"Still Separate and Still Unequal: How the Department of Housing and Urban Development Can Eradicate Racial Residential Segregation"

Abstract

The first part of Still Separate and Still Unequal examines how the agenda pursued by former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), George Romney, was the closest that America would come to achieving racial residential integration. In accordance with the Fair Housing Act of 1968, Romney linked municipalities’ urban renewal funding with their willingness to racially integrate. Most notably, President Nixon reversed his apparent written support for HUD’s policies to promote racial resident integration due to his fear of alienating white working-class voters, who greatly influenced his election in the Presidential Election of 1968. With his attention focused on the then upcoming Presidential Election of 1972, Nixon made it increasingly difficult and uncomfortable for Romney to pursue his agenda and placed an eighteen-month moratorium on HUD’s funding. Romney resigned as Secretary of HUD in January 1973. The second part of Still Separate and Still Unequal examines how successive HUD Secretaries including Henry Cisneros, Andrew Cuomo, Alphonso Jackson, have pursued moderate policies that haven’t addressed racial residential integration. The last portion investigates how small, integrated communities like South Orange, New Jersey and Oak Park, Illinois can serve as potential models for HUD to apply their strategies at the federal level. Overall, Still Separate and Still Unequal examines how HUD could achieve racial residential integration in the years since Romney’s resignation despite its missed opportunity.