Fair Housing at 50: A Call to Action

Last month’s 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act indicates a time for assessment, but more importantly for action.

How far have we come as a nation to advance fair housing and increase opportunity? How far do we have to go as social innovators, business leaders, philanthropists, policymakers and advocates to create an equitable ecosystem with affordable, healthy homes connected to quality education, good jobs, accessible transit and effective healthcare? And, most important, how do we get there?

How Fair Is Housing Today?

The road ahead is long. The wealth gap between whites and nonwhites widens, driven in large part by housing discrimination and resulting in segregation and disparities in home ownership, the primary source of wealth for most Americans. In many places, residential segregation has started to increase again, concentrating poverty, re-segregating schools and diminishing access to opportunity.

The latest research by Stanford economist Raj Chetty and collaborators makes a powerful case that race-based income inequality cannot be explained by individual or household characteristics. Rather, the causes of income inequality that trap generations of African Americans in poverty lie outside the home – in neighborhoods, in the economy, and in racism.

Lack of mobility is largely the result of discrimination manifested in law – of unmonitored and unenforced fair housing violations that limit long-term opportunities. By advancing fair housing, we can increase economic mobility and come closer to realizing opportunity for all.

How We Got Here

Segregation is primarily a result of government policies and a broken system: from segregated public housing projects of the New Deal, to unconstitutional local zoning laws, to federal redlining with lenders denying home loans in poor, primarily African American communities. Fixing this broken system requires a systems change approach.

Recent fair housing history represents two steps forward and one back. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “disparate impact” could be used in housing discrimination cases, prohibiting policies that negatively affect protected groups, even unintentionally. It created clarity that could yield better use of resources, enforcement powers, policies and outcomes for families over time. Then, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) introduced the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, requiring localities that receive HUD funding to identify barriers to integration and opportunity and implement policies to eliminate them.

After years of declining resources and inconsistent enforcement of the Fair Housing Act at the federal, state and local levels, 2015 appeared to mark the dawn of a new era. But earlier this year, as hundreds of eligible communities were partway or fully done with their Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH) analyses of local racial segregation and how to address it, the Trump Administration suspended the AFFH rule, putting progress at risk. 

So where do we go from here?

The Path Forward

Despite the suspension of the AFFH rule, many communities are continuing their assessments, and the work done offers valuable lessons for advancing fair housing objectives. We have seen that the technical challenges of implementation can be worked through and are well worth it – which we hope may inspire HUD to put the rule back in effect.

As a technical assistance provider working with HUD and localities across the country on their AFHs, Enterprise Community Partners offers the following recommendations:

Continue with Assessments of Fair Housing; Collaborate regionally. AFHs help communities embed fair housing principles and outcomes in their plans, budgets, programs and policies. Effective AFHs are diverse collaborations of engaged partners that receive broad and deep support, including targeted technical assistance, data for decision-making, supportive policies and regulations, and capital. In places like Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, D.C. and Denver, local jurisdictions are working together regionally for the first time through the AFH process – revealing new opportunities that can yield results equal to the scale of the problem.

Develop state-level AFHs. The suspension of the AFFH rule makes the development of state-level assessments necessary as a complement to the implementation of individual, joint and regional AFHs. Because local and regional fair housing issues sit within a larger context including state-level policies, regulations, budgets and priorities, state-level AFHs would offer additional support to what individual program participants and single regions are accomplishing.

Engage communities. Philadelphia’s AFH reveals the power of robust community engagement. When advocates wrote to HUD that the city’s AFH process did not effectively involve affected communities, Philadelphia restarted its community engagement process and successfully earned broad support from diverse stakeholders.

Transform federal and state policy. Federal and state tools can advance fair housing outcomes if structured effectively:

• The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, the main federal tool for creating and preserving affordable rental homes, is administered by states according to their Qualified Allocation Plans (QAPs). Having QAPs ensure a balance in affordable housing development between high-income and low-income areas will be a strong step toward furthering fair housing.
• Inclusionary zoning ordinances advance fair housing by requiring new construction to include a share of affordable units. In some cases, developers can instead pay a fee (to a housing trust fund, for example) that goes to support inclusive development.

Leverage new tools that help stakeholders think about fair housing in a more expansive way. Drawing on more than 200 indicators, Enterprise’s Opportunity360 platform measures whether people in a given place have access to the resources, institutions and services fundamental to well-being, like housing stability, education, economic security, health and mobility – because they are all connected.

A Long-Term, Cross-Sector Approach

Progress in fair housing will require implementing these recommendations as part of a long-term, concerted effort across sectors and silos, from affordable housing and disaster recovery to transportation, infrastructure, education, and economic and workforce development.

It will require embedding fair housing and equity principles in city and regional plans and budgets, and growing and sharing research documenting the costs of segregation. The resulting greater understanding will be crucial in building the public will necessary for systems change.

And, progress will require that we – businesses, governments and philanthropists – band together to drive inclusive economic growth and make every community one of opportunity.