As the post-War suburban boom hits its stride, policymakers sought to revitalize the urban areas that had become home to most BIPOC families. Perceptions of such neighborhoods as blighted led to whole-scale removal of thriving communities, with insufficient compensation or alternative housing options provided to displaced households. Meanwhile, the expanded supply of public and subsidized housing offered a solution to affordability challenges faced by many low-income households but exacerbated the isolation and concentration of poverty within majority-BIPOC neighborhoods. The Civil Rights era finally prompted policy action to acknowledge these injustices but did little to undo the harm caused by centuries of discrimination.

Legend

  •   Hindered racial equality
  •   Mix of helped and hindered racial equality
  •   Helped advance racial equality
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  • boost

    At the time of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelley, it was estimated that half of all housing built in the prior 40 years had a racially restrictive covenant preventing its occupation by BIPOC-led households. The Court ruled that such covenants were permissible within a private contract, but that public or judicial enforcement of them would violate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. Thus, racial covenants on properties remained legal, but only so long as both parties to a purchase or lease of the property agreed to adhere to them.

  • mixed

    The 1949 Housing Act sets a goal of ensuring a “suitable home and decent living environment for all Americans,” which would later be used to justify slum clearance and urban renewal efforts that destroyed BIPOC communities. It also authorized large numbers of new public housing developments, which were still required to be segregated, though more of these developments were now being designated for Black families who had been excluded from participating in FHA-insured lending and other housing programs. The growing suburban exodus of white families, meanwhile, meant that even previously white-only public housing developments were now open to Black families, as the surrounding neighborhoods experienced similar racial turnover.

  • block

    While not intended as housing policy, the establishment and funding of the interstate highway system had two major impacts on residential patterns. One, it facilitated the expansion of suburban communities farther from urban centers, and two, it allowed for the wide scale displacement of urban, mostly BIPOC-communities to make space for the new highways. The latter was a part of the larger urban renewal effort to remove perceived blighted neighborhoods and replace them with commercial or recreational facilities, which further reduced available housing options for BIPOC residents, isolating many of them in segregated pockets of poverty.

  • boost

    The elevation of the former National Housing Agency to a cabinet-level position served to both acknowledge the growing importance and participation of the federal government in the provision of affordable housing options, as well as allocate more funds to HUD programs, such as the Section 23 leased housing program that, for the first time, allowed federal subsidies to be used to rent units for low-income households in privately-owned properties. This program expanded the supply and quality of publicly-subsidized affordable housing, which was increasingly serving mostly BIPOC households.

  • boost

    President Johnson convened the commission to study the causes of racial and social unrest that had recently led to violent protests in many U.S. cities. The commission found that, among other catalysts, the systematic segregation and isolation of BIPOC communities due to discriminatory housing policies had led to concentrations of poverty and disadvantage, leaving residents of those communities with few options for economic and social mobility. Only through acknowledgement and redress of these wrongs, the commission stated, could racial equity and prosperity be achieved.

  • boost

    Passed two months following the release of the Kerner Commission report, and a week after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., the 1968 Fair Housing Act finally outlawed private and public housing discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity and religion (among other categories). It further endowed HUD with the authority to investigate and combat housing discrimination but provided only weak enforcement mechanisms to prevent racial disparities in housing from continuing.

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