Housing Development, Equity and Civil Rights

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Housing Development, Equity and Civil Rights

• Professor john powell
• Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and
  Ethnicity
• Moritz College of Law
• Ohio State University
• 3 December 2003

http//www.kirwaninstitute.org
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Presentation Overview

• Race and Racism
• What is Structural Racism?
• Spatial Racism
• Housing and Opportunity
• Why are current incentives inadequate?
• Looking Ahead

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Race and Racism

• Race
• Biological determinism vs social construction
• Constituted through racism
• Race is a biological fiction, but a social fact

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Race and Racism

• We have seen a move away from legal racism and
  personal prejudice to a racial hierarchy that is
  enforced through institutional/structural means
• de jure segregation ? de facto segregation

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Race and Racism

• Although racial attitudes and personal prejudice
  is improving steadily, racial disparities persist
  on every level.
• A characteristic feature of structural racism is
  its ability to conceal and disguise its true
  nature.

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Median Household incomes of racial and ethnic
groups (national)
SOURCE LEWIS MUMFORD CENTER 1990, 2000 CENSUS
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Understanding Structural Racism

• Theoretically neutral policies and practices can
  function to produce/maintain racial hierarchies.
  Laws and institutions need not be explicitly
  racist in order to disempower communities of
  color they need only to perpetuate unequal
  historic conditions.
• These policies and practices are not neutral
  however, and as a result the burdens are
  distributed unevenly.

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Effects of Structural Racism

• Simply recognizing disparities is not enough, we
  need to examine our assumptions surrounding them.
  
• Disparities reproduce themselves because of
  access to opportunity. The present arrangement
  will continue to increasingly perpetuate
  disparities if left unchecked.
• The damages of structural racism can be seen in
  our most persistent and pressing social problems
  educational attainment, crime, segregation,
  homelessness, etc.

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ExampleWealth and African-Americans

• Income is what people get paid.

• Wealth is what people own.

• Regardless of educational, occupational, and
  demographic characteristics, wealth is racially
  disparate.
• White Americans median net worth is twelve
  times that of black Americans.

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Homeownership in Wisconsin
SOURCE LEWIS MUMFORD CENTER (2000 CENSUS)
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The face of racism looks different today than it
did thirty years ago.Overt racism is easily
condemned, but the sin is often with us in more
subtle formsof spatial racismSpatial racism
refers to patterns of metropolitan development in
which some affluent whites create racially and
economically segregated suburbs or gentrified
areas of cities, leaving the poor -- mainly
African Americans, Hispanics and some newly
arrived immigrants -- isolated in deteriorating
areas of the cities and older suburbs.

Francis Cardinal George, OMI Archbishop of Chicago
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Spatial Racism The Civil Rights Agenda for the
21st Century
Space is how race plays out in American
society-and the key to solving inequities in
housing, transportation, education, and health
careSprawl is the new face of Jim
Crow. john powell
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Spatial Racism a Civil Rights issue

• The government plays a central role in the
  arrangement of space and opportunities.
• Not neutral or natural
• Social and racial inequities are geographically
  inscribed
• There is a polarization between the rich and the
  poor that is directly related to the areas in
  which they live.

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Spatial Racism not neutral or natural

• Civil Rights movement and the urbanization of
  people of color occurred in tandem during
  post-WWII America.
• While very real gains were being made against
  blatant exclusionary practices and a culture of
  discrimination, groundwork was being laid for
  persistent structural racism.
• Blacks moving to cities for opportunities, while
  opportunities leave the cities to the suburbs
• Same pattern beginning to repeat in first-ring
  suburbs today

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• If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is
  necessary that properties shall continue to be
  occupied by the same social and racial classes.
  A change in social or racial occupancy generally
  contributes to instability and a decline in
  values.
• Excerpt from the 1947 FHA underwriting manual.

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Segregation Today

• Persists at very high levels for
  African-Americans
• At 65 (75 in many major metropolitan areas)
• Improving at an extremely slow pace
• Worst in Northern cities
• Detroit, Milwaukee, New York, Chicago
• Southern cities more likely to be organized on
  county level

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Segregation in Wisconsin

• Milwaukee is one of the most segregated cities in
  the country
• Central City has lost almost 35 of its White
  population in the past 20 years
• Blacks, Hispanics and Asians combined account for
  less than 6 of the suburban population
• Madison is moderately segregated
• Benefits from being a college town
• Green Bay is still very white, but rapidly
  changing
• Growing Hispanic population, mostly in the
  central city
• Eau Claire is substantially integrated, but has a
  very low number of minority residents
• Less than 1 Black or Hispanic

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City-Suburban Disparity

• The economic advantages enjoyed by suburban
  regions over the last four decades continue to
  outpace those of cities.
• The income gap between city and suburban dwellers
  persists increases in median income were twice
  as large in the suburbs than in the cities and
  per capita income increased by about 1,000 more
  for the suburbanite than the city dweller.
• Cities have over a third more unemployment than
  suburbs.
• The poverty rate is twice as high in the cities
  than in the suburbs, remaining relatively
  unchanged since 1990.

Source Lewis Mumford Center
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City-Suburban Disparity

• Milwaukee has one of the highest disparities
  between its central city and its suburbs in the
  nation (ranked 307/326)
• Madison actually has a more educated central
  city than its suburbs, but the city still has
  much higher poverty rates

Source Lewis Mumford Center
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Separate and Unequal
All data represented as a ratio minoritywhite
values Source Lewis Mumford Center (Census 2000)
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Opportunity-Based Housing

• Affordable housing must be deliberately and
  intelligently connected to high performing
  school, sustaining employment, necessary
  transportation infrastructure, childcare, and
  institutions that facilitate civic and political
  activity
• Housing is a component of a larger set of
  interrelated structures that are both affected by
  housing and have impacts for the attainment of
  safe, stable housing.

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The Need to Think in Terms of Opportunity

• Opportunity structures are the resources and
  services that contribute to stability and
  advancement
• Fair access to opportunity structures is limited
  by segregation, concentration of poverty,
  fragmentation, and sprawl in our regions for
  low-income households and families of color
• Because opportunity structures exist as a web a
  multi-faceted, equity-centered approach is needed
• Opportunities created by public and private
  policies
• Housing is the core factor in access to
  opportunity

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Housing and Opportunity Questions to Answer

• 1.   Is the housing affordable?
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• 2.   Does it create access to employment?
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• 3.  Is the housing situated in proximity to
  transportation options?
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• 4.  Does the housing support school readiness,
  school stability, and educational enhancement?
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• 5.  Does the housing support the health of
  occupants?
•  
• 6.  How is wealth limited or advanced by the
  housing?

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Housing and Opportunity

• The current paradigm regarding low-income housing
  is failing to provide occupants with access to
  opportunity, wherever that is located in a region
  (the city, the inner-ring, the outer-ring).
• Where you live is as important as what you live
  in.

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WI smart growth plan

• By 2010, virtually all communities in Wisconsin
  will need to adopt a comprehensive plan. The law
  requires that the plan, "provide a range of
  housing choices that meet the needs of persons of
  all income levels and of all age groups and
  persons with special needs, (provide) policies
  and programs that promote the availability of
  land for the development or redevelopment of
  low-income and moderate-income housing, and
  (provide) policies and programs to maintain or
  rehabilitate the local governmental unit's
  existing housing stock." Because the law requires
  that, beginning in 2010, any land use decision
  must be based on a complete comprehensive plan,
  communities must plan for affordable housing or
  risk legal challenge to their land use decisions.
  
• Starting in 2005, the state will reward
  communities that create affordable housing with a
  new state aid payment. The "Smart Growth
  Dividend" will provide an aid credit for each
  unit of new housing that is sold at 80 or less
  of the county median sales price. The program
  also rewards small lot development, which is
  generally less expensive than large lot
  subdivisions.

SOURCE 1000 Friends of Wisconsin
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WI smart growth planpossible problems

• Not a legal mandate, could prove to be a problem
  with enforcement
• Does not create affordable housing in and of
  itself
• May require litigation and court challenges to
  proposed comprehensive plans could be costly and
  time-consuming

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Current Housing Paradigm LIHTC

• Programs such as the Low Income Housing Tax
  Credit plan have not desegregated our
  neighborhoods or provided occupants access to
  opportunity
• In a national survey conducted by the Fannie Mae
  Foundation, 39 percent of the central-city
  neighborhoods where LIHTC units were built are at
  least 90 percent nonwhite, and 51 percent are at
  least 80 percent nonwhite.
• Newman and Schnare (1997) found that LIHTC
  housing is concentrated in low-income
  neighborhoods. In major central cities the
  program is used much more often to provide better
  housing in poor neighborhoods than to provide
  affordable housing in higher-income
  neighborhoods.
• However, LIHTC siting in WI appears to be better
  than in many metro areas

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The Turning Point

• Instead of focusing on the tipping point, we need
  to better define what neighborhoods require to
  reach the turning point.
• Pushing development beyond the turning point
  threshold requires an intervention strategy to
  positively transform the neighborhoods physical,
  social, economic, and political environment.

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National Initiatives Resources

• Policy Link (www.policylink.org)
• Several initiatives aimed at creating and
  increasing economic opportunities for low-income
  neighborhoods such as Saving the Community
  Reinvestment Act.
• Advocacy for equity in the smart growth movement
  through an approach called Regional Equity.
• Institute on Race and Poverty (http//www1.umn.edu
  /irp/)
• The Racial Justice Regional Equity Project
  (RJRE) examines the impact urban sprawl has on
  people of color who live in central cities and
  inner-ring suburbs. Through this project, they
  seek to highlight and analyze regional strategies
  in affordable housing, quality education,
  employment opportunities, and other initiatives.

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Looking Forward

• Scrutinize our process and approach consider the
  structures that are creating and perpetuating
  inequalities.
• Identify possible allies
• We need transformative thinking to make lasting
  change.
• Where does housing fit in the larger picture?
• Start with what we are trying to achieve, and
  work back through the process to see how this can
  be accomplished.

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