Marking Fair Housing Month, Enterprise’s Jarrod Elwell discusses the Fair Housing Act and how we’re working to unwind the legacies of segregation.

Troost Avenue cuts a stark north-south line through the heart of Kansas City, separating the mostly white west side from the predominantly Black east side. It’s a place where going just one block east can mean a drop in average annual income of some $20,000 and, in some instances, a 15-year decrease in life expectancy.

Troost Avenue is a legacy of now-illegal segregation policies that still divide communities. And it’s a legacy that Enterprise leaders like Jarrod Elwell say must be dismantled across the country. In this Enterprise Q&A, Elwell discusses the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the mandate to affirmatively undo the devastating consequences of racially motivated housing policy in America.

Jarrod, as we mark Fair Housing Month, what’s the connection between the Civil Rights Movement and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 – outlawing discrimination in housing and affirmatively calling for the unwinding of racist housing policies and practices?

Jarrod Elwell: We have to go back to the post-World War II era when defense manufacturing became such an important economic driver in this country. A factory would be built, and ring of housing around it would be designed for white folks working in the factory. There was also a second ring where Black folks could live. The quality of the housing in the second ring was inferior and the distance to employment was farther. The lack of infrastructure in Black parts of town contributed to the inability to accrue generational wealth. Take the New Deal-era Home Owners’ Loan Corporation – 98 percent of those loans for home ownership were issued to white folks.

Fast forward to today. Take the DC region. Homes that were built in that time period were sold for, say, $11,000. In some parts of Washington, that home might now be worth $1 million. That has created generational wealth. How many folks use equity in their homes to fund college educations for their kids and grandkids? Compare that with Black families that haven’t had the same access to equity, access to jobs or access to schools. Kansas City is a great example of this. Troost Avenue was the dividing line between Black and white communities. Even after that kind of segregation was outlawed, leaders drew school districts that created separate white and Black schools. Today, even houses a few blocks away on Troost Avenue, built to the same standards and by the same developer, have a huge disparity in price if you’re on the Black side or the white side of the dividing line.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saw housing as a fundamental human right: food, clothing and shelter. Housing is connected to schools. Housing is connected to quality of life and health. Housing is connected to employment opportunities. All those disparities favor white folks and historically have done so by design. Unless we’re intentional about how we address those issues, we’re not going to make much progress.

So what did the Fair Housing Act do – and what are the principles behind it?

Jarrod Elwell: Dr. King viewed the Fair Housing Act as a down payment toward reparations, toward Black people in America. It was passed exactly one week after his death, which was not a happenstance. The bill had been killed previously, not even let out of committee by Southern white legislators. After King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, the bill drew bipartisan support and passed April 11.

The Fair Housing Act means that in America, folks should have access to housing and all real estate-related transactions without being discriminated against based on their membership in a protected class. Today, that means race, religion, color, national origin, sex, familial status and disability. But the law was created to not only prevent folks from discriminating against people; it was also meant to undo what had been done through intentional programs, policies, laws and practices. The law not only defined what types of discrimination would be illegal, but also specifically charged the federal government and the Department of Housing and Urban Development with the responsibility to affirmatively undo the impacts of segregation.

That part of the law hasn’t always been put into practice. The level of enforcement fluctuated from 1968 to 2015, when the Obama administration enacted the affirmatively furthering fair housing rule. It created a process around fair housing planning. The Trump administration suspended and dismantled that rule, and now the Biden White House is working to stand the rule back up.

What is Enterprise doing to further the mandate of the Fair Housing Act?

Jarrod Elwell: We take a racial equity-centered approach to all the work that we do. Every member of Advisors, our technical assistance and consulting department, explicitly centers racial equity in all of our engagements. We’re asking tough questions, looking at the data and asking folks to understand and explain the racial disparities. The data helps illustrate a point in time, but we need to understand the conditions that contributed to that point in time, and we’re intentional about addressing the underlying effects.

On the policy side, we’re advocating in cities and states across the country and at the federal level for source of income protections. We know that many recipients of housing choice vouchers are people of color, and yet it’s still legal in some places to discriminate against someone who tries to pay rent with a voucher. A landlord might say “I don’t accept housing vouchers." What they may be thinking is we don’t want people of color. In Richmond, Virginia, a case was filed recently where rent for the same unit was 60 percent higher for someone using a voucher. They’re gouging low-income individuals, forcing them to pay more of their limited income.

So what can people do in their own communities to further the ideals behind fair housing?

Jarrod Elwell: Around the country, we see a lot of NIMBYism (not in my backyard) and NIMEYism, which is when elected officials tell advocates “not in my election year.” Folks have to educate themselves and be more active in their communities. Economist Raj Chetty showed that when younger people move from concentrated areas of poverty to mixed income communities, the likelihood that they exit poverty as an adult increases dramatically. He found that while the education level of a child's parents is a critical gateway to upward mobility, the education level of that child's neighbors is also a determining factor. Generally speaking, mixed income communities are a major factor in folks exiting the cycle of poverty.

We need to do more than not discriminate. We have to be intentional in addressing disparities. And governments can’t do it alone. We need the public and private sector, nonprofits and philanthropies to work together.

Read more about our mission to advance racial equity in housing.