Hartman, Chester

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University of Arkansas at Little Rock: UALR Bowen Law Repository

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review Volume 21 Issue 4 The Ben J. Altheimer Symposium: Racial Equity in the Twenty-First Century Article 6 1999 Racial Equity in Housing Chester Hartman Follow this and additional works at: https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/lawreview  Part of the Housing Law Commons, and the Law and Race Commons Recommended Citation Chester Hartman, Racial Equity in Housing, 21 U. ARK. LITTLE ROCK L. REV. 809 (1999). Available at: https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/lawreview/vol21/iss4/6 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by Bowen Law Repository: Scholarship & Archives. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review by an authorized editor of Bowen Law Repository: Scholarship & Archives. For more information, please contact mmserfass@ualr.edu. RACIAL EQUITY IN HOUSINGChester Hartman*Housing is an extraordinarily pervasive issue with respect to racialpatterns and racism. America's neighborhoods are still enormously segregatedby race, and there are few stable integrated areas. Such patterns ofsegregation-which at the extreme have been characterized by sociologistsDouglas Massey and Nancy Denton as "hypersegregation," using a quiteprecise set of numerical measures-have broad and profound implications forracial minorities and for the society as a whole.Blacks and other minorities live in worse housing than do whites, interms of such quality issues as physical deterioration, amount of space,adequacy of plumbing, and other systems.Poor quality housing produces a wide range of health and safety impacts:lead poisoning (from peeling paint, ancient pipes, and air pollution), asthma,rat bites, electric shocks, accidents, asphyxiation (from poorly vented heatingsystems), and fires.Housing affordability problems are more widespread among minorities.Having to pay more than the household can afford for housing leads tocorresponding neglect of non-shelter basics: food, clothing, transportation,medical care, etc. Such neglect, of course, has health and other implications.A recent Boston City Hospital Pediatrics Department study, for example,demonstrated a higher incidence of iron deficiency among children living inunsubsidized (vs. government-subsidized) housing. The latter pay only thirtypercent of their income for rent, leaving adequate amounts to feed the family.Among the former, rents can take fifty to seventy percent of family income,making an adequate diet impossible.Minorities have far lower rates of home ownership, which translates intoless security of tenure as well as less wealth generation, due also to the factthat house values in segregated minority areas rise far less slowly-and insome cases not at all-compared with homes in white areas. Research byMelvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro has documented the extreme black-whitewealth gap---far more extreme and important than income disparities-duelargely to housing equity differences, and the salience of wealth for creatingand passing on a range of intergenerational opportunities.Municipal/community services and facilities of all types tend to be poorerin minority neighborhoods: schools, libraries, community centers, shoppingfacilities, and banking outlets. A particularly important municipal re-source--public transportation--often provides inferior service in and to such* Executive Director, Poverty & Race Research Action Council; A.B., Harvard College;Ph.D., City and Regional Planning, Harvard University.809UALR LAW REVIEWareas, limiting access to employment opportunities as well as other importantresources.Schools in minority areas tend to be older, in poorer physical condition,with inferior equipment and supplies, and with less experienced and qualifiedteachers. Involuntary residential moves-due to rent increases, buildingabandonment, fires, utility shutoffs, and many other factors-trigger highclassroom turnover, which in turn produces a poor learning environment.Environmental hazards such as toxic waste sites, pollution sources, andbrownfields are more common in minority areas. The concentrated povertyin many such areas is the breeding ground for various types of criminalactivity that produce an environment with increased danger to person andproperty.Minority areas often are politically under-represented, which makesremedy of existing problems more difficult.The extreme segregation and isolation of many minority areas-the"hypersegregation" phenomenon noted above-also reduces the range ofcontacts people living in these areas have with the rest of society. Suchcontacts/networks/links often provide the leads to jobs, apartments, services,and other kinds of information that most people regularly rely on to improvetheir lives.This then is a summary picture of how important housing-both in thenarrow sense of the living unit itself and in the broader sense of residentialsetting-is to a wide range of problems, satisfactions, and opportunities in thesocial, economic, political, educational, health, and personal realms. Thenation's racial hierarchy-as it affects and produces income and wealthdifferences, political power, and social distinctions-as well as the wide-spread discriminatory behavior throughout the housing system (real estatebrokers, homeowners, rental agents, landlords, lenders, insurers, and zoners)have created a housing pattern clearly deleterious to minorities.Given the pervasiveness of the issue, there can be no one "magic bullet,"nor even a single most important policy change, that would remedy thissituation.To the extent that inadequate incomes and the black-white income/wealthgap is an underlying cause of housing problems-and in a sense that can besaid to be true, as most people with adequate incomes can satisfy their h9usingneeds in the existing private market-then policies certainly are needed toimprove the economic well-being of minorities: raising the minimum wage(and indexing it to inflation) so a full-time worker rises above the poverty line;mounting "living wage" campaigns so that workers actually can afford market-rate housing (which by and large is not possible at income levels just abovethe poverty line); creating full employment programs with adequate training,810 [Vol. 21RACIAL EQUITY IN HOUSINGbenefits, and services (childcare, transportation, etc.); strengthening labororganizing; and creating a more progressive tax system. But the privatehousing market is such that rental and ownership costs tend to be beyond evenworking-class levels, and the profit-maximizing tendencies of actorsthroughout the system keep raising costs as demand increases. If affordabilityis not to remain a central problem, there is need to rethink the way housing isfinanced, developed, owned, and managed so that various forms of non-market, social housing can meet the needs of lower-income Americans of allraces. While 50 years ago, in the Congress' Preamble to the 1949 HousingAct, the nation set forth a National Housing Goal of "a decent home andsuitable living environment for every American family," we have not comeclose to attaining that end, and we need to think seriously about creating a"right" to decent, affordable housing.To more narrowly focus on a few specific housing policies that canameliorate current patterns, I would suggest three:1) Create more opportunities for minority home ownership (via CommunityReinvestment Act remedies, anti-redlining activities, downpaymentassistance, counseling, and mortgage subsidies) in order to enable greaterwealth generation, security of tenure and strengthening of communities.2) Permit greater dispersion of minority residents by making all governmentsubsidy programs regional rather than local; taking effective steps to end"snob zoning"; enforcing fair housing laws, particularly via use of"paired tester" programs and vigorous pursuit, followed by widespreadpublicity of damage awards, where discrimination is documented.3) Invest heavily and comprehensively in inner-city neighborhoods:housing, jobs, schools, transportation, and community facilities, so thatpeople have a real choice of remaining or moving.It needs to be emphasized that a serious approach to the nation's housingproblem, for minorities and for the rest of the population, will requireconsiderably more investment of government funds than now is the case.Ironically and tellingly, we now spend four to five times as much indirectly,through tax subsidies, on housing benefits for the non-poor (mainly via thehighly regressive homeowner tax deduction) as we do in direct expendituresfor subsidizing the housing needs of the poor. The gap between what lower-income people earn and what housing costs is enormous and growing. If wewill not take the steps necessary to increase incomes or lower the market cost1999]812 UALR LAW REVIEW [Vol. 21of housing, this gap can only be filled with government subsidies of amagnitude far, far higher than now prevails.Whether the housing problems of minorities can (or should) be addressedseparate from the extensive housing problems of non-minorities is a philo-sophical and political issue subject to considerable debate. To be sure, manyof the housing problems of minorities are due specifically and demonstrablyto their minority status, and thus we must keep issues of discrimination, in allforms, at the forefront. But there is wisdom in an approach that seeks a rightto decent, affordable housing for all as a social and political goal that oughtbe pursued.

Racial Equity in Housing

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