Abstract
Moving toward Integration by Richard Sander, Yana Kucheva, and Jonathan Zasloff argues that further progress toward reducing high levels of segregation in American metropolitan areas will require a proactive stance toward integration and not simply continuing the current emphasis on eliminating housing discrimination.
The book combines innovative census analysis, a thorough literature review with an account of the history of antidiscrimination policies. It provides a refreshing optimistic take on the prospects for greater neighborhood integration and is one of the first segregation studies to include a national pro-integration plan.
Before the Great Migration to northern cities (1916–1970), a lesser migration occurred in the urban South (1870–1917). More than a dozen southern and border cities adopted racial zoning. But in Buchanan v. Warley, the US Supreme Court declared racial zoning unconstitutional. Ghettoization emerged in the North during the 1920s. Racial covenants were the one private legal mechanism available to maintain white racial homogeneity. But in 1948, the Supreme Court ended the use of racial covenants with Shelley v. Kraemer. Real estate brokers, however, took advantage of the resulting racial transition by engaging in blockbusting.
Sander et al. rebut the assertion made by others (e.g., Richard Rothstein in Color of Law) that government efforts to promote racial segregation were the driving force behind the “ghettoization of African-Americans” (p. 83). “Public housing rarely created ghettos, but instead reinforced patterns that already existed” (p. 92). Furthermore, the federal Home Owners Loan Corporation—widely condemned because of its color-coded maps that identified ethnic neighborhoods and their mortgage loan risks—actually helped blacks as well as whites.
The rate of white-to-black transition increased during the 1960s, thus depleting the ghetto of low-income residents and decreasing the social mix of black residential clusters. Black ghetto expansion patterns were more complex than that have been indicated in previous scholarly work. For example, in contrast to the stereotype of “white flight,” racial change is primarily attributable to a drop in white demand for border areas perceived likely to undergo complete transition.
The Fair Housing Act (FaHA) of 1968, which banned housing discrimination in the private housing market, would not have been enacted had it not been for the political savvy of President Lyndon Johnson. Once the FaHA was enacted, the Department of Justice took up the task “of attacking institutionalized practices of discrimination…with gusto” (p. 136). Housing audits showed a sharp drop in overt discrimination during the 1970s, indicating a change in the behavior of housing providers.
Whereas segregation declined slightly, if at all, in the largest metropolitan areas such as New York and Chicago, other metropolitan areas, especially in the west such as San Diego and Seattle, experienced substantial desegregation in the 1970s. Black residential patterns facilitated desegregation: (1) the proportion of blacks in outlying areas increased sharply, (2) blacks who moved to border neighborhoods moved in a dispersed manner and, as a result, did not threaten the area’s ethnic identity, and (3) a meaningful number of Hispanics and Asians moved to the black districts.
The second generation of fair housing (1975–2000) went beyond overcoming housing discrimination to address socioeconomic discrimination, a product of exclusionary zoning. Under Mt. Laurel I and II, the New Jersey Supreme Court set up a fair share housing system for the state. It increased affordable housing in suburbs, but they did not increase racial integration.
Congress’s decision to require banks and savings and loan associatons (S&Ls) to release individual-level data, including race of applicants, provided the impetus for Boston Home Mortgage Disclosure Act study (1992) which showed that although blacks were more likely to be denied loans than whites, most of the difference disappeared when background characteristics were controlled.
During the early 1980s, the political conversation remained focused on housing discrimination leading to the passage of the Fair Housing Amendment Act of 1985 that reflected the fact that “[fair housing] norms…had broadly diffused through American society” (p. 293). Housing audits carried out between 1977 and 2012 indicated that housing discrimination against blacks fell sharply. After 1980, racial transition slowed. However, the “slowing of resegregation was a necessary precondition to real integration…by no means [did this] provide a sufficient impetus for integration to actually occur” (p. 309).
Between 1968 and 2012, government-assisted housing programs shifted from housing subsidies to “people” subsidies (i.e., housing vouchers). Two housing experiments showed the value of housing vouchers as part of a national integration program: Gautreaux promoted racial integration and also led to positive employment and educational outcomes; Moving to Opportunity promoted income integration with mixed results related to socioeconomic outcomes. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD's) national-level Housing Choice Voucher Program’s first priority is access to affordable housing with poverty deconcentration as a secondary goal. If poverty deconcentration was elevated, it would mean restricting participants’ neighborhood choices. Furthermore, shifting the focus to deconcentration would also likely mean defunding existing inner-city neighborhood upgrading programs, since they reinforce existing housing segregation.
Although gentrification has occurred in American cities since the 1930s, it has only become a palpable phenomenon since 2000. Scholars disagree about the causes of gentrification, but there is little doubt that it reflects a growing willingness of whites and middle-income persons to live in diverse communities. While much of the discussion about gentrification centers on displacement, Sander et al. note that direct displacement is relatively rare (p. 372) and that those who are displaced report similar levels of satisfaction at their new locations (p. 372). The challenge for planners is how to promote “smart” or “moderate” gentrification, maintaining an affordable housing stock in gentrifying neighborhoods, thereby enabling low-income families to benefit from revitalization.
Salter et al. offer twelve distinct pro-integration policies including mobility grants (to encourage whites to move to black areas and blacks to white ones), integrative housing counseling, housing trusts to fund affordable housing in gentrifying areas, legislation to remove restriction to multifamily housing in the suburbs, fair share housing, and disparate impact legislation on zoning as a remedy for exclusionary zoning. They recommend that HUD implements a “Race to the Top” competition. Metropolitan planning organizations from around the United States would develop plans responsive to local conditions. Using Buffalo, NY, as an example, they show that such a metropolitan integration plan’s total cost (US$285 million) would be reasonable and that the number of whites and assisted moves would be limited (about 10,000), thereby increasing the political feasibility of the plan.
Despite America’s sharp racial divisions during the Trump era, the authors are optimistic that the Race to the Top Initiative might be funded and implemented. I am not as confident about its political feasibility nor do I believe, that if it were funded and implemented, that it could, as the authors argue, solve the intractable social problems of American urban areas. Nevertheless, I believe that the Race to the Top Initiative is worth trying. The plausible benefit-cost ratio [for the Initiative], seems huge, no matter how we calculate it. And the pilot programs…would generate exactly the information we need to fill our current…knowledge gaps about segregation dynamics. We cannot afford not to try. (p. 457)