History Of Housing In The United States - Research Paper Example

History Of Housing In The United States I. Introduction There have been several researches on the impacts of segregation and economic disparity on wealth, education, welfare regulations, and housing in the United States. Such researches frequently conclude, totally or openly, that segregation is a reflection of oversimplified white bigotry resulting in prejudice against racial minorities, frequently arbitrated through a defective market system. It was generally assumed that the new federal legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, would not merely drastically mitigate the inequalities as an outcome of this process through alleviating segregation and curtailing racial discrimination but as well restrict the socioeconomic disparity between racial minorities. Fair housing would decisively, “turn this nation toward the creation of a slum-free, ghetto-free America and affect the whole pattern of urban housing and community life and actually lead to the establishment of fair housing throughout the United States (National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, 1968, 12-13).” Some three decades following these civil rights and fair housing programs, nonetheless, segregation persists to be a severe political and social predicament in majority of American cities. The failure of these programs is frequently attributed to the adjustment of domestic practices in relation to race issues by the federal government and administrative implementation of the Fair Housing Act (Coulibaly et al., 1998). This essay argues instead that racial and income segregation has been a fundamental component of the federal housing policy from its beginning, and that prejudiced forces such as white bigotry and related individual discrimination only confuse the function of the federal government in generating and perpetuating segregation. II. History of Housing in the United States Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, racial segregation in the United States was paradoxically not a key social problem. With the abolition of slavery, nevertheless, the question of how to incorporate emancipated blacks into mainstream society became a complicated political as well as social concern. Abraham Lincoln, in a speech addressed in Peoria in 1854, summed up what would turn out to be post-slavery traditional consciousness: Free them, and make them politically and socially our equal? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great masses of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling whether well or ill founded cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot, then, make them equals (Franklin, 1966, 53). Throughout the next century the suspected resistance of the ‘great masses of white people’ to the economic and political development of free blacks perhaps has been not that illogical as Lincoln implied. Blacks in the labor force could become an economic hazard to white workers, if made use by employers to put off the strikes and destabilize the economic needs of structured white labor. Employers discovered black workers more obedient than white workers, and thus valuable instruments in fights for lower labor costs and in opposition to union activities (Franklin, 1966). The social limits bore by free blacks were hence beyond illogical; they were identified by many whites as a protection of their individual economic security. Gerald Grob, a labor historian, emphasizes that the racial issue became even more severe at the aftermath of the Civil War, when liberation threw the Black workers into more open competition with white workers. As an outcome white workers initiated organized and continual efforts to prohibit or segregate Blacks and bar them from joining in unions. Employers were as well quick to take advantage of the racial issue to thwart unionizing activities, particularly in the South (Momeni, 1986). However, mainstream social thinkers of the latter part of the nineteenth century and the earlier part of the twentieth century typically attributed the social situation of free blacks to racial discrimination, itself frequently believed to originate spontaneously from natural biological variations among various species of mankind. To discount dominant white injustices and effort to improve economic and social conditions of Blacks, a fashionable subject went, would be worthless. As stated by Robert Parks, as long as the Blacks stay in their places, places designated to them by traditional racial hierarchy, racial affairs would trigger insignificant resistance or observation (Momeni 1986). It is when the Blacks overrun a new expanse that race rebellions take place; it is when Blacks look for a place in a new job or a new career that they stumble upon the most forceful resistance; it is when they pursue to take in a new distinction that they cease to be old-fashioned and becomes absurd. By 1929, intensifying economic pressures had generated a major housing problem. In most cities, hardly any low- or middle-income families of any racial background could manage to pay for decent housing. These families tended to be focused in metropolis areas, whereas most higher-income families diffused to concentric circles surrounding the metropolis (Huttman et al., 1991). Applying the caste and class paradigm, Charles Johnson disputes that the pattern of Black segregation can be foreseen from the nature of the leading economy. Hence, in the North, wherein the prevailing mode of production and allocation was free market capitalism, spatial segregation of Blacks and white workers turned out to be the recognized pattern of settlement, coherent with a perhaps inaccurate assumption that residential segregation facilitates to mitigate racial differences. In the South, as Johnson claims, where the prevailing economy was ‘semi-feudal’, a “back-yard pattern of Negro segregation” turned out to be indispensable to accommodate individuals who “could afford a Negro maid” (Johnson, 1943, 202). Undoubtedly, racial residential segregation was frequently strengthened by pressing economic interests and motives of land owners and developers who aim to get the most out of their profits from real estate by addressing the assumed prejudices of their wealthy clients, who were, obviously, white. Such interests can as well be noticed in components of a national housing policy of the 1930s and the 1940s intended to secure the property values against unfavorable infringement and racially dissonant use. Akin to any private capitalist, the person behind this policy, the newly formulated Federal Housing Administration (FHA), was primarily concerned in financial success. Bigotry and discrimination became embedded to public policy so that higher incomes could be generated (Coulibaly et al., 1998). After the Second World War, in spite of a developing empirical and theoretical contention, mainstream assumptions of urban residential segregation carried on to be founded on psychological forces. For a number of neoclassical economists, racial affairs, akin to any other commodity, are influenced by individual preferences and indiscernible market factors (Coulibaly et al., 1998). For others, the perceptibility of racial minorities and the anxieties of status loss by the whites were at the core of racial residential segregation; advancing the economic situations of racial groups, specifically Blacks, without getting rid of these race-related difficulties to assimilation could enhance segregation. III. Public Housing Segregation in the United States Public housing in the United States has been denounced in the press as a massive testimonial to segregation and overlooked and criticized by social thinkers as placing but another nail in the coffin of the low-income group in the urban areas. For instance, Arnold Hirsch, the historian, in his comprehensive study of the recent or ‘second’ Chicago ghetto reveals that with the appearance of redevelopment, restoration and public housing; government assumed an active role not just in bolstering dominant patterns of segregation but as well in providing them a stability never witnessed before. The repercussion of administration in the second ghetto was extremely invasive, extremely profound that it almost comprised a new kind of racial segregation. Government-subsidized segregation is shown as a powerhouse in limiting the social and residential preferences of Blacks in urban America (Huttman et al., 1991). Five political resolutions, subsequent to the passing of the Housing Acts, have had significant effects on the distribution of public housing units. The first has been the recurrent decline in congressional financial support for the program, which has lessened both the number of housing units constructed and their amenities so barely a small proportion of the housing deprived are provided by federal programs. Second, the resolution to make use of the housing industry of the private sector, and reduce federal participation, has led to a program which is greatly motivated and controlled by domestic factors (Karn & Wolman, 1992). Third, the resolution to relate urban restoration conditions to public housing has implied that previous occupants of the locations vacated of squatter housing had an immediate privilege to come back to the newly constructed housing. Several populations of nonwhites were relocated to public housing, to generate a justly prominent reform in the racial tenancy of public housing. These three parts of administrative action were of such significance that, for a number of cities, they hardened the effect of federal housing on housing segregation. (Karn & Wolman, 1992). A fourth congressional resolution that was to have significant repercussion for what forms of households were provided by the program of public housing was the resolution in the middle of the 1950s to allow households of aged individuals to occupy units formerly set aside for families. This decision as well implied that public housing officials could initiate projects devised exclusively for the aged, several of whom were white (Karn & Wolman, 1992). The ratification of civil rights security for occupants of the 1960’s federal housing makes up the fifth key legislative decision which impacted the segregation of the residents of public housing (Karn & Wolman, 1992). The Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically in Title VI, became an instrument for dealing with the discriminatory nature of federal housing through banning federal subsidy for discriminatory practices and through setting up an enforcement strategy to reprimand violators. Congress tried to counterbalance the power of local authority on public housing, recognized several decades earlier, with a focus on federal obligations for the civil rights of residents of public housing. The indecisive consistency between federal and nonfederal obligations on the residential features of public housing has been a root of conflict in public policy ever since (Schorr, 1963). Covert racism, and its underlying anxiety of status and class corruption, are natural factors with which both domestic and federal housing programs and planning authorities should challenge. Evasion, discrimination, and class prejudices are intertwined in the preferences of white residents who when asked where they like to live, commonly prefer to live in secluded public housing units. Several minority residents as well may not desire to leave an area where their families, friends and neighborhood relations are concentrated (Schorr, 1963).Public housing residents do not, hence, abandon their individual likings when they occupy a public housing unit, nor is their impoverished conditions, though short-term or long-term, a ruthless bar to their right to use alternative economical private housing. Such choices can indeed be organized by interest groups with hidden economic or political intentions and will definitely surface under particular structural circumstances, in particular locations and not in others. They will as well be influenced or bolstered by the preferences of local housing authorities, who may aim to maintain the pattern of segregation which is present all over their jurisdiction; who are anxious of annoying local authorities who favor the segregated condition. However, the capability of poor white occupants to get away from integrating programs or officials comprises an additional factor of secluded public tenancy. It seems logical then to assume that a fusion of historical, micro level, and structural influences seem to have had a function in influencing the present level of segregation in public housing. The weight of these forces has enriched and diminished as federal subsidy has emerged and declined and as federal policies have throw in requirements concerning nondiscriminatory practices. Moreover, the comparatively negligible share of the low-income housing market regulated by public housing divisions may make it susceptible to distinctive or temporary transitions and limitations functioning within domestic property markets (Huttman et al., 1991). None of these tactical manipulations and assumptions can be completely addressed without taking into account historical or time-series information. Gaining awareness of something regarding the racial characteristic of each locality before and after the beginning of public housing, and also as the relationships of each locality to the economic and ecological renovation of the city, is apparently a considerable task. IV. Conclusions What could be some of the main forces that reinforce the housing segregation in the United States and socio-economic realities connection as shown in the discussion of housing policies? These forces include those that have been recognized and suggested beforehand such as racial segregation and relocation of slum areas. In combination, these forces have led to fundamental spatial inequality between residential and income status for groups specifically for those racially secluded in urban areas, thus contributing to their poor conditions and residential relocations. Nevertheless, other forces are possibly contributing as well. The economics and natures of low-income housing may add to the concentration of poverty. The natural mechanism of classifying in housing markets besides where low-income housing is located and for what reason may as well contribute. Suburban efforts that constrain the reserve of low-income housing definitely have contributed to where low-income housing is situated. Finally, given with the rising presence of immigrants specifically in suburban neighborhoods, issues may crop up about whether there is competition between immigrant and native groups, specifically with Blacks, over access to low-rental housing that may impact the race, housing and income relationship. The available empirical literature about the relationship between race, housing and income as shown in housing policies disclose findings somewhat coherent with much consideration about what people know regarding the race, income and suburbanization conflict. These maintain that poverty remains to be concentrated among underprivileged social groups, specifically among Blacks and other immigrants, and remains greater in the innermost urban areas than suburbs. A higher proportion of the impoverished still live in central cities, mostly Blacks, but that this pattern is increasingly less actual for immigrants such as Latinos and Asians as their disadvantaged communities have been suburbanizing. The poor Whites have been suburbanized since the mid-twentieth century (Coulibaly et al., 1998). These changes have crucial implications and raise a number of unanswered questions. These include whether the disadvantaged Black population remained concentrated over this phase despite of rising decentralization of the underprivileged more generally; another are the probable implications of this increasing isolated pockets of severe Black segregation in urban America. The growing diversity of poverty and ethnicity in suburban areas of the United States demands concerns regarding the kinds of immigrant neighborhoods and Black localities that are growing in suburban regions, whether they are emerging in central ring suburban vicinities or in currently expanding suburban borders, whether the poor are isolated in these neighborhoods or are beneficially assimilated with their own fellow racial non-poor (Coulibaly et al., 1998). But racial segregation among and between racial minorities has reduced even while such segregation from the governing Whites has remained on stable specifically in suburban neighborhoods and between Whites, Latinos and Asians. These trends implore related issues of where increasing racial minority-assimilated neighborhoods are occurring within metropolitan locales and in which metropolitan vicinities and areas these transformations are changing the most. They as well implore the issue of what socio-economic grouping of these neighborhoods is, and whether the developing assimilation of minorities is generating conflict or collaboration for local resources (Rose & Rose, 1948). Minority households keep on experiencing considerable degrees of housing dispossession, segregation and discrimination. Their housing situations, even though slowly developing in physical condition and the degree of crowding, are more and more affected by the expensive or higher costs of rental or buying a home. Minorities in pursuit of decent housing will have to allot more financial resources, as well as risk undergoing either restrained or open kinds of discrimination, so as to locate a home similar to that of the whites. All too frequently the act of discrimination will continue to be unfelt and indiscernible. Various or small number of apartments and housing units are shown to the underprivileged but never to whites. There is nothing particularly new in this explanation of housing discrimination. Economic forces and segregation have long been recognized to be essential determinants of secluded, and insufficient, or unreasonably priced housing for minorities in majority of urban housing markets. What is new is the disagreement in opinions as to the manner of addressing inequalities in housing impacting minority households. Uncertainty and loss of interest for civil rights are complicated by some of the additional hindrances which recently emerge to impact the potentials for organizing support for a firmer reasonable housing plan. Public opinion seems uncooperative of further federally-enforced schemes. Moreover, Blacks and other immigrants do not seem to have united around a consented civil rights program, further dispelling tension for political support. And ultimately, the remarkable increase of minority population in cities has the possibility of swamping legislators’ concerns for practical issues of reasonable housing law implementation with expansive issues of socio-economic and racial equality. References Coulibaly, M. et al. (1998). Segregation in Federally Subsidized Low-Income Housing in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Franklin, J. H. (1966). The Negro American. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Huttman, E. et al. (1991). Urban Housing Segregation of Minorities in Western Europe and the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Johnson, C. S. (1943). Patterns of Negro Segregation. New York: Harper & Brothers. Karn, V. & Wolman, H. (1992). Comparing Housing Systems: Housing Performance and Housing Policy in the United States and Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Momeni, J. A. (1986). Race, Ethnicity and Minority Housing in the United States. New York: Greenwood Press. National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. (1968). Citizens' Guide to the Federal Fair Housing Law of 1968. New York: National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. Rose, A. M. & Rose, C.B. (1948). America Divided: Minority Group Relations in the United States. New York: A.A. Knopf. Schorr, A. L. (1963). Slums and Social Insecurity: An Appraisal of the Effectiveness of Housing Policies in Helping to Eliminate Poverty in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Stokes, C. J. & Fisher, E.M. (1976). Housing Market Performance in the United States. New York: Praeger. Read More