Intentional racial discrimination and segregation by the federal government as a principal cause of concentrated poverty: a response to Schill and Wachter.

• Author: Roisman, Florence Wagman
• Position: Article by Michael H. Schill and Susan M. Wachter in this issue, p. 1285 - Symposium - Shaping American Communities: Segregation, Housing & the Urban Poor

Schill and Wachter's The Spatial Bias of Federal Housing Law and Policy: Concentrated Poverty in Urban America(1) is a rich and stimulating article on a vitally important topic: the role of federal housing law and policy in creating the concentrations of poverty that devastate our society. The authors of this article and the organizers of this Symposium deserve great credit for addressing one of the most serious problems in United States society today: the extreme residential separation imposed on blacks and the concentrated poverty that results.

I have two general criticisms of the article. My first, and principal, criticism is that Schill and Wachter pay too little attention to the racial discrimination and segregation that pervade the federal housing programs. They begin by identifying several causes of concentrated poverty, including racial discrimination and federal housing policies, but do not discuss the conjunction of these two causes. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton have shown that a fundamental way in which federal housing policies have concentrated poverty has been through racial discrimination and segregation in the administration of those programs.(2) The Civil Rights Commission has reported that of all the sources of residential segregation, "[t]he Federal Government ... has ... been most influential in creating and maintaining urban residential segregation."(3) If we agree that residential segregation concentrates black poverty, then federal housing policy stands indicted as a principal cause of concentrating poverty.(4) The bulk of my response addresses the issue of racial segregation in the federal housing programs.

My second criticism is that the language of Schill and Wachter's article creates confusion by often treating as synonyms the terms "black," "poverty," and "problem household" and the terms "low-income," "poor," and "welfare recipient." The nonequivalence of the first three terms should be obvious. The nonequivalence of the second three terms is a matter of statutory and administrative definition. Using national average figures, "low-income," for most federal housing programs, means an income of no more than $28,000 per year for a family of four;(5) "poor" means an income approximately half of that, or $14,335 per year;(6) and recipients of "welfare" or, as I prefer, public assistance, receive cash benefits of no more than approximately $5200 per year, less than half the poverty-level income.(7) Analysis of the issues is obscured when these concepts are not distinguished from one another.

In this response, I comment on four aspects of Schill and Wachter's article: (1) causes of concentrated poverty in the public housing program; (2) the relationship of large public housing developments to neighborhood poverty; (3) current policies that concentrate poverty in public housing; and (4) possible solutions to the concentration of poverty. Public housing must be considered in the context of the full array of federal housing laws and policies, including the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC),(8) the home mortgage loan insurance and guarantee programs of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Department of Agriculture;(9) urban renewal and community development programs;(10) tax programs, including the home mortgage interest deduction and the low-income housing tax credit; and the many demand- and supply-side subsidies of the public and assisted housing programs administered by HUD and the Department of Agriculture. In addition, it is important to take into account other federal policies that have a substantial role in concentrating poverty(11) and the shared responsibility of state and local government agencies for racial discrimination and concentrated poverty.(12)

1. THE CAUSES OF CONCENTRATED POVERTY IN THE PUBLIC HOUSING PROGRAM

   Schill and Wachter assert that the federal housing program that "has generated the most intense pattern of concentrated poverty" is the public housing program.(13) This is true only in the narrow sense that public housing serves the largest number of poor people. More poor people live in public housing than in housing associated with any other government program because poor people generally are excluded from the other housing programs. Much to the credit of the public housing program, it has been open and hospitable to very poor people when every other government housing program has excluded or severely limited their participation.(14)

   To some extent, very poor people are excluded from other programs because the programs provide only a shallow subsidy, so that very poor people would have to pay extremely high percentages of their incomes for rent. (This is true, for example, of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program and interest-credit programs such as sections 221(d)(3)(15) and 236.(16)) Some very poor people still would choose to live in those shallow-subsidy developments, preferring to pay high percentages of their income rather than live in terrible housing; others have Section 8 certificates or vouchers and would choose to use them in those shallow-subsidy developments. Many of these very poor families, however, are excluded from these developments by a series of devices: minimum income requirements, refusal to accept Section 8 certificate or voucher holders,(17) refusal to accept public assistance recipients, or outright racial, ethnic or other illegal discrimination. Even more telling, there are other federal housing programs that offer deep subsidies and that are, in theory, as available to very poor people as public housing. The Section 8 program, for example, has essentially the same income eligibility and preference requirements as does public housing, but the incomes of Section 8 residents are higher than the incomes of public housing residents.(18) This is because very poor people often are excluded from Section 8. Similarly, the Section 202 program for the elderly and handicapped is deeply subsidized and can serve very poor people, but the income levels in Section 202 housing are above the levels in public housing.(19) We need to ask not what it is about public housing that makes it open to very poor people, but what it is about the other federal housing programs that keeps very poor people out of them.

   1. Racial Discrimination and Segregation in Public and Other Housing

      Programs as a Cause of Concentrated Poverty

      The first and most important point to make is that public housing and the other federal housing programs have been used to create and maintain racial discrimination and rigid segregation which, as Massey and Denton show, concentrates poverty.

      The federal government intentionally established the public housing program on a de jure racially segregated basis.(20) Schill and Wachter note that the federal public housing program gave considerable authority over siting decisions to local communities, enabling some to exclude public housing altogether and allowing others to confine public housing to high-density developments on small sites.(21) The historical and legal literature establishes that the single most powerful explanation for this exclusion and confinement of family public housing has been hostility to people of color, particularly blacks;(22) and the historical and legal literature also establishes that the federal government has been fully complicit with the local agencies in that discrimination.(23) Segregation in public housing and other federal programs continues.(24) A recent HUD report confirms that "most African Americans living in public housing live in a largely African-American and poor community, whereas whites, living in elderly housing, typically live in areas with large numbers of whites who are not poor."(25) The federal government never has performed its constitutionally mandated duty to undo that segregation, to eliminate its vestiges "root and branch."(26)

      Racial discrimination in other federal housing programs has helped to confine blacks to public housing. The Section 8 Existing Housing Assistance Program is administered in a racially discriminatory way, with HUD's complicity:(27) blacks in public housing or on the public housing waiting list are told that they cannot apply for Section 8 without losing their place on the public housing list; they are refused access to Section 8 subsidies in the suburbs through the employment of residency preferences and other discriminatory mechanisms.(28) Why are Section 202 projects predominantly white? Why do black elderly and handicapped people more often live in public housing than in Section 202 housing? Very poor whites have options that very poor blacks lack. While whites are only 35% of the public housing population, they hold 45% of the certificates/vouchers and reside in 57% of the subsidized, project-based housing.(29) The HUD-assisted programs' affirmative marketing regulations are ignored.(30) The federal government's largest contemporary subsidized housing production program--the Low Income Housing Tax Credit--operates without any civil rights regulations and without information about the race of residents and the extent of segregation in or near project sites.(31) Both HUD and the President have acknowledged the federal government's failure affirmatively to advocate measures to promote fair housing.(32)

      I consider that the single most important reason why poor people are concentrated in conventional public housing is that racial discrimination continues to move poor people out of federally aided housing other than pubic housing. I proceed, however, to consider the other suggestions made by Professors Schill and Wachter.

   2. Bad Physical Conditions in Public Housing as a Cause of Concentrated

      Poverty

      I completely agree with Schill and Wachter that bad physical conditions in public housing promote concentrated poverty. When public housing is substandard, people who have options other than public...