Despite the Fair Housing Act being passed, housing discrimination is still frequent today in the United States. The act was passed to promote equality of all groups when renting or buying a home, yet minority groups are still being discriminated against in subtle ways. Redlining, the refusal of financial help such as loans based on race or ethnicity, is often used in the sense that people of color tend to receive higher down payments for homes regardless of their economic standing. This makes it even harder for minority groups to purchase or rent homes since they tend to be paid less and have a harder time finding jobs. Research provided by the CQ Researcher also demonstrated that white clients who were looking to buy or rent a home were shown “safe” neighborhoods, while minority groups were often shown to less safe areas with high crimes. If this is true for most cases, then certain neighborhoods would be predominantly one race or ethnicity, indicating a possible underlying form of segregation existing in the housing system. Thus, fueling the inequality that exists in America. While it’s hard to combat a system filled with different mentalities, a plausible solution as to how to decrease discrimination is through education. If people are educated, especially at a young age, about the social injustices that exist in our country, there can be an understanding about what they can do to change a system built to keep some people winning and majority losing.
Moreover, chapter 12 touched on increasing the minimum wage and similar to every issue that comes up, it comes with opposition and support. While a rise in the minimum wage might lead to slight inflation and an increased cost in expenditures on business owners, the overall benefits would outweigh this. In exchange, more people will have more money in their pockets for spending both on their necessities as well as luxuries, making life easier for more families.
