Fair Housing

After a couple of decades of ignoring economic inequities between African Americans and whites, riots broke out in American cities in the 1960s.  Massey and Denton write, “Unlike the communal race riots of early 1900s, these disturbances arose from within the black community itself and were . . . directed at property rather than people.”[1] Rioters directed their anger at symbols of white power and institutions.[2] In response to these outbreaks, President Johnson created a national commission chaired by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner called the Kerner Commision.  It issued a report in 1968 that recommended integration as a solution to the inequities that led to urban riots concluding that, “Integration is the only course which explicitly seeks to achieve a single nation rather than accepting the present movement toward a dual society.  This choice would enable us at least to begin reversing the profoundly divisive trend already so evident in our metropolitan areas – before it become irreversible.[3]  In response to the Kerner Commission report, moderate Republican support for civil rights, the riots, and Martin Luther King’s assassination, Congress acquiesced and President Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act into law on April 10, 1968.[4]

However, the 1968 law had enforcement limitations.[5] If HUD concluded that a landlord or seller was racially discriminating against a renter or homebuyer; HUD passed the case on to the Justice Department.  Yet, as Denton and Massey point out, “the Attorney General was authorized to act only if there was evidence of a ‘pattern or practice’ of discrimination or if the alleged discrimination raised an issue ‘of general importance.’”[6] In other words, it was nearly impossible for an individual to sue.  Additionally, regional administrators handled the application of the Act, which kept it from resolving local, institutionalized racist practices.

Although numerous lawsuits gave more power to fair housing standards,[7] Ronald Reagan virtually gutted these standards when he became president.  Under Reagan’s watch, the courts dropped numerous fair housing cases; the case Havens v. Coleman prohibited the use of testers to sue under the Fair Housing Act;[8] his administration restricted the gathering of race data in housing applications;[9] and realtors were no longer responsible for complying with Fair Housing provisions.  Ironically, his administration was so obvious in its lack of respect for fair housing equality that even Vice President George Bush and the National Association of Realtors supported strengthening fair housing laws.  Reactively, Congress passed the Fair Housing Amendment Action in June 1988.[10]  As Denton and Massey write, “in one bold stroke, the amendments remedied the principal flaws of the 1968 act that had been so well documented in two decades of Congressional hearings, court cases, government reports, and academic treatises.”[11]