Race, Neighborhoods, and Community Power


Book Description

Examines the extent to which race affected public policy formation in Buffalo, New York between 1934 and 1997.




Public Housing and the Legacy of Segregation


Book Description

For the past two decades the United States has been transforming distressed public housing communities, with three ambitious goals: replace distressed developments with healthy mixed-income communities; help residents relocate to affordable housing, often in the private market; and empower former public housing families toward economic self-sufficiency. The transformation has focused on deconcentrating poverty, but not on the underlying role of racial segregation in creating these distressed communities. In Public Housing and the Legacy of Segregation, scholars and public housing officials assess whether--and how--public housing policies can simultaneously address the problems of poverty and race.




Race, Housing and Community


Book Description

This book provides an important new contribution to debates around housing policy and its impact on community cohesion. There has never been a more prescient time to discuss these concepts: the book provides an interpretation of housing, race and community cohesion in a highly politicized and fluid policy context. It is designed to initiate discussion and debate but this should not be esoteric and limited to a group of academics. Rather the objective is to bridge academic and policy audiences in the hope that this fusion provides a basis for a new agenda to discuss these topics. Race and community have been key features of social housing policy over the last 20 years with many high-profile interventions, from the proactive approach by the Housing Corporation to support black and minority ethnic housing associations, to the influential Cantle Report documenting segregation in towns and cities following riots, and the National Housing Federation led Race & Housing Inquiry leading to sector wide recommendations to achieve equality. However, volume of policy interventions and reports has not been matched by academic outputs that co-ordinate, integrate and critically analyse 'race', housing and community. Housing, Race & Community Cohesion is the first systematic overview of 'race', housing and community during this tumultuous period. The material presented is robust and research based but also directly engages with issues around policy and delivery. It is designed to reflect the interests both of the academic research community and policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic. It is not rooted to specific policy interventions that could quickly date but instead focuses on developing new ways to analyse difficult issues that will help both students and practitioners now and in the future.




Discrimination in Federally Assisted Housing Programs


Book Description




Our Town


Book Description

"This book is both an inspiring account of public interest law at its best and a sobering assessment of how 'the soul of suburbia' continues to resist social justice. . . . an unexpectedly moving account of hope, idealism, and intelligence." --The New York Times Book Review "A well-written, exhaustively researched account of the legal battle to open New Jersey's suburbs to the poor . . . The authors actually took the time to talk to the lawyers and litigants on both sides of the controversy. Their chronicle of the legal developments is informed, and much improved, by the flesh-and-blood stories of those who actually lived the case. . . . a cautionary and inspiring tale." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "The authors of Our Town in particular enable readers to see historical continuity in legal and popular discussions of race, realism, and housing patterns in American society. Our Town also explores the challenges to public policy raised by the existence of residential segregation patterns." --The Nation " This book] is valuable both as a case study of judicial activism and its consequences and as a detailed anaylsis of suburban attitudes regarding race, class, and property." --Urban Affairs Review




Race for Profit


Book Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST, 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY By the late 1960s and early 1970s, reeling from a wave of urban uprisings, politicians finally worked to end the practice of redlining. Reasoning that the turbulence could be calmed by turning Black city-dwellers into homeowners, they passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and set about establishing policies to induce mortgage lenders and the real estate industry to treat Black homebuyers equally. The disaster that ensued revealed that racist exclusion had not been eradicated, but rather transmuted into a new phenomenon of predatory inclusion. Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners. The federal government guaranteed urban mortgages in an attempt to overcome resistance to lending to Black buyers – as if unprofitability, rather than racism, was the cause of housing segregation. Bankers, investors, and real estate agents took advantage of the perverse incentives, targeting the Black women most likely to fail to keep up their home payments and slip into foreclosure, multiplying their profits. As a result, by the end of the 1970s, the nation's first programs to encourage Black homeownership ended with tens of thousands of foreclosures in Black communities across the country. The push to uplift Black homeownership had descended into a goldmine for realtors and mortgage lenders, and a ready-made cudgel for the champions of deregulation to wield against government intervention of any kind. Narrating the story of a sea-change in housing policy and its dire impact on African Americans, Race for Profit reveals how the urban core was transformed into a new frontier of cynical extraction.




The One-Way Street of Integration


Book Description

The One-Way Street of Integration examines two contrasting housing policy approaches to achieving racial justice. Integration initiatives and community development efforts have been for decades contrasting means of achieving racial equity through housing policy. Goetz traces the tensions involved in housing integration and policy to show why he doesn't see the solution to racial injustice as the government moving poor and nonwhite people out of their communities. The One-Way Street of Integration critiques fair housing integration policies for targeting settlement patterns while ignoring underlying racism and issues of economic and political power. Goetz challenges liberal orthodoxy, determining that the standard efforts toward integration are unlikely to lead to racial equity or racial justice in American cities. In fact, in this pursuit it is the community development movement rather that has the greatest potential for connecting to social change and social justice efforts.




The Suburban Racial Dilemma


Book Description

An examination of the dilemmas of integrating America's suburbs.




The Impacts of Racism and Bias on Black People Pursuing Careers in Science, Engineering, and Medicine


Book Description

Despite the changing demographics of the nation and a growing appreciation for diversity and inclusion as drivers of excellence in science, engineering, and medicine, Black Americans are severely underrepresented in these fields. Racism and bias are significant reasons for this disparity, with detrimental implications on individuals, health care organizations, and the nation as a whole. The Roundtable on Black Men and Black Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine was launched at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2019 to identify key levers, drivers, and disruptors in government, industry, health care, and higher education where actions can have the most impact on increasing the participation of Black men and Black women in science, medicine, and engineering. On April 16, 2020, the Roundtable convened a workshop to explore the context for their work; to surface key issues and questions that the Roundtable should address in its initial phase; and to reach key stakeholders and constituents. This proceedings provides a record of the workshop.




Unfair Housing


Book Description

It is difficult to ignore the fact that, even as the United States becomes much more racially and ethnically diverse, our neighborhoods remain largely segregated. The 1968 Fair Housing Act and 1977 Community Reinvestment Act promised to end discrimination, yet for millions of Americans housing options remain far removed from the American Dream. Why do most neighborhoods in American cities continue to be racially divided? The problem, suggests Mara Sidney, lies with the policies themselves. She contends that to understand why discrimination persists, we need to understand the political challenges faced by advocacy groups who implement them. In Unfair Housing she offers a new explanation for the persistent color lines in our cities by showing how weak national policy has silenced and splintered grassroots activists. Sidney explains how political compromise among national lawmakers with divergent interests resulted in housing legislation that influenced how community activists defined discrimination, what actions they took, and which political relationships they cultivated. As a result, local governments became less likely to include housing discrimination on their agendas, existing laws went unenforced, and racial segregation continued. A former undercover investigator for a fair housing advocacy group, Sidney takes readers into the neighborhoods of Minneapolis and Denver to show how federal housing policy actually works. She examines how these laws played out in these cities and reveals how they eroded activists' capability to force more sweeping reform in housing policy. Sidney also shows how activist groups can cultivate community resources to overcome these difficulties, looking across levels of government to analyze how national policies interact with local politics. In the first book to apply policy design theories of Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram to an empirical case, Sidney illuminates overlooked impacts of fair housing and community reinvestment policies and extends their theories to the study of local politics and nonprofit organizations. Sidney argues forcefully that understanding the link between national policy and local groups sheds light on our failure to reduce discrimination and segregation. As battles over fair housing continue, her book helps us understand the shape of the battlefield and the prospects for victory.