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Urban Decolonization
National fair housing legislation opened up higher opportunity neighborhoods to multitudes of middle-class African Americans. In actuality, the FHA offered much less to the millions of poor, Black residents in inner cities than it did to the Black middle class. Partly in response to the FHA’s inability to provide quality housing for low-income blacks, Congress has pursued various mobility strategies designed to facilitate the integration of low-income Blacks into high-opportunity neighborhoods as a resolution to the persistent dilemma of the ghetto. These efforts, too, have had limited success. Now, just over fifty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act and the Housing Choice Voucher Program (commonly known as Section 8), large numbers of African Americans throughout the country remain geographically isolated in urban ghettos. America’s neighborhoods are deeply segregated and Blacks have been relegated to the worst of them. This isolation has been likened to colonialism of an urban kind. To combat the housing conditions experienced by low-income Blacks, in recent years, housing advocates have reignited a campaign to add “source of income” protection to the federal Fair Housing Act as a means to open up high-opportunity neighborhoods to low-income people of color. This Article offers a critique of overreliance on integration and mobility programs to remedy urban colonialism. Integration’s ineffectiveness as a tool to achieve quality housing for masses of economically-subordinated Blacks has been revealed both in the historically White suburbs and the recently gentrified inner city. Low-income Blacks are welcome in neither place. Thus, this Article argues that focusing modern fair housing policy on the relatively small number of Black people for whom mobility is an option (either through high incomes or federal programs) is shortsighted, given the breadth of need for quality housing in economically-subordinated inner-city communities. As an alternative, this Article proposes, especially in the newly wealthy gentrified cities, that fair housing advocates, led by Black tenants, insist that state and local governments direct significant resources to economically depressed majority-minority neighborhoods and house residents equitably. This process of equitable distribution of local government resources across an entire jurisdiction, including in majority-minority neighborhoods, may be a critical step towards urban decolonization.Do Not (Re)Enter: The Rise of Criminal Background Tenant Screening as a Violation of the Fair Housing Act
Increased landlord discrimination against housing applicants with criminal histories has made locating housing in the private market more challenging than ever for individuals with criminal records. Specifically, the increased use of widely available background information in the application process by private housing providers and high error rates in criminal record databases pose particularly difficult obstacles to securing housing. Furthermore, criminal record screening policies disproportionately affect people of color due to high incarceration rates and housing discrimination. This Note examines whether the policies and practices of private housing providers that reject applicants because of their prior criminal records have an unlawful, disparate impact on racial minorities by denying such individuals the benefits of housing in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3600, et. seq. The author compares existing enforcement guidance under Title VII employment discrimination law and suggests solutions for balancing the concerns of private housing providers and strong policy reasons behind increasing access to private housing for individuals with criminal records.The Current State of Residential Segregation and Housing Discrimination: The United States’ Obligations Under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
The United States government accepted a number of obligations related to housing when it ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination ("CERD"). For example, the United States government must ensure that all people enjoy the rights to housing and to own property, without distinction as to race; cease discriminatory actions, including those that are discriminatory in effect regardless of intent; and take affirmative steps to remedy past discrimination and eradicate segregation. This Article discusses the United States government's compliance with those obligations, as well as the importance of meaningful compliance in maintaining the United States' credibility on human rights issues. In the context of those obligations, this Article evaluates the current state of housing discrimination and segregation in the United States and the significant problems the United States government must address to fulfill its obligations under CERD. For example, some programs and policies of the United States government, both historically and today, have contributed to the creation and perpetuation of highly segregated residential patterns across the United States. In addition, private acts of discrimination frequently confront African Americans and Latinos attempting to rent or purchase a home, or attempting to secure funding or insurance for a home purchase. The United States government must improve its enforcement of the nation's fair housing laws to improve its compliance with CERD and ensure that all residents, regardless of race, enjoy a right to fair housing. This Article concludes by directing a series of recommendations to specific arms of the government, specifically the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Justice, the United States Congress, the Internal Revenue Service, and state and local governments, to facilitate the United States government's compliance with CERD.
