Facing segregation: Housing policy solutions for a stronger society

Marking 50 years since the passage of the Fair Housing and Civil Rights Acts, this collection both builds on and departs from two generations of scholarship on urban development and inequality. The volume’s contributors provide historical context for patterns of segregation in the United States and present arguments for bold new policy actions ranging from the local to the national. Evidence for the negative effects of segregation and concentrated poverty in America’s cities now exists in abundance. Poor and underrepresented communities in segregated urban housing markets suffer diminished outcomes in education, economic mobility, political participation, and physical and psychological health. Many of the aggravating factors underlying this inequity have persisted or even grown worse in recent decades. Yet the level of energy and attention devoted to them by local and national policymakers has ebbed significantly from the levels that inspired the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. This book refocuses our attention on achievable solutions by providing not just an overview of this timely subject but a roadmap forward, as the twenty-first century assesses the successes and failures of the housing policies inherited from the twentieth century. Instead of introducing new theories or empirical data sets describing the urban landscape, the book’s editors have gathered the field’s first collection of prescriptions for what ought to be done. Topics discussed include community development, the Community Reinvestment Act, education triage, housing choice vouchers, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, mixed-income development, and tax increment financing.