Why 'Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing' Matters

Elias Isquith interviews Paul Jargowsky—professor of public policy at Rutgers University and the author of Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City—about the historical significance of the new fair housing rules produced by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  

Jargowsky calls on his experience working with the Clinton Administration and HUD to generate methods for affirmatively furthering fair housing. His conclusion: the new rules are long overdue in the effort to end segregation.

An example of the exchanges and arguments of the interview:

Is the administration endorsing any view or theory of segregation in particular with this plan? Or is it more of a grab-bag of ideas?

I don’t see that as endorsing or coming from a particular point of view about the sources of racial segregation, but I think it’s quite clear that at least partly it’s driven by the pattern of existing housing. If you look at how housing has been constructed, and I’m talking both private market and subsidized housing, over the last decade, that provides a framework within which people have to find their units. If we’re talking about a group of African Americans, who on average have much lower income than whites, if the housing they can afford is all within either the central cities or the older inner ring suburbs, that’s going to be a constraint on the ability to reduce segregation.