In 2015, under the Obama administration, the HUD issued the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, requiring state and local housing agencies to affirmatively further the fair-housing law’s goal of banning housing discrimination and promoting housing desegregation. Fair-housing advocates called the rule “the most serious effort” (262) ever to require communities to reduce housing segregation. Yet, critics opposed the rule on grounds that it threatens local control of zoning issues (275).  In January 2018, under the Trump administration, HUD announced the delay of enforcement of the AFFH (NY Times). The AFFH remains controversial.

A goal of AFFH is housing desegregation. Specifically, the rule requires local governments to take meaningful actions that replace segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns (HUD). Over the past few decades, HUD and public housing agencies have been criticized for concentrating public housing in minority neighborhoods. Fair-housing advocates and bipartisan commission call for reorienting federal housing programs to help low-income families or minorities move to better communities with jobs, and access to high quality education, health and transportation. Thus, low-income families can thrive and we can reduce racial segregation and concentrated poverty (275).

However, I think that poverty is the root cause of today’s housing segregation, not the other way around. Affluent minorities do not live in racially-segregated poor neighborhoods because they can afford to move to low-poverty and racially mixed neighborhoods. Relocation or desegregation itself does not necessarily means greater job opportunity or economic fortunes. People who don’t meet educational requirements for jobs, or lack job skills and working experience would certainly have less chance to land a high-paying job no matter where they reside. Nonetheless, children of low-income families benefit from better schools and a safer environment. Study showed that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood when young increases college attendance and earnings and reduces single parenthood rates (Chetty et al, 2016).

Despite that low-income families may benefit in certain ways from moving to better neighborhoods than the ones they currently live in, there are some serious obstacles. The limited federal housing funds, as well as political opposition, including resistance from majority-white neighborhoods, may limit the potential for relocation or desegregation. For example, the Section 8 program provides subsidies to low-income families to rent housing in the private market. The program does enhance tenant choice and access to a broader range of neighborhoods. However, fewer than one in four who qualify for assistance receive it (275). Thus, in addition to helping low-income families move out of a high-poverty area, other approaches are need to achieve fair housing and reduce poverty. Federal, state and local governments should place greater emphasis on transforming areas of concentrated poverty into areas of high opportunity, through some effective programs such as equipping residents of distressed urban areas with the skills they need to prosper, improving school performance, expanding investment and spurring economic development in the distressed communities, and reducing crime in poor neighborhoods, etc.