The Evolving Challenges of Fair Housing Since 1968: Open Housing, Integration, and the Reduction of Ghettoization,” Cityscape: A

As the legislative history surrounding the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (Polikoff, 1986), subsequent court rulings (for example, Zuch v. Hussey, 1975), and Federal policy pronouncements (Smith, 1993), make clear there are multiple fair housing goals. Three are relevant for this article: n The elimination of differential treatment, which discriminates on the basis of race.1 n The creation of stable, racially diverse neighborhoods. n The reduction of ghettos occupied by poor minority households. I believe that we have made, at best, only halting—far from satisfactory—progress since 1968 in achieving the first two goals. Moreover, we have clearly regressed with regard to the last goal. Due to our retrogression on the last goal, we have achieved little on the first two goals despite considerable increases in institutional fair housing capacity. Because we have moved further from attaining this last goal of eliminating minority poverty ghettos, race relations in this Nation continue to be poisoned by stereotypes generalized from ghetto behaviors. Rationalization of these stereotypes provides a basis for justifying continued discrimination and self-segregation by Whites, with the concomitant difficulties in progressing toward the first two goals. This process of circular causation I call spatial racism. As a consequence, the emerging challenge for fair housing is to reverse “ghettoization, ” which implies fighting both differential treatment directed at lower income minorities and the adverse impacts of a host of institutional practices related to metropolitan spatial arrangements