Although I believe the writer of this ProPublica article certainly has a a biased stance, I have no doubts as to the legitimacy of the evidence brought up.

From the article, it seems very clear that a large segment of the population was opposed to the idea of integrating neighborhoods. “Forced integration” was how it was viewed, and any action towards fair housing was met with fierce resistance. Shockingly, even the HUD was complicit and suffered from internal segregation. Perhaps this was the most important roadblock for the push to fair housing. I think an adequate analogy is frighting to give teeth to a dog that won’t bite. If the HUD (more specifically, certain employees within HUD) choose not to perform their jobs correctly by not reviewing funding proposals and even going as far as to “tell recipients they didn’t have to comply with fair housing regulations,” then no bill from Congress can hope to make strong impact on the situation.

However, an overall theme emerged from this article- one that was only confirmed towards the end. It has to do with the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which mandated the government to “affirmatively further” fair housing. I suspected that it was this “affirmatively further” that would cause problems, and sure enough, it was. Because it has no definition or criteria, it is left completely open to interpretation. Unfortunately, the language persisted, and wasn’t conducive to any advancement in fair housing.

At one point, however, the “further fair housing phrase” was used to state the the government “had an active role to play in desegregation.”

The article clearly states that “what Congress meant by the phrase ‘affirmatively further fair housing,’” was a crucial issue, and that no changes were made. It wasn’t until the end of the article, where the story of Rolando Alvarado realizing that that there is no clear definition of “affirmatively furthering fair housing,” and that it’s left to personal interpretation.

On that note, I leave this from the update: “In its 5–4 ruling, the Court held that governments or lending institutions can be sued based in part on statistical evidence that certain categories of residents had suffered what is known as “disparate impact,” as a consequence of housing or lending policies.”

Will “disparate impact” have the same issues that “affirmatively furthering fair housing” did?