Six Facts About Housing and Racism, Part Three: Public Housing's Struggles, and How We Fix This

Photo by Fibonacci Blue via Wikimedia Commons

Our last two posts covered the first four of six facts about racism and housing: The Systemic Theft of Black Labor Has Created Housing Disparities; Our Government Housing Policy Has Benefitted Whites and Excluded Blacks; Predatory Housing Practices Disproportionately Harm Black Americans; and Urban “Development” Disproportionately Harms Black Americans. You can read Part One here and Part Two here.

We conclude this important discussion with two final points: Public Housing’s Struggles are Rooted in Racism, and We Can Make Things Right, If We Want To:

5.    Public Housing’s Struggles are Rooted in Racism

Readers of this newsletter know that the nations that have addressed their housing needs the best have done so by relying heavily on attractive, safe, and affordable public housing. You can read more about the legacies of public housing success both abroad and in the U.S. here and here.

But, from its very beginning, our nation’s public housing system was marred by racism. Many public housing complexes were segregated by design, with the units designated for Blacks built with cheap, inferior materials. Federal agencies allowed local governments to site public housing in segregated, poor Black neighborhoods, in part a response to the for-profit real estate industry’s efforts to limit the appeal of public housing for whites.

For example, 98% of the public housing units built in Chicago over a 15 year-period in the 1950’s and 1960’s were placed in all-Black neighborhoods. A 1984 investigation by the Dallas Morning News covering 47 metropolitan areas revealed that nearly all public housing was segregated by race, with Black housing projects lacking in amenities that white projects enjoyed.

That intentional segregation, along with the greater housing and income opportunities for white households we discussed earlier in this series, have led to the U.S. public housing population being disproportionately Black.  Forty-three percent of household heads in public housing are Black, with another 26% Latino or Hispanic. This means public housing is and has been especially important for Black families, leaving those families grievously damaged by the systemic demolition, underfunding and neglect of public housing.

The U.S. government and local agencies have destroyed well over 100,000 public housing units and left many of those that remain in a dangerous and unhealthy state of disrepair. What was the motivation behind this abandonment of public housing? Urban planning professor Edward Goetz conducts a thorough analysis of the public housing crises in Chicago, Atlanta, and New Orleans in his book New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy, and finds a clear answer: “In these cities the full-scale attack on public housing was employed as a means of eliminating entire communities of poor Black residents.”

When Goetz widened his scope, he found that Black public housing residents across the nation are far more likely to be displaced than white residents of public housing. Through the demolition and neglect of public housing, we are repeating urban renewal’s sin of targeted elimination of Black homes.  

6.    We Can Make Things Right, If We Want To

There is a good reason why this discussion of racism’s impact on housing started with income and wealth (The Systemic Theft of Black Labor Has Created Housing Disparities). The scarce supply of subsidized housing in this nation means that the vast majority of households of all races are dependent on the private, for-profit market to secure a roof over their heads.

In our eviction defense work, we see very few clients with housing emergencies that could not be solved with an infusion of cash. That means we can make a big impact in our housing crisis by erasing the racial wage and income gaps, which would immediately boost our Black clients’ abilities to find safe, decent housing.

There are many possible non-housing remedies for our housing crisis. Beyond just increasing wages, this approach means stepping away from the U.S.’s outsized reliance on home values as the family safety net that a robust national pension, disability support, and healthcare system should provide. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor focused her landmark book Race for Profit on the way our housing system has benefitted whites and abused Blacks, but she does not see the remedy for this toxic legacy coming via housing reforms alone:

The real issue here is how the insistence on homeownership as the solution to economic or racial inequality actually leaves African Americans behind . . . This shouldn’t be interpreted as accepting the limits imposed by discrimination or the marginalization of African Americans. Instead, it is a plea that we do not leave the quality of people’s lives in the supposedly invisible hand of the market economy. Instead of relying on the home as an asst to secure retirement or weather an unforeseen health emergency, government should play a larger role in providing retirement benefits or healthcare to ensure consistent and equitable public welfare.

Housing-specific reforms are called for, too. After all, the FHA and VA et al. have proved convincingly that our government can promote stable housing at enormous scale. Similar efforts can and should be launched again—this time, minus the racism. In fact, principles of equity (recognizing that some people and groups have been long denied opportunities available to others) over mere equality (providing the same resources now with no recognition of historical differences) means we should start affirmatively undoing the effects of housing racism.

One current program that is widely praised is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 502 Direct Loan Program, which provides guaranteed, low-interest loans to first-time homebuyers. It is a good approach, but the 502 program’s focus on rural homebuyers raises echoes of the white-benefitting housing programs that dominated the last century. A similar effort should be targeted at the Black communities who have been left out of past government homeownership programs.

The long legacy of U.S. housing racism has led to multiple reparations proposals that focus on housing subsidies for Black Americans. Seattle, Santa Monica, and Berkeley, California all have proposals in various stages that are designed to help provide affordable homes for Black residents. In 2022, the city of Evanston, Illinois took one of the most tangible reparations steps yet, giving $25,000 housing vouchers to 600-plus Black residents.

A larger, broader reparations program is planned, but Evanston’s Black community deliberately chose housing to be its first priority. "Our harm report showed that housing is an area in which we were harmed and stripped away of wealth and opportunity,” says Robin Rue Summons, chairperson of the city’s reparations committee. “So we've started with housing.”  

If we truly want to remedy the ongoing painful impacts of our long legacy of U.S. housing racism, we should all follow this lead.