“Again and again, attempts to create integrated neighborhoods have foundered in the face of vehement opposition from homeowners.”

 

“People say integration has failed,” said Julian, an assistant secretary for fair housing during the Clinton administration. “It hasn’t failed because it’s never been tried.”

 

Nothing in politics happens by accident. If you look hard enough, the reasons someone is put in office as well as the reasons they stay there are very clear. Politicians refuse to address the issues with housing and as a result, with housing discrimination because they clearly do not want to lose their base with homeowners. In a place where the ultimate dream is to own your own home, on your land, under your own circumstance, any stance showing anything but pure support of homeowners could lose a politician his or her entire base. People vote for their own interests, that is how America works, and no one would vote for a policy which takes money out of their pockets without directly benefitting them in some way. It bewilders me that in this day and age, that a minority family moving into a white neighborhood may be detrimental to housing value.

 

How is it possible to say that there is no longer segregation in this country when you look at public housing projects. These massive and crumbling structures were at one point designed to provide short-term housing for the poor and at need working to get back on their feet. And what these places have become are the long-term residences, populated almost entirely by poor populations of Blacks and Hispanics.

 

These areas of high concentrations of the poor and of minorities will never stop being what they are and what they are well known to be because homeowners don’t want to see it happen. Property owners want to see these “undesirable people” cooped up and away from their homes because somehow, we still live in an America where the property value of a neighborhood can be determined by how many people of color live there.