The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

The Future of Fair Housing

• Table of Contents
• About the Commission
• Acknowledgements
• Executive Summary
  • Recommendations
• Introduction
• I. Housing Discrimination and Segregation Continue
• II. Fair Housing Enforcement at HUD is Failing
• III. Fair Housing Enforcement at the Justice Department is Weak
• IV. The Need for Strong Fair Housing Programs
• V. Fair Housing and the Foreclosure Crisis
• VI. Federal Housing Programs
• VII. Fair Housing Obligations of Federal Grantees
• VIII. Regionalism and Fair Housing Enforcement
• IX. The President's Fair Housing Council
• X. Fair Housing Education: A Missing Piece
• XI. The Necessity of Fair Housing Research
• XII. Conclusion

Appendices

• Appendix A: Emerging Fair Housing Issues
• Appendix B: International Disapproval of U.S. Fair Housing Policy
• Appendix C:
  • Letter to Congressional Leaders
  • Letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
• Appendix D: Commission Witnesses and Staff

Adopt a Regional Approach to Fair Housing

Any system of coordinated metropolitan planning should include consideration of the fair housing impacts of major investments in housing, transportation, health, employment, education and infrastructure development to encourage diversity and access to opportunity throughout metropolitan regions.

The federal government should consider reinstating a regional planning tool such as the A-95 Review process to require regional planning organizations to develop fair housing plans with specific target performance goals for each major metropolitan area. These plans could engage every jurisdiction in the metro area and include specific numerical and geographic targets for each federal housing program operating in the region, with the goal of expanding housing opportunity throughout the region and gradually breaking down historic patterns of segregation and concentrated poverty.

Public Housing Agencies in each metropolitan area should be encouraged and required to act cooperatively to promote desegregated housing opportunities for residents throughout the region.

HUD should encourage model inclusionary land-use regulations like the California Housing Element Law as part of its fair housing mandate to state, county and municipal grantees. Similarly, housing development or rehabilitation funds directed to cities should emphasize setasides of long term affordable housing in neighborhoods experiencing gentrification or similar commercial redevelopment.

Federal "smart growth" initiatives should incorporate fair housing principles and goals to support affordable and inclusive housing development near job centers and along transit corridors. States should be encouraged to link environmental and transportation planning with affordable housing development, similar to California’s recent anti-sprawl initiative.

Next Section: The President's Fair Housing Council