Blog #81e. – Towards Transformative Approaches to Unjust Inequality.

Blog #81e. – Towards Transformative Approaches to Unjust Inequality.

Given that the conservative responses to unjust inequality essentially accept its existence, that the liberal  does something to ameliorate the results of unjust inequalities but does not address their causes, and that the progressive response does even more, but both within  severe limits that leave the production of such inequalities essentially untouched, and finally given that radical responses, although  they do address the causes of unjust inequality, are not  on the real world agenda anywhere in the world today, what can be nevertheless be done to achieve a more desirable handling of issues of equality than  our present system presents?

The suggestion here is to push for actions that are immediately possible, but that point transformatively to the more radical proposals necessary to eradicate unjust inequalities.. At least four modest but theoretically promising types of efforts in that direction are already under way, although their transformative potential is not always stressed: 1) transformative electoral activities; 2) transformative demands in the active day-to-day political arena; 3) transformative  pilot projects attempting to model in limited practice solutions  that would be radical if comprehensively adopted; and 4) transformative educational efforts involving teaching , research, writing, public debates, on the real sources of unjust  inequalities and the possible steps to their eradication – and the development of theory. These might be considered four fronts in the effort to tackle the unjust inequalities that characterize our present societies.

1)      Transformative electoral activities.

The progressive democratic-socialist campaign of Bernie Sanders for the presidency in the United States would be an example. If it is seen simply as a normal campaign for the election of a particular individual with a particular attractive platform, it may have limited impact, and may not survive a likely electoral loss. If the electoral campaign is seen as accompanied by a political revolution, as its rhetoric in fact proclaims is necessary, it points to broader and deeper issues, and opens the door to consideration of radical possibilities going beyond the progressive.

Historically , the record of radically-oriented national election campaigns  has not been good, although they have a long tradition behind them, just this  century, the Socialist Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, The Progressive Party, Jesse Jackson’s campaign, all had very limited influence.  Today, the Working Families Party is active in electoral campaigns in some states, but it remains small. In crass political terms, the experience seems to be that the more radical the platform the less effective the electoral impact. Efforts are beginning to evolve to have the Sanders campaign itself lead to some type of on-going organized involvement both in future elections and/or in current political issues. Whether it will be an exception to the rule remains to be seen.

2)      Transformative demands in the active day-to-day political arena

The individual issues that are fought over in any even formally democratic society usually center on specific concerns, but may or may not be seen as parts of more fundamental societal arrangements, and may then, very much context dependent, have a transformative impact.  The criticism of the role of money in political campaigns could point to a full public funding of campaigns, with limits on private money going far beyond simple calls for transparency. Calls for a $15 minimum wage may open the door to an on-going push for a livable wage and beyond, to a truly equitable distribution of compensation for work done, and minimums set on the basis of an expanded definition of what such a wage should provide. Single-payer insurance provision to cover the cost of health care could raise the question of whether health care should not from the get-go be free, not provided on a fee-for-service basis but as a public good, as basic public education is provided, or police or fire protection or the building of streets and highways. Modest proposals for participatory budgeting could raise the question of whether all budgeting decisions could not be made with grass-roots democratic involvement. Support for the creation of Community Land Trusts as owners of land could raise the question of simple public ownership of all land, as a natural resource.[1]

Keeping Liberal and Progressive proposals expanded to their radical fullest regularly in sight, while still getting ones hands dirty in the struggles to achieve what can be done day –too-day, would be a way of making many existing political efforts not only more appealing in the present but also transformative to what might be done in the future to fully end unjust inequality.

3)      Transformative pilot projects attempting to model radical alternatives.

The history of utopian communities is extensive and rich. They are rare today. But the attempt to try out radical ideas on a limited scale, with the transformative goal in mind of leading to their wide-spread and comprehensive adoption, remains important. Indeed, utopian thinking and puzzling out what ideal cities or countries or neighborhoods might look like is an exercise that might be more important now than ever, now that any new idea is likely to be met with the charge that nothing like that has ever been done before, where’s the data to support it, let’s stick to doing things that we know can be done in the world that we have, not the world we want. In limited practice, solutions that seem utopian might in fact be tested and shown to work on a small scale, and would be very radical if comprehensively adopted. The work of Gar Alperovitz and the Democracy Project,[2] and the New Economy efforts, are provocative. Learning from such efforts could indeed be transformative on the way to broader change.

But there are severe limits to most pilot models, involving, viability today in the here and now. Dangers lie in the context of a competitive profit-driven society, with constant down-ward pressures on wage to maintain financial viability. Even short-term, internal democracy in e.g. co-ops, and more, may end up at risk. And how the transition might be made from pilot project to its broader environment. The  temptation and often apparent necessity of building fortified silos of justice in a desert of unjust inequality  to broad social change is under-discussed.[3], [4] Pilot models are a good and helpful step towards a just and equal society, but do not inevitably lead us there.

4)      Educational efforts and the development of theory.

Most of those reading tis blog, and certainly its writer, have not been brought to concerns about the unjust inequalities discussed in these blogs by their own material deprivation, by the kinds of physical exploitation and immiseration that classic images of revolutionary subjects evoke. As this is written, The New York Times headlines a front-page story about “How the G.O.P Elites Lost the Party’s Base” and describes how “Working Class Voters Felt Ignored by Republican Leaders.” The Republican Party having deserted its “traditional blue-collar working class base—“its “most faithful voters, blue-collar white Americans.”[5] The descriptions set conventional social theory about class relations on its head.  But it reflects a current reality: the wide gap between undying material relationships of class and power, on the one hand, and the ideological interpretations and their psychological reflections that characterize so many political disagreements and rationalize the unjust inequalities that we see today. It is a gap that is ideologically, in the broad sense of the term, created, and it requires ideological counters if there is to be any hope of serious social change.

Ideological efforts to confront unjust inequalities have two aspects: one involving educational work, the other theoretical work.

Education is a somewhat awkward term for public information or savvy use of the media to tell a story, to convince readers or listeners or watchers, to convey the news in critical depth, to undo prejudices and stereotypes analyse conventional wisdoms. It may involve letters to the editor, journal articles, phone calls, panels, or, research, funded or not.

Theoretical work overlaps with the educational somewhat, but has a different audience and somewhat different audience: It may be educational, in the above sense, but it is also directed at those already concerned and active, and involve itself in clarify cause and effect relationships as a guide to strategy and tactics in ideological/political confrontations. Research of course has standard of logic and fact-finding that are necessary for credible work, but in the choice of subject matter and willingness to draw conclusions relevant to issues of equality that radical research show its usefulness. As the social psychological processes of one-dimensionalization grow in importance, the counter processes of logical analysis and exposure become ever more important.

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Transformative might thus be the name of such blended proposals aimed at dealing with unjust inequality in a politically feasible fashion. . It would characterize ideas, demands, program proposals, legislative actions, social movement demands, which would marshal political power behind immediate demands for liberal or progressive measures coupled with a consistent and open consideration of the political feasibility of forwarding the goals of the Radical approach and building the foundation for struggles for radical action

A Transformative approach would add a recurring footnote, as explicit as the political situation will allow, to Liberal and Progressive demands. It can help to maintain awareness of the depth of the problem of Unjust Inequality and of the need for each individual program and proposal to recognize that the ultimate goal is actually the elimination of Unjust Inequality altogether. It can help keep pressure on the arc of history to bend ever more towards social justice and just equality..

 

ds Transformative Approaches to Unjust Inequality.

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[1] For further examples of potentially transformative demands , see my Blog #30: Beyond Immediate Proposals: Some Transformative Provocations

[2] See http://garalperovitz.com/ and Gar Alperovitz “The Question of Socialism (and Beyond!) Is About to Open Up in These United States”, April 13, 2013 Truth out News Analysis

[3] For my own views of the potentials and limits of the pilot project approach see Marcuse, Peter. 2015 “Cooperatives on the Path to Socialism?” Monthly Review, vol. 66, No. 9, February, pp. 31-38

[4] For a further discussion, see also Blog# 58a: From Immediate Demands to Utopias via Transformative Demands

[5] March 28, p. 1.

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This blog is one of a set of five dealing with Unjust Inequality:

Blog #81a: What’s the Problem? Not Just Inequality

Blog #81b: Inequality: What’s the Answer? Economic or Racial? Conservative or Liberal-Clinton?

Blog #81c – From Clinton Liberal to Sanders Progressive Responses

Blog #81d – Inequality: A Radical Response

Blog #81e. – Towards Transformative Approaches to Unjust Inequality.

Blog #80 – Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and Zoning: the Good and the Bad

Mandatory Inclusionary Housing: MIH, the Good and the Bad

MIH is an approach to ameliorating housing problems, and it lays an important role in city planning and zoning. It generally permits denser and higher new private development in areas zoned for it, but it requires  developers to set aside a given percentage of the new units for housing affordable  by families of lower income, essentially paid for by the profits of the new market rate housing also allowed. It combines zoning and planning policy with housing policy; both aspects need to be considered in any careful evaluation.

The housing part: A housing system that does not provide adequate decent safe and sanitary housing for all citizens is wrong. It hurts the most vulnerable sections of our society; it is the exact opposite of what Rawls calls the second principle of Justice:[1] it discriminates against those already the least advantaged, those already suffering from hardships in employment, in education, in health care, in finance. And it inevitably overlaps with discrimination on racial and ethnic grounds.

The fact that the effect of discrimination is produced by the market is no excuse for allowing it.[2] Wealth is unequally divided in our society; there is no conceivable moral justification for some acquiring billions and others being homeless; we are rich enough to house everyone, in decent, safe, and sanitary units. Allowing billionaires to play a wildly disproportionate role in politics, and thus in government, in the social decisions that we make through government, permitting them to act in their own self-interest rather than letting government act on behalf of all of us and be guided by a decision-making process that is fully informed and democratic, makes the injustice of a profit-based market housing system even worse.

Mandatory inclusionary zoning can be an effective tool to deal with the injustices of such  a purely market-driven system of producing and allocating housing. I would commend the mayor and HPD for pursing it, and making it an important component of an overall approach to the problem of housing.

But MIH fails if it is distorted to serve as an excuse for segregation and functions by enabling displacement under cover of serving social justice. That’s not a criticism of MIH as such; it’s a criticism of it us without considering it role in the wider task of community–based planning and development. MIH plays this perverse role in two ways:

1. Who is included in the inclusionary part? If it is a program that makes sure that those earning a million a year are include in every enclave of billionaires, that could be called “inclusionary” too, but not what this is intended to be about by its advocates, and I believe not what the Mayor or HPD intend either. The abstract debate about whether those targeted for inclusion are those at 30% of AMI, or 20%, or 10%, is not quibbling about numbers, it is of the heart of the matter. It calls for thoughtfulness, for a recognition of political realities, for some careful analysis of needs and resources, but it seems clear to me that, given where we are, the lower the income groups served and the higher the proportions required to be included, the better. The perfect may be pragmatically the enemy of the good in political negotiations, but the direction of good public policy must be to move as close to the perfect answer as we can get.

2. Where and how MIH is used is the second major issue in the program — in addition to the issue of numeric income limits and proportions – and the two are linked. It is a program intended by is advocates to act against discrimination , to help those excluded from decent housing because of their incomes and their jobs, or the lack of jobs, or by their  race or ethnicity or sexual orientation or religions, from a decent housing in a decent environment, those discriminated against by the functioning of the housing market enforced throughout by government, through its courts and judicial system, its environmental regulations and their presence and absence, through  public investments or disinvestment in physical infrastructure  and social  MIH can promote segregation as well  as integration. The devil knows that too.

Segregation is a form of discrimination. It restricts opportunities, inhibits broad diversity and its benefits, defines the opportunities it provides for community solidarity negatively, by indicating what cannot be done, by whom, with whom, rather than enabling a broad social concept of community as embracing the broad range of the society. MIH, if it is not undertaken in a community -sensitive and spatially-planned way, opens the door to the G word, Gentrification. Gentrification, over-simplified, is the displacement of poorer households by better -off ones, worsening the housing of those at the bottom for those closer to the top. The unregulated market will allow  those with the wealth and political resources to take over desirable locations in our cities that have been historically occupied by working class and poor families and turn them into higher income enclaves from which the or  have been expelled. If a MIH proposal is part of a zoning scheme in which gentrification is rationalized by requiring a smattering of those in need of housing to benefit from the displacement of many of their brethren and sisters, it produces that kind of segregation. Rezoning a particular area to allow more housing to be built in such fashion that the net proportion of higher income households is significantly increased in the community displaces families both on the parcels on which it is built and those priced out of the community by the impact of increased land values resulting from the new construction for the richer will further, not reduce, segregation as the net result.

And MIH will have a natural tendency to produce that result if it is not carefully structured to avoid it. The income levels fixed, the proportions allowed, the resulting net totals, the neighborhood effects, the social guidance of the market setting of rents and, the planning social facilities and social investments, re all involved here. The impacts of specific provisions will vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, from community to community, and should be undertaken with the greatest of care and the maximum of community input and decision-making – Rawls’ goals of social justice must be kept  in mind.[1] Diversity, for instance , has specific benefits in itself , in permitting mixing, mutual enrichment, solidarity and mutual support ; but diversifying public housing by introducing higher income household at the expense of those intended to be serve by it, with the result of benefiting higher over low-income families, is not  a just objective of public policy . Likewise with the allocation of public subsidies, using housing vouchers, etc., to facilitate inclusionary occupancy only when it is to the ultimate benefit of its developers and those in less need, is unjust.

MIH may be put forward as a painless no-displacement approach to rezoning empty or grossly technically underutilized land. But again it may be helping solve a housing problem at the cost of increasing segregation and in determining desired zoning and planning goals. The issue is not direct displacement, but secondary displacement: preventing families from moving into an area where they might otherwise find affordable housing and integrated housing by an upzoning that increases housing, specifically land, prices beyond their reach. That process is called secondary displacement, and advances segregation as much, if less visibly than, direct displacement.  Using MIH as part of an upzoning is better than having the upzoning without the MIH, but that’s hardly the only alternative. Good planning would evaluate a range of possibilities. One very promising approach, for instance, is the use of community land trusts or mutual housing associations as owners or decision-making entities of development, making the process of planning and implementation really democratic down to the neighborhood level. Further, the alternatives for any major proposal should be considered in the context of planning for the future of the city as a whole, where future commercial development might best be concentrated — or dispersed – whether the plan promotes or helps overcome the sharp divisions of the city with its internal boundaries of race, income, ethnicity, social status, gender.

In summary: Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, in the context of community-based planning, strengthening inclusionary communities democratically designed by and for those that government justly should serve, has great potential. But it must be carefully designed, both in its own details, incomes to be served, proportions to be reached, and in its broader context, the communities to be served, the planning into which it must be integrated. Depending on its design, it can go badly awry, or be a real instrument for progress in the social good.

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The big picture:

In the best case scenario, Mandatory Inclusionary Housing can be a way of redistributing the benefits of the city’s growth  and sky-rocketing land values, which the city as a whole has created, not the individual land owners benefiting from it, , and letting the city’s people and their communities capture some of that increase in value. It does so in a way clearly meeting the very definition of justice, helping those least advantaged and reducing the advantages of their richer cousins.  Communities, and particularly those most need, can capture some of that socially created increases in land values through MIH. It redistributes from the more fully advantaged to the less advantaged, the very definition of justice. In less advantaged communities, MIH can make sure, given adequate, meaningful community control, that benefits and costs are fairly distributed. In more advantages communities. Think how different today’s suburbs or exclusionary enclaves would look if mandatory inclusionary zoning had been in effect when they were developed!

Or

In the worst case scenario , mandatory inclusionary housing  can be a way of enriching developers and land owners by opening new opportunities for profit for them by building  market rate high rise highly profitable developments in upzoned “undervalued” neighborhoods, at the expense of displacement of families in need of housing , what’s called gentrification. Displacement follows, not only on the site of the new development, but secondary displacement also follows, where land in the newly developed parcels increases development prices in the surrounding neighborhood, putting some of it also out of reach both of its existing residents and of those under normal circumstances likely to move in but unable to at the new higher prices.  And the masters of the new developments can get away with it politically by raising the image of dong good through provision of a limited number of housing units to poorer people, some of whom might actually b those they themselves just displace,. or who might be useful for the rich to have nearby as nannies and cooks and chauffeurs and butlers. In both cases, there is a danger that, at the scale of the city, segregation may increase and, for lack of a comprehensive city-wide planning approach, the desired balance among uses, residential, commercial, manufacturing, public facilities, will be lost.

Even seemingly technical issues, like what % of Area Median Income defines households in need of “affordable“ housing, or what proportion on MIH units in a given development should  be market rate and what affordable, or seemingly procedural planning issues such as the strength of city-wide comprehensive planning and its relationship to community-based plans, and in what communities with what standards, can make the difference between the best case and the  worst case scenarios .

 

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[1] that inequalities in society work to the benefit of the least advantaged

[2] In fair housing law, it is not only acts of intentional discrimination that are banned, but also those having the adverse effect of discrimination.

#70 – The Causes of Discrimination

Blog #70 – The Causes of Discrimination

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To a large extent the limits of the new Affirmatively Advancing Fair Housing Rule are connected with a weaknesses in the underlying assumptions being made in both of them, specifically, in the implicit causative role assigned to the legacy of slavery as an explanation for why discrimination exists today, to the neglect of addressing the fact that current actors and current interests and current structures maintained in use in fact need to be dealt with if the problem of discrimination is to be solved.

A detour to examine the causes of discrimination is briefly necessary. It involves examining two different emphases in explaining current discrimination — The Legacy of the Past, and the Actors in the Present. Which is adopted makes a real political difference.

The United States is hardly a post-racial society. Certainly black residents don’t think it is; a growing number in recent years, even before the spate of police shootings miscarriages of criminal justice. An increasing number of black Americans regard race relations as one of the most pressing problems facing the country. [1] And much rhetoric has been expended on bemoaning racial prejudice, with frequent references to the lasting legacy of slavery, and the direct reminders of that legacy, as in the controversies about the states flying the Confederate flag by state agencies on state buildings or land. Barack Obama’s election, seen by many hopefully as a turning point, has not turned out to be that; if anything, it has hardened some pre-existing lines of political division. There has been a lot of response focused on the legacy of slavery concept, with real victories on the flag issue, and explicit condemnation of racial and minority stereotyping, as in the condemnation of Donald Trump’s blunt expression of his views. And this aspect of the problem, call it historical, ideological, psychological, remains important – look at the votes Trump garners in even in blue states. But optimism is not so clearly warranted and more analysis of cause as well as effect is required

There is indeed a legacy of slavery, and it does have to be dealt with. But focusing on its historical impact is misleading if it does not deal with the contemporary patterns of discrimination[2] and exploitation that use that inescapable legacy as explanations for contemporary wrongs, present discrimination. An eloquent Opinion piece by Isabel Wilkerson in the New York Times expresses a deep-felt hope:

“The day after the flag went down in South Carolina, an editorial in The Richmond Times-Dispatch made the stunning declaration that it was finally time for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and that Virginia should take the lead. “Accounting has not occurred,” the paper wrote, “the half remains untold.” This is precisely what history demands and what this moment requires. Perhaps a new reconstruction could truly take hold and inspire the rest of the country if it sprang from the region that resisted it in the first place.”^[3]

Present discrimination is not simply the consequence of that the legacy but it also helps explain its survival. Ignoring or minimizing the present conditions of discrimination leads to exactly the wrong conclusions, reverses cause and effect.

In the debate around public policy dealing with race, the failure of full analysis of causes and results comes about in two ways: 1) Minimizing the extent of the problem, and 2) assigning responsibility for present conditions to the legacy of slavery. There is of course some truth in both points: important aspects of discrimination have been of diminishing impact, particularly since the New Deal days of the 1930’s, anti-discrimination legislation after World War II, and the 60’s. Certainly the legacy of slavery has enduring consequences. Both neither point is the end of the matter. In fact, both may be, if unintentionally, distractions from getting at real causes and framing really effective responsive policies.

On the first point, minimizing the extent of discrimination suggests that things are indeed progressing very well, present policies are already effective, we need no different or more radical governmental policies, one needs to find the sources of what problems remain elsewhere than in the absence of current policies to eliminate racist practices. The conservative Manhattan Institute, in a much publicized study,[4] speaks of the “end of segregation,” and its author is cited as saying:

but the best way to do so is by expanding and improving educational opportunities for poor people of color and “by helping families and investing in kids at an early opportunity and instilling a love of education in them while they’re young. I don’t think that switching them to a different neighborhood is going to accomplish that.”[5]

A classic blaming the victim argument: if only black kids would have “a love of education,” everything would be all right. That their apparent lack of a “love of education” has something to do with the schools to which they are required to go, whose segregated attendance was a primary mover in the whole civil rights movement, is not relevant, and whose continued attendance at segregated schools, segregated today by neighborhood schools in themselves based on segregated neighborhoods, is somehow not the problem. It is the children’s lack of love of education, not the segregation of their neighborhoods, the underfunding of the schools in those neighborhoods, the conditions of life at homes in those neighborhoods, the restricted opportunities children from those neighborhoods face when (if) they graduate from those neighborhoods, which need to be addressed. Changing their neighborhoods can be accomplished by moving them to other neighborhoods, or changing the neighborhoods where ty are, but racial segregation today is a major blockage to any such efforts. And the Fair Housing Act,[6] and the new regulations calling for Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (hereafter AFFH)[7]are precisely what is needed, and much, much more. See below.

On the second point, focusing on the legacy of slavery, is often coupled with an unbalanced celebrating of the positive reactions to Ferguson and the Charlestown church shootings, to the significance of the confederate flag removals, HUD’s Affirmatively Fostering Fair Housing Regulations, and similar public responses. But seeing these responses as a turning point, has, intended or not, a similar result to minimizing the extent of actual discrimination in today’s society. The argument here is not so much that which comes from minimizing current discrimination that leads to blaming the victim and his or her mentality (“no love of learning) for what remains, but blame the legacy of slavery and the discriminators’ lack of understanding, or our own lack of understanding, for what discrimination continues to exist. It easily takes changes in discourse for changes in actions and policies.

That the discourse has changed, and that more understanding all around is need, is certainly true and needs to be said, but one could easily draw very wrong conclusions from it. For instance, David R. Williams, a Harvard sociologist, is quoted in Isabelle Wilkerson’s piece, above,[8] as writing:

“We have to come to grips with the reality that this racism is so deeply embedded in our culture that it shapes how we see the world, it shapes our beliefs, our behavior, our actions toward members of other groups. We have to examine ourselves in a profound way.”

Who “we?”

The problem – and it’s an important one – is that there isn’t just one “we.” There are multiple “we’s,” and they are very different and often n conflict with each other. There are actually three “we’s,” and realizing that they are different is crucial if anything is to be changed. Certainly everyone has to come to grips with how deep racism lies in us, but its manifestation is very different in different “we’s”, their resulting behavior is very different, and it has to be very differently addressed. It was Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “Morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.”

The “we” that is written about in the Williams quote is not the heartless, not those who deliberately and intentionally discriminate, but those with hearts who do not do enough to implement what their hearts know they should be doing.[9]

Ignoring who holds what beliefs, whose behavior it is that must be changed, and assuming “we” are all in the same boat, denies the fact that not all of us have the same interests in ending discrimination, that there are those that are victimized by racism and those that benefit from it. This ignores the necessity of some redistribution of power and wealth if racism is to be ended. It leads to conclusions like the Manhattan Institute’s that the answer is instilling a love f education in black kids. That is pure blaming the victim, and at best may help some of the poor but ignores the need for redistribution that would affect the rich as well as poor.

In broad terms, three different categories of actors can be distinguished, whose beliefs and actions need to be addressed to defeat discrimination.

 The thoughtless. Perhaps the large majority of individuals, subject to all the influences of the world around them and the country’s history and prevalent prejudices, conditioned by prevailing stereotypes , and thus reflecting prejudicial beliefs and largely acting on them, but without reflection, without thought about the impact on others, on minorities, acting essentially reflectively. Many, perhaps of good will, simply not realizing the confederate flag is painful to so many of their fellow citizens, are not struck by the fact that their proud tradition of valor and Southern culture is a painful tradition of slavery and despair for others.

For them, David Williams’ advice is appropriate, and needs to be affirmatively supported with funding, research, policies across the board of government and private actors. They should read Go Set a Watchman and support taking down the confederate flag.

 The perpetrators. At the other end of the spectrum, there are those would directly benefit from discrimination, for whom talk of culture or historical legacy is simply an ideological legitimation for what they do. When Donald Trump attacks immigrants as rapists, he is consciously appealing to a prejudiced segment of the voters in the quest for votes to sustain his own ambitions. When real estate developers build gated communities, they are directly profiting from the concerns of potential buyers about the dangers of racial and class mixing. When employers pay minority workers less than white workers, give them the most menial jobs, they are not only profiting directly by the discriminatory treatment, but using it to keep white workers from complaining too much because they are still treated better than those others of a different color. The discrimination in the criminal justice system which imposes harsher treatment on African-Americans than on whites contributes to the maintenance of a law and order which controls the militant protest of the worst off of the 99% and their potential disruption of the ordinary course of profitable business, for the benefit of the 1%

These are the perpetrators of discrimination, the actors who directly benefit from the gap between whites and blacks. Williams’ advice is directly against their own interests, and will not be followed. Their conduct directly produces the adverse disparate impact that parts of the law are being targeted to remedy. It is their behavior, motivated at least as much by their self-interest as their beliefs, that needs to be controlled by law. And public policy and the law must deliberately take into account the impact of their behavior in all of its actions.

 The unwitting collaborators. The unpleasant truth is that the majority of white people in the United States benefit indirectly discrimination. Prices at Walmart are lower because it pays its workers less, and prejudice dampens their protests and their breadth of their appeal. If the combination of poverty and discrimination leads to a criminal response, peace loving citizens benefit from a police force that keeps them secure. If teachers do not have to struggle with the difficulties of likely very differently prepared youngsters in integrated classes, their jobs are easier and their students and their parents happier. If neighborhoods are segregated, and if infrastructure, education, public services, parks community facilities and parks, sanitation, are all worse in minority neighborhoods than in exclusionary wealthier ones, white taxpayers achieve a savings through the disparate public expenditures in what are typically white and black districts.

But, although the beneficiaries of these disparities, of this discrimination are indeed collaborators in the discrimination, they in a sense have little reasonable alternative. They collaborate unwittingly. If the system works in such a way that white schools are better than black schools, reasonable persons will send their children to white schools. And shop at Walmart. And report criminal behavior to the police. And seek higher rather than lower paying jobs, interesting work over routine menial labor. They are, in a sense, trapped in a system that provides real benefits for them, even though it may actually violate their own personal belief in justice or equality. Williams’ advice may give them a guilty conscience, but for them following their conscience to its logical conclusions will not be an easy choice.

The victims/opponents/critics.. For every disparate impact of discrimination benefiting a perpetrator there is a symmetrical victim disadvantaged by that impact. Profits for some mean losses for others; a favorable economic climate for some is bad weather for others; competition inevitably means, at least in the first instance, victory for some and losses for others. In old-fashioned terms, the exploitation of labor means profit for capital, housing that is deliberately exclusionary leads to enclaves of the rich and ghettoes for the poor. But those at the losing end of the competition, are not likely to be passive. There will be actors in a resistance to disparate distribution of benefits and costs. And there will be opponents and critics pained by the system, ideologically critical, culturally injured, morally repelled, in various stages of resistance. The more democratic the political system, the greater the disparities, the more intuitive rules of fairness are violated, the more active will that resistance be. And, to complicate things, some are both victims and perpetrators, unwilling collaborators or simply thoughtless, whose actions may be self-contradictory and unpredictable.

And of course of all actors operate within the rule laid down by the system, the political, economic, social, and ideological patterns of the society, established over the course of history by the outcomes of the various conflicts and the relative powers of the various actors involved. Ultimately, whether specific problems can really solved, and even the extent they can be superficially remedied, depends on what those rules are: how the economy functions, how the law defines private property, what goods and what services are distrusted through the market and what through the state, what ideologies are developed and supported, and by whom, that support the status quo and what that critique it. The complexity the inter-relatedness of allof these structures , what makes capitalism the name of a single system affecting all that is done within it, the importance of what is coming to be called intersectionality, all this is strikingly apparent in the housing field. Think of just one issue: “home ownership.” Private ownership of land is historically a recent development, and what priority the law gives to rights of “ownership” is bitterly contested. How real estate taxes are calculated, who benefit and who pays, is important. What security it provides fluctuates. , and the psychological importance placed on what security it does provide is centrally determinant of the actions of many actors. The financialization of housing plays a large role, and has global causes and consequences. Even the aesthetics of architecture and its link to social status is are involved. The actors specified above determine their own actions and make their own policy decisions, but not under circumstances and structures of their own choosing.

So what are the possibilities for affecting housing and planning outcomes to end discriminatory adverse disparate impacts?

The answer is two-fold:

First, public policy must act aggressively against the perpetrators of discrimination and penalize discriminatory behavior, for not only will that action prevent its undesired disparate consequences, but also by seeing it penalized, it will help unwitting collaborators regain their wits and motivate them to change their own behavior, producing the results that Williams hopes for from self-examination.

Second, however, and in the longer view, that system, those structures, that produce the chains of discrimination, with its consequent aligning of the interests of collaborators with those of the perpetrators, must be changed.to change the system that gives them the guilty advantage, the system that chains together discrimination in one field to effects on another, low wages for Walmart workers to low prices for collaborators as consumer, segregation and exclusionary enclaves to safety on the streets for their resident collaborators, profits from technological advances for some to unemployment for others. And since that system benefits the perpetrators and harms the victims more than it benefits the collaborators, there is are complex underlying conflicts of interests involved that must be faced and worked with if discriminatory behavior is to be banished.

In one reading, the aspects of today’s societal system that account for the undesired disparities of discrimination with which we are here concerned is its reliance on profit-seeking as it motors, acceptance of wealth creation as its goal, the market as its means. What is needed instead is rather solidarity and mutual caring as its motor, social welfare for all as its goal and informed democratic discussion as its means. But that is topic for another and broader discussion!

[This blog is one of 5 taking up the Supreme Court’s decision in Texas vs. Inclusive Communities and HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Regulation (AFFHR), and some general principles dealing with the meaning of social change and the efforts to accomplish it

.Blog #68 – Evaluation of Recent Developments, examined the reception the Court’s decision and the AFFHR have received and their respective roles in dealing with housing discrimination.

Blog #69 – Fair Housing: Limitations of Supreme Court decision and AFFHR, took up the limited scope of the AFFHR, the weaknesses in the Court’s decision and the problems of implementation for both.

THIS Blog #70 – The Causes of Discrimination, opens an analysis of the current causes of discrimination, and the attribution of causes to the legacy of slavery and to present actors—the thoughtless, the perpetrators, the collaborators, and the victims, the structural context in which they operate.

Blog #71 – Fair Housing – Remedies and Solutions, then proposes some immediate remedies, and then some principles for real solutions.

Blog #72 – Beyond Fair Housing: Some Elusive Principles for Societal Change, raises some questions about elusive general principles for societal change.]

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[1] According to a Gallup poll cited by the New York Times, Magazine section, July 5, 2015, p. 14.

[2] A note on terminology: “discrimination” is not the same as “differentiation,” though the Supreme Court seems not to acknowledge the difference (See Justice Kennedy’s comment in the Texas case calling for remedies that do not differentiate by race, that are “race-neutral”) “Discrimination” as used here means causing an adverse disparate impact to protected minorities, with a focus on African-Americans or Blacks. “Race” is used, although an outdated concept, simply as shorthand for those adversely affected by discrimination.

[3]

[4] THE END OF THE SEGREGATED CENTURY: Racial Separation in America’s Neighborhoods, 1890-2010,

Edward Glaeser, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

Jacob Vigdor, Adjunct Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_66.htm

[5] Experts Attack Manhattan Institute Study Claiming End to Segregation in U.S. Cities.By Marjorie Valbrun. America’s Wire, available at http://americaswire.org/drupal7/?q=content/experts-attack-manhattan-institute-study-claiming-end-segregation-us-cities-0.

[6] The Fair Housing Act, text available at http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/hce/title8.php or https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/3604

[7] Federal Register / Vol. 80, No. 136 / Thursday, July 16, 2015 / Rules and Regulations, available through http://www.huduser.org/portal/affht_pt.html#final-rule.

[8] Supra note 2.

[9] A reviewer in The Nation long ago formulated in: when I write “we” I mean “me and my friends.” Period.

#69 – Fair Housing: Limitations of Supreme Court decision and AFFHR

#69 – Fair Housing: Limitations of Supreme Court decision and AFFHR

[The 5 blogs in this set take up the Supreme Court’s decision in Texas vs. Inclusive Communities and HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Regulation (AFFHR), and some general principles dealing with the meaning of social change and the efforts to accomplish it.

Blog #68 took up how the large argument is organized in this set of 5 Blogs, the reception the decision and the AFFH Rule has received, the attribution of causes to the legacy of slavery and to present actors, and the problems that the analysis of causes has created.}

THIS BLOG #69 – Fair Housing: Limitations of Supreme Court decision and AFFHR, takes up the limited scope of the AFFHR, the weaknesses in the Court’s decision and the problems of implementation for both. This was: Blog #67-2a – Fair Housing Act and Disparate Impact Claims]

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#69 – Fair Housing: Limitations of Supreme Court decision and AFFHR

The AFFHR[1] and the recent Supreme Court win in a Texas Fair Housing case^[2] is a significant win for measures aimed at contesting racial discrimination in housing, especially given the composition of the Supreme Court today. However:

The AFFT Rule is, in its practical impact, far less important that the Court’s decision. The purpose of the AFFT Rule is very limited. As its summary in the Federal Register states:

Through the availability of such data and available local data and knowledge, the approach provided by this rule is intended to make program participants better able to evaluate their present environment to assess fair housing issues.[3]

The AFFHR is an aid to others to comply to the pre-existing mandates of the Fair housing Act, and will specifically help those bring claims under the Act to show statistically disparate impacts of challenged actions. It provides no new penalty for violations, gives no new enforcement powers, sets no new higher standards for behavior. It does commendably provide a boost for efforts at planning, but does not mandate any standards that would make planning more effective than what local authorities. Its greatest effect will probably be to simplify the application of the disparate impact standard that the new Supreme Court decision has legitimated by helping to assemble the data that would show such an impact. So the focus of examination should be on that decision of the Court.

There are also reasons not to get complacent about the meaning of that decision, in some of the language of the Court’s opinion.

Overt racial discrimination in public actions has long been condemned in the United States, and recent events in a staunchly southern state such as South Carolina in the aftermath of the recent murder of nine African-Americans during church services by a white racist suggest that at least the overt display of racially offensive beliefs and conduct meets widespread, if not unanimous, popular condemnation. But there is also substantial evidence of continuing discrimination based on race and ethnicity is many aspect of U.S. life, and very visible in patterns of inequality and racial segregation in housing and urban planning practices. The result is a pattern in which racist conduct is denied as being racist, is explained by many other considerations but not by prejudice, in which practices having a demonstrable discriminatory effect are justified by all manner of claims as to innocent intentions and legitimate non-racist goals. Housing discrimination in many communities are clear examples.

The Supreme Court’s decision recognizes this history, and that apparently innocent non-discriminatory purposes for actions may have in fact a prohibited discriminatory impact. It may open the door to extensive controversy and perhaps litigation around what legitimate public concerns may justify actions that do have a discriminatory impact. But in such litigation the decision also creates problems.

In the employment discrimination case cited by the Court, for instance, a “legitimate business purpose” may validate an action having a disparate impact, depending on the circumstances.

To be specific:

The Court’s Syllabus states:

“Re­medial orders in disparate-impact cases should concentrate on the elimination of the offending practice, and courts should strive to de­sign race-neutral remedies. Remedial orders that impose racial tar­gets or quotas might raise difficult constitutional questions. “

In Kennedy’s opinion, citing the employment discrimination cases:

“…not all employment practices causing a disparate impact impose liability under §703(a)(2). In this respect, the Court held that “business necessity” constitutes a defense to disparate-impact claims.”

Further, “These cases also teach that disparate-impact liability must be limited so employers and other regulated entities are able to make the practical business choices and profit-related decisions that sustain a vibrant and dynamic free-enterprise system…. And before rejecting a business justification—or, in the case of a governmental entity, an analogous public interest—a court must deter­mine that a plaintiff has shown that there is “an available alternative . . . practice that has less disparate impact and serves the [entity’s] legitimate needs.”

And later:

“disparate-impact liability has always been properly limited in key respects that avoid the serious constitutional questions that might arise under the FHA, for instance, if such liability were imposed based solely on a showing of a statistical disparity. Disparate-impact liability man­dates the “removal of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers,” not the displacement of valid governmental policies. Griggs, supra, at 431. The FHA is not an in­strument to force housing authorities to reorder their priorities. Rather, the FHA aims to ensure that those priorities can be achieved without arbitrarily creating discriminatory effects or perpetuating segregation.”

“It would be paradoxical to construe the FHA to impose onerous costs on actors who encourage revitalizing dilapi­dated housing in our Nation’s cities merely because some other priority might seem preferable. Entrepreneurs must be given latitude to consider market factors. Zoning offi­cials, moreover, must often make decisions based on a mix of factors, both objective (such as cost and traffic patterns) and, at least to some extent, subjective (such as preserving historic architecture). These factors contribute to a com­munity’s quality of life and are legitimate concerns for housing authorities. The FHA does not decree a particular vision of urban development; and it does not put housing authorities and private developers in a double bind of liability, subject to suit whether they choose to rejuvenate a city core or to promote new low-income housing in sub­urban communities. As HUD itself acknowledged in its re­cent rulemaking, disparate-impact liability “does not mandate that affordable housing be located in neighbor­hoods with any particular characteristic.” 78 Fed. Reg. 11476. “

Terms such as “race –neutral remedies,” or “a mix of factors contribut[ing] to a community’s quality of life,” or “legitimate needs” that may outweigh disparate impacts, or prohibiting taking a community’s “particular characteristics” into account in locating housing, may well lead to delegitimize such frequent progressive goals of public planning and zoning actions as achieving diversity, promoting equality, distributing based on need, all of which to be meaningful must clearly take racial and ethnic characteristics into account in formulating policies. “Race neutrality” may be an ultimate objective, but on the way there it can prevent many needed responses to discrimination.

This is all language that, depending on how it is interpreted in the future, may turn disparate impact cases into long-drawn-out technical planning debates about what “a community’s quality of life” is, or whether economic development is an appropriate public purpose and how it might be achieved, etc. Indeed, it is a disservice to logical thinking that the Court’s opinion frequently uses the term “minority” but nowhere defines it, uses the term “racial or ethnic minority” once but seems to equate “minority” with “racial minority” in its discussion of race in dealing with remedies. It would be ironic if the law were to be interpreted to hold that racial discrimination in housing is bad unless it “serves a legitimate business purpose,” as the bald language often cited in employment discrimination cases reads. And it would be upsetting indeed if the cautious language of the decision limiting disparate impact claims to those challenging practices that have a “dispropor­tionately adverse effect on minorities” were broadly interpreted to strike down the disparate positive impact on minorities that plaintiffs often in fact seek in remedies, a disparate impact that favors minorities but adversely affects other minorities, e.g. small property owners, or, for that matter, the wealthy.

The affirmative actions required of governments to implement the Fair Housing Act within their jurisdictions is not touched on in the Court’s decision. The explicit holding that race may not be part of any remedial order, after a finding of adverse impact in violation of the Act, is a potential crippling threat to efforts at affirmative action to overcome findings of racial disparities. If statistical measures can be used as evidence of a disparate impact on race of a governmental action. And be a valid reason to invoke the Fair Housing Act, why is it not appropriate to ask for a remedy likewise taking statistical and other measures of impact on race into account, even having a “racial quota” as a measure of success – as part of the remedy?

It’s time to recognize calls for “color -blindness,” in Scalia’s opinion, or “race-neutral measures,” in Kennedy’s, for the logical inconsistencies and red herrings that they are?

The Court holds that “the FHA does not decree a particular vision of urban development.” But many of its proponents certainly thought it did: a vision of an urban development that is socially, economically, and physically just, in which minorities will be full and equal citizens entitled to share in all the benefits of urban life, without discrimination. Such a vision implies affirmative action, as well as the absence of negative, by government. It would be a shame if this decision buried that vision.

Finally, The Court’s structuring of the desired approach to adjudicating disparate impact claims opens a Pandora’s Box that may become a job creation program for planers. After a prima facie case of disparate impact claim has been established, as by statistical evidence with background, the defendant is given the opportunity to legitimate that impact by some alternate overriding purpose. In turn, the plaintiffs must then show that other legitimate means were available to achieve that purpose that did not have such a disparate impact. That may mean having to develop a full-blown alternate plan, backed up by expert testimony, that the defendants could follow. That’s a pretty substantial burden to put on any plaintiff—in effect, to fulfill the government’s responsibility to plan fairly.

Six further problems with the Court’s decision can be identified:

The Supreme Court has limited, as least in dicta, the potentially far-reaching possibility of voiding measures based on a showing of adverse impact. While those praising the holding argue that it looks at consequences of actions, not motives or intentions, the Court specifically holds that a “simple” showing of statistical disparity is not enough. Further information is needed, for which the proponent had the burden of proof, was that it had a “legitimate purpose.” Once that was shown, the burden of proof shifted to the challenger to show that that the claimed other “legitimate purpose ” could be as well served by other measures not having such a disparate impact. The contested action might survive if the claimed legitimate purpose could not be served in any other reasonable manner. This is the ”burden-shifting ” provision. It leaves open the question whether every alternate legitimate purpose will have priority over a purpose further fair housing, whatever the magnitude of each, or how such magnitude should be measured, if relevant.

Let us take a typical case. A zoning change for a parcel of land hitherto zoned as open space is zoned by a zoning board in a disproportionately white town (by county or state standards. None mentions race in the process of adopting the zone change; no direct evidence of intent is available. There is statistical evidence that the zone change would make occupancy by minority group members more unlikely than by whites , so a disparate impact, but a precise measure of what constitutes “disparate” is unclear in the Act) for housing, at a density of 4 units an acre. A fair housing group proposes a density of 12 units an acre to make it more affordable for low-income and minority groups. It challenges the more restrictive zoning under the Fair Housing Act’s provisions. It must hire a planner or statistician to show that there is a shortage of housing for minority group members, and that this would be an opportunity its members. The Town says that will increase traffic and lead to pollution. The fair housing group needs to show its alternate would not. Perhaps it puts forward a plan for investment in public transportation to reduce car traffic. It needs environmental science testimony to the resultant reduction in pollution. It needs to show what the user demand would be, what the costs, what the consequences elsewhere along the route. Suppose net costs to service 12 units are very high; case closed? Then those benefiting from the discriminatory zoning will have simply bought its legitimacy

At least six problems with that:

First the burden of proof is heavy and expensive. Challenger must develop a stasticial analysis, then an alternative plan, presumably show its feasibility with actual studies.

Second, no standard is given for what constitutes a “legitimate purpose” of such a nature as to over-ride the discriminatory effect. Would preserving “community character” be legitimate? It is a common and widely desired goal for good planning, and likely democratically established. As most would define it, changing it racial balance or class balance would interfere with that goal, by definition.

Third, whose “purpose” is involved here? The zoning boards? The town council’s? The majority of voters? Are the interest of those who would like to move into the town to be considered? The developers who would like to build the four units? And how is anyone’s purpose determined, simply by what they say it is? No one will ever say publicly their purpose is to limit black occupancy, exclude Hispanics, etc.? What purpose, and who’s, is considered legitimate: making a profit? Reducing taxes? Beautifying the area? Winning voters for the next election?

Fourth, are we back at a variation of the “intended” definition discrimination: did the proponents of the zone change “intend” it to be discriminatory? They may be big contributors to the NAACP, and some of their best friends may be black. Is that relevant? There is little difference discussed between “motive” and “intent.” “Motive” is actual state of mind, “intent”, in criminal and negligence law, is often held to be acting in knowledge of the likely result of an action, acting based on the knowledge a reasonable person would have of the expected consequence of the action, and therefore intending that result.

Fifth, neither the problem nor the remedy can be logically considered piece-meal, in isolation. The new regulation recognizes that; a remedy, the provision of integrated (non-disparate?) housing must take into account transportation, infrastructure, libraries, schools, needed by that housing’s residents. But no town wants to just make decisions based on FH criteria for these 12 units there needs to be, a town-wide comprehensive plan that deals with the whole range of urban problems. Not only does this particular decision demand that, but absent it there may well new disparate impacts imposed on other parts of the two. Zoning, in many states, needs to be in accordance with a comprehensive plan; doing it piece-meal is on its face unfair. Minorities will generally haves less control over their own residential areas than whites; on its face that is disparate, discriminatory.

Sixth, gentrification is a process ignored in the Regulation, yet is it is a major example of the need for a comprehensive approach allowing the application of fair housing principles. Yet it is an important consideration in many urban areas today. In a previously segregated area located near earlier employment in the “inner ring” around a central city area, as the economy develop and manufacturng gives place to services the area may become very attractive to white, who move in, at one point displacing blacks. At that point, technically, the area becomes less segregated. Yet minority group members are adversely and disparately affected. Where in a white area a neighborhood preference in new housing adversely affects minorities, in a black gentrifying area is favors them. One-rule-fits-all approaches will not do; individual communities must be comprehensively reviewed in deciding what rules to apply. Just like with piece-meal zoning, the answer is comprehensive planning, not provided for in the AFFH regulation.^[4]

Underlying all this is the failure to recognize the real causes of the problems the Act is intended to deal with. The biggest problem creating unfair housing is the inequality of wealth and income, and power; combine that inequality with a market-based distribution of housing, and inadequate housing for those at the bottom will result. Combine that with continuing if declining racism[5] and its after-effects, and with the resulting systemically lower wealth and income of minorities, and you have the direct cause for the conditions the Fair Housing Act is designed to remedy. And the causes operate at the national, if not the global, level, as must the remedies as well.

Lawyers, planners, and advocates for diversity and racial justice should remain wary of unconditional approval of the decision or praise of the AFFHR.

More positively, perhaps this otherwise welcome decision can be seen as a step forward in crafting stronger positive role for the federal government in the area of housing and urban development. The logic of the decision, although limited by foreboding language by this Court, suggest there is much that could be done at the federal level to in fact develop a broad vision of a desirable urban policy in the cities of the nation. It would be a vision hardly to be expected of this Court or of this Congress, but perhaps could be thought through for what a progressive urban platform for 2016 might be and the longer-range future.

Continuing the discussion will be:

Blog #70 – The Causes of Discrimination, opens an analysis of the current causes of discrimination, and the attribution of causes to both the legacy of slavery and to the present actors behind discrimination, and then the structural context in which they operate.

Blog #71 – Fair Housing – Remedies and Solutions, then proposes some immediate remedies, and then some principles for real solutions.

Blog #72 – Social Change: Some Elusive Principles for Societal Change, goes beyond Fair Housing to raise some questions about elusive general principles for societal change.]

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[1] Federal Register /Vol. 80, No. 136 /Thursday, July 16, 2015 /Rules and Regulations, p. 42283. Available through http://www.huduser.org/portal/affht_pt.html#final-rule.

[2] Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs et al. vs. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., et al

Texas Dep’t of Housing & Communit. Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, No. 13–1371, 2015 U.S.

LEXIS 4249 (June 25, 2015). Available at: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-1371_m64o.pdf

[3] Federal Register / Vol. 80, No. 136 / Thursday, July 16, 2015 / Rules and Regulations, p. 42272

[4] The provision for data gathering, analysis, and sharing by the Federal with local governments can indeed be helpful in local comprehensive planning efforts, but is not the same as directly fostering such efforts.

[5] See the discussion at Blog #68 warning of minimizing the extent of discrimination today.

#68 – Evaluation of Fair Housing: HUD AFFHR and Supreme Court Decision

#68 – Fair Housing: Evaluation of Recent Developments.

[The 5 blogs in this set take up the Supreme Court’s decision in Texas vs. Inclusive Communities and HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Regulation (AFFHR) (Blogs #68 and #69), posting today) and the broader questions they raise about some elusive general principles dealing with the meaning of social change and the efforts to accomplish it(Blogs #70, 71, 72) posting in the next few days..

This Blog #68 – Evaluation of Recent Developments, examines the reception the Court’s decision and the AFFHR have received and their respective roles in dealing with housing discrimination.

Blog #69 – Fair Housing: Limitations of Supreme Court decision and AFFHR, takes up the limited scope of the AFFHR, the weaknesses in the Court’s decision and the problems of implementation for both.

Then:

Blog #70 – The Causes of Discrimination, opens an analysis of the current causes of discrimination, and the attribution of causes to the legacy of slavery and to present actors—the thoughtless, the perpetrators, the collaborators, and the victims, the structural context in which they operate.

Blog #71 – Fair Housing – Remedies and Solutions, then proposes some immediate remedies and some principles for real solutions.

Blog #72 – Social Change: Some Elusive Principles for Societal Change, goes beyond Fair Housing to take up some elusive issues raised by the preceding four blogs.]

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#68 – Fair Housing: Evaluation of Recent Developments.

There is an element of unrestrained welcome in the responses to two recent major Federal actions on fair housing, one the Supreme Court’s Decision in Texas vs. Integrated Community Policies, the other is the Regulation Concerning Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.   The New York Times, for instance, editorially says “The new rule …provides a clear, forceful definition of the law… which means replacing segregated Living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patters.”^[1] The National Resources Defense Council Staff blog speaks of it as an historic and overdue final rule. ^[2]

The reaction on the other side has been more than just the opposite: The conservative National Review, for instance, went so far as to call the new Regulation “easily one of President Obama’s most radical initiatives.” ^[3] And “AFFH could spell the end of the local democracy that Alexis de Tocqueville rightly saw as the foundation of America’s liberty and distinctiveness.^[4]

But both reactions are overdone. And this aspect, fulsome praise of the AFFH, can seriously detract from efforts to remedy the very serious problems of discrimination that we still face in this country.
Seen in perspective, the advance since Ferguson, Charlestown,, the flag lowering and the AFFH Regulation is limited,[5] and in the AFFH case has within it possible seeds of serious steps backwards in the route to full justice for minorities (an increasingly dubious term) and for racial justice (likewise a term still to be used with caution (African-American justice doesn’t quite cut it either).

To begin with, the existence of a serious problem is indisputable. About 25% of African—Americans live in poor census tracts (where more than 30% have incomes under the poverty level), only about 16% of white households do. A non-poor African-American is more likely to live in a poverty census tract than a poor white household. For the first time in 2014 non-white students are a majority of students in public schools in the United States, and “black students are just as segregated today as they were in the late 1960s, when serious enforcement of desegregation plans first began.”^[6] Infant mortality rates are almost two and a half times higher for African-Americans in the U.S than they are for whites, and not just because of poverty in the southern states. In Massachusetts, the rate of infant deaths per thousand for white is the lowest the country, 3.8 per 1,000, but for African-Americans it is 9.2 per thousand, almost 3 times higher. ^[7]

But there are several limitations to the progress represented by these most recent two actions, the Supreme Court decision and the HUD regulation.

The two events, a Supreme Court decision in a Texas case, and the issuance of a Final Rule by HUD dealing with Affirmative Action to Further Fair Housing, are closely linked, and treated essentially as one in much of the discussion, and in the blogs that follow. Taken together, they have impact in two ways: first on the on-the-ground ability to enforce the established negative goals of the Fair Housing Act, specifically the prevention and remediation of discriminatory acts in housing, acts defined in general terms unchanged since its adoption in 1968, and second, on the impact of such positive provision of housing as there now is on racial patterns of segregation, thus provoking re-examination of the goals of that law, and the public policies relating to race and space of which it is a part.

The first of these impacts, on the negative prevention of acts of discrimination by others, e.g. realtors may not show some houses just to whites, not to blacks. The second is providing that the government does not itself discriminate in such positive provision of housing as it undertakes, e.g. it may not locate subsidized affordable housing only in areas segregated by race. The language of “affirmative” action could be more broadly interpreted to require government to in fact provide housing, in a manner aimed at integration, but neither the Supreme Court decision nor the AFFH program confront that possibility. There is a brief interchange in the Federal Register[8] on the final rule that goes as follows:

Commenters stated that even if the [zoning] ordinance does not violate the nondiscrimination provisions of the Fair Housing Act the jurisdiction may need to adopt an inclusionary zoning ordinance because such a policy would be the most effective means of addressing the identified contributing factors under the circumstances…

HUD Response: The proposed rule provided that program participants would take meaningful actions to further the goals identified in an AFH conducted in accordance with the requirements of this rule and would take no action materially inconsistent with their obligation to affirmatively further fair

They would “take meaningful actions” and “take no actions.” Prohibiting exclusionary zoning is “a meaningful action,” but it falls short of being “the most effective means,” which might be mandating[9] inclusionary zoning. Zoning is never elsewhere mentioned by HUD. There is little in the history of HUD’s use of the Act to suggest it holds to such a broader use of “affirmative.” So there is really nothing new in either the Supreme Court’s decision or HUD’s AFFH rule to suggest that HUD would go beyond “take no actions” to enforce anything as meaningful” as inclusionary zoning.[10]

So the real contribution of the AFFH is its facilitation of the application of the disparate impact standard that the Supreme Court’s decision has legitimized.

The contribution that the decision and the rule make in fact lies in the implementation of the negative prohibitions of the Fair Housing Act, not expanding the meaning of “affirmative.” On the negative side the issue has been what proof is necessary to invoke the Act’s prohibition of housing discrimination. The Act has two definitions of prohibited conduct: acts of “intentional” discrimination, and acts having an “adverse disparate effect” on minorities.

That proof on an “intent” to discriminate” is hard to come by. That is universally recognized, including by the courts, but defendants charged with violation of the FHA have long stoutly maintained it is necessary under the law. The Supreme Court has now validated the use of the disparate impact standard instead, and HUD, through the AFFH Rule, had made it easier for local governments to come up with evidence that there has in fact been an adverse disparate impact.

On the reach of affirmative action neither the Supreme Court’s opinion nor HUD’s AFFH rule provide anything that is really new. What they do do is raise in the minds of many what the ultimate goal of broad and effective affirmative action should be, and specifically what the desirable nature of integration of minorities is and how it is best accomplished. The blogs that follow argue that both the Court’s opinion and the impact of the AFFH will make resolving that issue even harder.

And both the Court’s holding and the AFFH rule have severe limits. Blog #69 now turns to a detailed examination of the specific weaknesses in the Court’s decision and the AFFHR. Blog #70 explores the causes of those weaknesses, suggested to lie in their avoidance of the underlying causes of discrimination in housing and planning.

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[1] It goes on: “[the Regulation means] transforming racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity and fostering and maintaining compliance with civil rights and fair housing laws. ”The End of Federally Financed Ghettos,” The New York Times, July 12, 2015, p. Sunday Review, p. 10.

[2] Deron Lovaas’s Blog. “Taking the First Big Step Toward Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” Posted July 8, 2015. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a historic and overdue final rule requiring its grantees to leap forward by “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.” http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dlovaas/taking_the_first_big_step forward.htm. l Natural Defense Council Staff Blog.

[3] It goes on: “AFFH gives the federal government a lever to re-engineer nearly every American neighborhood — imposing a preferred racial and ethnic composition, densifying housing, transportation, and business development in suburb and city alike, and weakening or casting aside the authority of local governments over core responsibilities, from zoning to transportation to education. Not only the policy but the political implications are immense — at the presidential, congressional, state, and local levels.” National Review, July 8, 2015. Available at http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420896/massive-government-overreach-obamas-affh-rule-out-stanley-kurtz.

[4] Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420896/massive-government-overreach-obamas-affh-rule-out-stanley-kurtz

[5] On the present state of racism, see my Blog #   , Racism After Ferguson – A Turning Point? at pmarcuse.wordpress.com.

[6] Reed Jordan, “America’s public schools remain highly segregated.” Urban Wire, http://www.urban.org/urban-wire/americas-public-schools-remain-highly-segregated August 24, 2014.

[7] Kaiser Family Foundation, Infant Mortality Rate (Deaths per 1,000 Live Births) by Race/Ethnicity, available at              http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/infant-mortality-rate-by-race-ethnicity/

[9] Zoning is indeed typically a local government activity over which the Federal government has no general jurisdiction, but the final rule is clear that the basis of the Final Rule is HUD’s threat to withhold funding, a threat generally considered adequate to achieve compliance with HUD’s requirements. HUD could if it would.

[10] A Westchester case is a notable exception, and in fact was settled including an agreement that the County provide 450 units of new affordable housing within five years o when the suit was first brought, and its implementation has been tied up in litigation over almost 5 years and the results to date have been not been large, and whether it could have been mandated by HUD under the FHA was never tested in court. See http://homes.westchestergov.com/housingsettlement and http://www.propublica.org/article/westchester-county-could-lose-millions-for-fair-housing-failures.

Blog #69 now turns to a detailed examination of the specific weaknesses in the Court’s decision and the AFFHR