Sustainable Future for All; Briggs, Xavier ed. (2005) The Geography of Opportunity: Race and housing Choice in Metropolitan America. Brookings Press; Schwemm, Robert (2007) “Why Do Landlords Still Discriminate (and What Can Be Done About It)” John Marshall Law Review. v40.
 National Fair Housing
 Charles, Camille Zubrinsky. (2001) Processes of Racial Residential Segregation. From O’Connor,
 McKenzie, Evan and Jay Ruby (2002) Reconsidering the
 Smith, Geoff et al. (2007) Paying More for the American Dream: A Multi-State Analysis of Higher Cost Home Purchase Lending. (available at the Woodstock Institute’s website).