Threading the Needle of Fair Housing Law in a Gentrifying City with a Legacy of Discrimination (original) (raw)
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The Fair Housing Act (FHA) is a powerful tool in the civil rights arsenal and has achieved a great deal, but its promise to address structural inequities that have undergirded the U.S. housing system has yet to be realized. HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule is an important effort to do that, reflecting new learning and a refined approach to the core challenge of remedying ongoing barriers to fair housing that perpetuate disparities. This article aims to provide details on how and why that rule was created, building on the experiences of two Obama-administration appointees involved in the rule’s creation. After providing a brief background on the AFFH mandate of the FHA, this article explains the origins and theory behind the new rule and summarizes details of the rule and key initial critiques and experiences. It ends with some thoughts on how the approach embodied in HUD’s rule could assist in ushering in a new era of equity planning. Background: The Fair Hous...
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New York City faces the twin problems of housing segregation and a shortage of affordable housing. In response, Mayor Bill de Blasio developed Housing New York, a plan to create or preserve 300,000 affordable units across a variety of income bands. As part of this plan, the City instituted inclusionary zoning policies and modified density caps in certain neighborhoods while targeting units for households in a range of income brackets citywide. Yet many residents and community advocates have long argued that homes developed under the plan are unaffordable to working-class, disproportionately affecting Black and Latino New Yorkers. This Note takes a first pass at analyzing the plan’s compliance with the Fair Housing Act of 1968 through the lens of the plan’s income affordability targets and its household targets (the latter being deciphered through the aforementioned changes to city policy on density and the number of bedrooms targeted in new housing units). It examines key neighborhood demographics for communities targeted for inclusionary zoning and argues that the plan’s income affordability targets and its household targets, taken together with the City’s existing community preference policy, likely have a disparate impact on Black and Latino New Yorkers by disproportionately denying members of these communities housing and by perpetuating segregation within and between neighborhoods. This Note then propose a non-comprehensive set of remedies that would fall within jurisprudential constraints on Fair Housing Act cases.
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This essay contribution to the 25th anniversary of the Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law first lauds the Journal for its contributions to the field. Then, based upon the profound tensions and conflicts between affordable housing, community development, and fair housing, the essay calls upon the Journal to give a more concentrated and consistent focus to these issues and to consider adding "Fair Housing" to the Journal's name.
The Gentrification Trigger: Autonomy, Mobility, and Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
Brooklyn law review, 2013
Gentrification connotes a process where often white “outsiders” move into areas in which once attractive properties have deteriorated due to disinvestment. Gentrification creates seemingly positive outcomes, including increases in property values, equity, and a city’s tax base, as well as greater residential racial and economic integration; yet it is typically accompanied by significant opposition. In-place residents fear that they will either be displaced or even if they remain the newcomers will change the culture and practices of the neighborhood. Gentrification then is understood to cause a loss of community and autonomy – losses that have been well recognized in the eminent domain literature. This article focuses on gentrifying neighborhoods that were abandoned during the government sponsored suburban migration of the 1950s through the 1980s. Racially discriminatory practices of government and private actors often denied Black and Latino families the option either to join the m...
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University of Memphis Law Review, 2016
With the Supreme Court’s Inclusive Cmtys. Project decision in June 2015 and the Obama Administration’s adoption, the following month, of the Final Rule for Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), local government accountability for ending segregation and resolving the spatial mismatch between affordable housing and economic opportunity has been placed on a more solid footing. Instead of being responsible only for overt, conscious attempts to harm protected groups, jurisdictions that receive money from HUD will now need to take a hard look at their policies that perpetuate the barriers to housing opportunity for economically marginalized protected groups. The duty to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing, although somewhat aspirational in its formulation, requires HUD grant recipients to engage with fair housing issues in a way that the threat of litigation, even disparate impact litigation, never has. In this paper, I examine how the new AFFH rule impacts local government efforts...
Cityscape, 1999
The year 1998 marks the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act, the last major civil rights law passed during the 1960s. It is also the 30th anniversary of the publication of the Kerner Report (Kerner Commission, 1998) on the violence that erupted in our cities in the same decade. In my mind the two are closely linked because residential segregation so dramatically embodies the Report's most famous words: "This is our basic conclusion: Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one Black, one White-separate and unequal." More than anything else, I would like to be able to argue that the past 30 years have proved these words false. Some have claimed them to be false saying that the Kerner Commission "traumatized by the riots ... had deluded themselves into thinking that the conditions of African-Americans in the United States had been deteriorating rather than improving since World War II." (Thernstrom and Thernstrom, 1997). Recognizing the progress that has been made is important, and this progress cannot be denied. But emphasizing progress while minimizing the importance of the slow speed of the progress and the remaining resistance to it (Thernstrom and Thernstrom, 1997) serves only to make people feel better. Refusing to think about the remaining problems does nothing to solve them. The first part of this article presents evidence of how segregation has changed since the Kerner Report was published and the Fair Housing Act was passed while the second reflects on the effectiveness of the law itself. In the third section I discuss post-1968 changes in society, as well as changes in the nature of housing discrimination that alter the context in which future gains in neighborhood integration will have to take place. In this section, I also report some of my current research on all-White neighborhoods, which challenges the reliance solely on segregation indices as the measure of progress toward an integrated society. Though the accuracy of the segregation indices is not in doubt, they represent only one aspect of a complex picture. The article concludes with some reflections on what present trends and the past 30 years of history mean for the future of housing policy and neighborhood integration in the United States. 1
Fair Housing's Third Act: American Tragedy or Triumph?
Discrimination, 2020
Fifty-two years ago, Congress enacted a one-of-a-kind civil rights directive. It requires every federal agency—and state and local grantees by extension—to take affirmative steps to undo segregation. In 2020, this overlooked Fair Housing Act provision—the “affirmatively furthering fair housing” or “AFFH” mandate—has heightened relevance. Perhaps most visible is Donald Trump’s racially charged “protect the suburbs” campaign rhetoric. In an apparent appeal to suburban constituents, his administration repealed a race-conscious fair housing rule, replacing it with a no-questions-asked regulation that elevates “local control” above civil rights. The maneuver is especially stark as protesters fill the streets, marching in opposition to systemic racism’s many forms. In this moment of racial awakening, it is critical to revisit how neighborhood segregation affects nearly all aspects of American life. We live in a racist ecosystem, and racial segregation is its defining feature. Segregation’...
Fordham Urb. LJ, 1995
This article examines the problem of housing discrimination in New York City as well as the role of the Human Rights Commission in fighting illegally discriminatory practices. Part I describes the evidence demonstrating housing market discrimination and examines the harmful impact these practices have on many New Yorkers. Part II examines the New York City Human Rights Commission's battle against housing discrimination from its founding in 1955 to the present day. As part of this analysis, New York City's Human Rights Law is compared with analogous protections enacted by the State of New York and the federal government. Data on all housing discrimination complaints filed with the Commission in 1992 and 1993 is also studied. Finally, Part III of the article comments briefly on how the Commission can face the challenges of the future in seeking to break down barriers to residential mobility and integration.