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Understanding Housing Discrimination and Segregation

History of Fair Housing

@ctfairhousing

Rashida Rattray

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Connecticut Fair Housing Center

The mission of the Connecticut Fair Housing Center is to ensure that all people have equal access to housing opportunities in Connecticut.

Because housing discrimination disproportionately affects people with low incomes, the Center focuses on the intersection of poverty and housing discrimination. The Center also assists Connecticut homeowners who have been hardest by the nation’s ongoing foreclosure crisis.

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The Connecticut Fair Housing Center

Foreclosure Prevention
Education & Outreach
Policy Advocacy
Tenant Empowerment
Fair Housing Enforcement

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Agenda: A Tale of Two Cities

Most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes. If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent—at least when it comes to housing—we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the politicians’ canard about one of the richest countries on the planet being unable to afford doing more. If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.”�― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Investigate past and current housing policies and practices

Understand how discriminatory patterns continue to shape our built environment.

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Federal & State Fair Housing Laws

In order to make sure everyone has equal access to housing Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968. It prohibits discrimination based on your membership in a protected class in all forms of housing transactions.

Connecticut has protected vulnerable members of our communities by enacting additional state-wide fair housing laws.

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Federal & State Fair Housing Protections

Race
Color
National Origin
Sex
Disability
Religion
Familial Status

Federal

Ancestry
Marital Status
Age
Sexual Orientation
Lawful Source of Income
Gender Identity & Expression
Veteran Status

State

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Forms of Discrimination

Differential Treatment

Treating people differently because of their membership in a protected class is illegal

Disparate Impact

Neutral rule that has a disparate impact (greater negative effect) on members of a protected class

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Vocabulary

Policy – rules for an organization, institution, or government agency that are written and enforced

Systemic/Institutional Inequality – personal prejudice + power to discriminate against specific individuals, groups, or communities

Built Environment – everything that we have constructed in our environment, from houses to sidewalks to highways.

Racial Segregation – the practice of requiring separate housing, education, and other services for people of different races; specifically separating white and non-white people

Subsidy – monetary assistance provided to an institution, corporation, or person

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Where we live

The United States and Connecticut remain highly segregated�67% of State’s population of color lives in 8% of Connecticut’s towns.

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Racial Segregation Map of Connecticut

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Fair Housing History

Decades of discriminatory policies shape our built environment, and still contribute to the lack of wealth accumulation for families of color, and the extreme racial and economic segregation of our neighborhoods.

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How did discriminatory policies shape our built environment and segregate our neighborhoods?

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Was racial and economic segregation an accident?

Private development supported by public policy actions and perpetuated by racial discrimination created and maintain our segregated neighborhoods:

Industrial Revolution & Development, Early 1900s
The New Deal and Redlining, 1933-36
Post War Suburban Development, 1950s
Federal Interstate Highway Act of 1956
Urban Renewal & Relocation, 1950s-60s
Barriers to Fair Housing Today

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Logically when you have an influx of people, you need housing, but where you put housing, and who gets to live there shapes our communities.

Worker housing built before and during the industrial revolution often excluded non-white workers.

Colt Factory housing built in 1910.

To protect the real estate during the great depression the FHA created the HOLC, which assessed risk of lending. Non-white neighborhoods were redlined.

Post WWII development was subsidized with federal money, and often excluded non-white families from homeownership.

Simultaneously, highway development and urban renewal decimated non-white urban neighborhoods.

Patterns of Discriminatory Housing Policy

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Industrial Revolution Early 1900s Development

Hartford, CT workforce housing development

Industrial workforce development predated formal zoning and like zoning would eventually do, factory development responded to a community desire for land use planning.

Factories developed communities, and ultimately housing for their workers. However, most of the time factory-built workforce housing was only available to white workers. The exclusion to housing opportunity by race continued a long-standing pattern of excluding people of color from safe and stable housing close to their work. A tradition that is continued today.

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Racial Segregation through Zoning & Workforce Housing Development

Workforce housing built before WWII was often not available to African-Americans

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Zoning’s Beginning in CT : 1927 Zoning Enabling Act

This act was one of the foundational developments in land use planning in the United States. Introduced ‘exclusionary zoning’ in which ordinances to exclude certain types of land uses from a given community, especially to regulate racial and economic diversity. These ordinances were used typically to prevent black, Latinx, and poor migrant families from moving into middle- and upper-class neighborhoods. Municipalities used (and continue to use) zoning to limit the supply of available housing units, such as by prohibiting multi-family residential dwellings or setting minimum lot size requirements. These ordinances raise costs, making it less likely that lower-income groups will move in.

Simultaneously, these zoning laws and ordinances ensured that many of the black parts of town were officially zoned for industrial plants, waste disposal, other things that we would consider a blight. And meanwhile, those businesses were explicitly kept out of white neighborhoods in the same cities.

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Decades of Choice Created Segregated Neighborhoods

Spencer Lancaster was active in the NAACP, was New London’s first African American First Selectman, first African American sheriff and first African American candidate for City Council.

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Redlining: A Consequence of the New Deal

The New Deal sought to prevent foreclosures and encourage new home construction to increase the number of people who owned homes. HOLC set uniform national appraisal methods and simplified the mortgage process (today, known as redlining). The HOLC maps, created in the 1930s to assess credit-worthiness, were color-coded by race, with majority of areas where people of color lived were marked in red and designated as high risk or "hazardous“ while green areas indicated the best neighborhoods for mortgage investment. Mortgage companies, banks, and the insurance industry used these maps to justify racist mortgage lending and home insurance, and recovery policies for decades. Impact continues to this day, with increase in racial segregation and decline in home ownership, house values, and credit scores in redlined areas.

The New Deal sought to prevent foreclosures and encourage new home construction to increase the number of people who owned homes; created two new housing agencies: Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). HOLC set uniform national appraisal methods and simplified the mortgage process. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) created national standards for home construction. The HOLC maps, created in the 1930s to assess credit-worthiness, were color-coded by race, with majority African-American areas marked in red and designated as high risk or "hazardous“ while green areas indicated the best neighborhoods for mortgage investment, followed by blue and yellow areas. Mortgage companies, banks, and the insurance industry used these maps to justify racist mortgage lending and home insurance policies. Impact continues to this day, with increase in racial segregation and decline in home ownership, house values, and credit scores in redlined areas.

Images: National Housing Act of 1934 and Residential Security Map for Hartford and West Hartford, 1937, from the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation records at the National Archives.

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Subsidizing the suburbs: G.I. Bill & Housing Construction

By the 1950s housing construction in the cities was primarily public housing while in the suburbs, builders concentrated on single-family, owner-occupied homes. Many families financed their homes with mortgages from the Federal Housing Administration. Many housing developments and many of the government loan programs were almost exclusively for white people. Many housing development restricted occupancy by “members other than the Caucasian race.”

An important provision of the G.I. Bill was low interest, zero down payment home loans for white servicemen, with more favorable terms for new construction compared to existing housing.This encouraged millions of white families to move out of urban apartments and into suburban homes. The abandoned urban apartments were still not available to Black servicemen and their families since many public housing projects such as Charter Oak, that we just saw, had racial quotas.

“White Flight” - the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or culturally diverse.

Black, Latinx, and poor migrant families were not able to move into the homes that white families left due to the restrictive racial covenants that were put in place in the 1920’s.

Photos (from left to right): An example of suburban housing built during the 1950s and suburban housing built today

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Subsidizing the Suburban Development

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was steered by two goals immediately following World War II. The first was to use community development to stimulate the economy. The second was to steer to the market towards only opinionated versions of “good investments.”

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Highways & Urban Renewal Relocation

Beginning in the 1950s, the federal government reshaped American cities through urban renewal, zoning, residential density, automobile usage, and highway construction. Equipped with billions of dollars in federal funding, local governments applied eminent domain to displace hundreds of thousands of non-white, migrant, and poor families across the country, deeming long-standing neighborhoods as “blighted” land unfit for habitation. Homeowners were forced into becoming renters and much of the compensation given in exchange for eminent domain seizure was based on undervaluation of those properties. Urban renewal included the construction of vast system of highways to make urban centers more accessible to the suburbs by automobile.

Photos (from left to right): Cover of Federal Urban Renewal Relocation policy document; Construction of the “Dike Highway” in Hartford circa 1945 from the Connecticut Historical Society.

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Highway Development & Urban Renewal

1956 – Federal support to pay for 90% of construction

“They could have their highways and they could get rid of their slums. With just one surgery, they could put in more arteries, and they could remove the city’s heart.”

– The Atlantic, Alana Semuels

Highway construction in the 1940s was only the beginning of gutting communities of color.

Soon after federal highway money ran out, urban renewal initiatives quickly followed.

Beginning in the 1950s, the federal government reshaped American cities through urban renewal, zoning, residential density, automobile usage, and highway construction. Equipped with billions of dollars in federal funding, local governments applied eminent domain to displace hundreds of thousands of non-white, migrant, and poor families across the country, deeming long-standing neighborhoods as “blighted” land unfit for habitation. Homeowners were forced into becoming renters and much of the compensation given in exchange for eminent domain seizure was based on undervaluation of those properties. Urban renewal included the construction of vast system of highways to make urban centers more accessible to the suburbs by automobile.

Photos (from left to right): Cover of Federal Urban Renewal Relocation policy document; Construction of the “Dike Highway” in Hartford circa 1945 from the Connecticut Historical Society.

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Goals of Urban Renewal

Public clearance for private enterprise
Infrastructure for greater dependency on automobile
Create urban centers that appealed to suburban residents
Job creation in development
Slum clearance

Governor Winthrop Boulevard

Church Street

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Urban Renewal in Hartford & New haven

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Outcomes of Urban Renewal

Housing was not fully replaced; estimates suggest that only one unit of housing was built for every three that were lost
Private investment followed into the suburbs leaving abandoned empty lots in cities
Displacement was only counted until 1967

Crystal Ave. New London, CT

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The Civil Rights Movement & Housing

Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago with the open housing movement, (or the Chicago Freedom Movement), from mid-1965 until early 1967. The Movement fought against mortgage and loan discrimination and called for tenants’ rights, quality education for all, and equal access to jobs.

The Civil Rights Movement and the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. played a major role in the creation of Fair Housing laws and protections.

“The Chicago open housing movement, also known as the Chicago Freedom Movement, took place from mid-1965 until early 1967. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, then led by King, targeted Chicago "due to high levels of institutionalized discrimination" in schools and housing. On Jan. 26, 1966, King moved into an apartment at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave., on Chicago's West Side near Douglas Park. He said at the time, according to Tribune archives, that he moved to the apartment "to dramatize slum conditions in the city." He held a variety of events in the city to draw attention to the slums after he moved within the city.” – From “50 years ago: MLK Jr.'s speech at Soldier Field, march to City Hall with demands for Daley” by Chicago Tribune staff, July 10, 2016.

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Fighting for Integration in Hartford, CT

The Black Panthers and other Civil Rights activists protest at S.A.N.D. Elementary School in the North End of Hartford

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Do discriminatory policies persist today?

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Barriers to Fair Housing In Connecticut Today

Subprime Mortgage Crisis, 2007-2010
Gentrification of Poor & Non-white Neighborhoods
Lack of Affordable Housing
Bad Conditions, Absentee Landlords, & Evictions
Evictions and Foreclosures due to COVID-19 Pandemic

Foreclosure Prevention & Mediation Legal Clinics
Economic Investment to Serve Current Residents
Require ALL CT Towns & Cities to Build More Affordable Housing
Holding Landlords Accountable, ex: No More Slumlords Campaign
Rental Assistance & Moratoriums

Fair Housing Challenges

Efforts to Address Problems

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Fair Housing and the Eviction Crisis

“If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.” – Matthew Desmond

The top 10 evicting housing providers in our metro regions are predominantly in hyper segregated census tracts.

Public housing authorities are often the highest evicting housing provider in a city.

In Connecticut 20,000 evictions were filed in 2019.

In CT 70% of Black families rent their homes, which means they will be overwhelmingly represented as defendants in the state’s ongoing eviction crisis.

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What does the Connecticut Fair Housing Center do to help end these practices ?

The mission of the Connecticut Fair Housing Center is to ensure that all people have equal access to housing opportunities in Connecticut.

We help to enforce the Fair Housing Act through testing, education, providing legal advice and representation to those who have been discriminated against, and working to prevent foreclosures.

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What can we do?

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Support Anti-Racist Work

Support legislative advocacy efforts that are working towards equitable policy solutions and promoting equity.

Support organizations that are committed to anti-racist service.

Make a committee to address recuring diversity, equity, and inclusion issues education.

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Right to Counsel for Tenants Is Here!

Right to Counsel rollout began Jan. 31 in 14 zip codes with high eviction rates
Currently covers 25% of tenants & more zip codes coming soon
Connecticut is just the second state to implement Right to Counsel

Bridgeport: 06610 Waterbury: 06710

Hartford: 06105 / 06106 / 06112 / 06114 / 06120

New Haven: 06511 / 06513 / 06519

West Haven: 06516 Willimantic: 06226

Danielson: 06239 Putnam: 06260

The state seeded the program through 2023 with $20 million in ARPA/federal COVID relief funds, which will get the program off the ground and provide legal representation–and a systemic intervention in the eviction process–to tenants in many urban areas in the state that have experienced high eviction rates for years. But we don’t have a permanent funding source to keep the program going after the first two years or enough money to cover Connecticut tenants everywhere.

��Initially tenants in these zip codes will be eligible for legal representation, with priority given to those whose incomes are under 200% of the Federal Poverty Line: Bridgeport (06610), New Haven (06511, 06513, 06519), Hartford (06105, 06106, 06112, 06114, 06120), Waterbury (06710), Danielson (06239), Putnam (06260), West Haven (06516), Willimantic (06226).

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