Thread by @aceckhouse

fun to hear Richard Rothstein say "YIMBY is one of my favorite organizations"

Rothstein: we've made excuses to ourselves for the persistence of residential segregation, trying to tell ourselves that it results from a series of individual actions instead of government policy

Rothstein is talking about the ways residential segregation perpetuates inequality in educational achievement through factors like disparate exposure to environmental hazards like air & lead pollution

refers to a Supreme Court decision written by John "racism is over, if I want it be" Roberts that struck down school desegregation (busing) efforts in Louisville & Seattle because that segregation was supposedly a result of private rather than public activity

Rothstein is sharing history of how the federal government came into integrated neighborhoods, tore down existing housing stock, and built segregated public housing

also refers to San Francisco & Cambridge as "self-satisfied smug places" 😅

"Watts was not a black neighborhood before World War II, it became the black neighborhood because that was where the federal government placed public housing for black workers," similar history in SF, Portland, Seattle

Rothstein is now recounting how Congressional conservatives planned to put forward a non-discrimination amendment for public housing after WWII as a poison pill to spike the whole endeavor

Northern liberals "made a difficult choice to oppose the amendment"

They thought everyone would be better off with federal public housing moving forward, but that amendment was used as justification by the federal government to enforce segregation of all housing

but white residents proved reluctant to move into even segregated public housing

white flight from public housing led to the need for subsidies, and culminated with the eviction of middle class residents from public housing & creation of pockets of concentrated poverty within the projects

why did we see white flight & long black waiting lists for public housing? largely due to a separate federal program

at the same time, the federal government was underwriting massive expansions of suburbia, attractive to middle class whites & off limits to black families

massive suburban developments like Levittown could only be financed with federal support, and the federal government required segregation

"if any of you live in these postwar suburbs, I bet if you look at the deed of your home you will see" racially restrictive covenants

federally underwritten mortgages in suburbia helped white families build wealth as those homes grew in value

black families were excluded from that opportunity to build wealth

today, black families' incomes are ~60% of white families' but black wealth is just 7% of white wealth

"The policies to redress segregation are well known": increase housing opportunities in exclusive suburbs + subsidies to ensure access by black families to those new homes

"We should be creating mixed income housing that includes market rate, workforce, and low income housing"

tears into LIHTC, which "increases segregation" by encouraging low income housing be placed in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty

Rothstein calls for "a new civil rights movement" & teases the impending formation of a new nationwide organization to that effect

Q&A time!

Q: Fair Housing Act was enacted in April 1968, but segregation is as bad or worse today in California as it was then

A: Fair Housing Act banned explicit discrimination in sale of housing, but didn't address broader structural forces; we need explicit racial subsidies

Q: very little political appetite in the US for reparations; are there other "race blind" policies that could help?

A: "I don't really think so… when I was young there was no appetite to desegregate buses & lunch counters, but a movement of activists changed that"

Q: have courts engaged with the evidence of de jure presentation presented?

A: "there's little possible redress through litigation… very few people who could claim to be plaintiffs" based on legacy of historic injustice; "what's needed is legislative solutions"

Q: zoning reform!

A: "I think zoning reform that increases density is an essential first step, but it's not the last step… we should abolish single family zoning nationwide [which is] designed to perpetuate segregation… need to go beyond that" (rent control, land trusts, more)

Q: should LIHTC generate for-sale low income housing?

A: It should be used to create mixed-income housing that includes market-rate, workforce, and low income housing… "segregating low income families in separate buildings, even in high opportunity neighborhoods" is not good

Rothstein reiterates that we don't lack policy ideas or understanding of needed changes, we lack political will & need a new civil rights movement to demand those policies be put in place

And we're concluding! @hanlonbt agrees that YIMBY policies to support more homebuilding are necessary but not sufficient to advance racial equity in housing, and that we must revisit our housing subsidy programs, starting with the biggest one: the Mortgage Interest Deduction