Racial Integration in the Housing Market: An Advocacy Approach

Abstract

Racial integration in the housing market is a market condition in which whites, blacks, and others are in competition for housing in numbers roughly proportionate to their racial population and buying power. In-tegration in the real estate market should not be con-fused with other concepts. Integration is not transition or resegregation or the in-migration of minority group people. It is not keeping blacks out. It also is not the same as open housing or fair housing, which refer to laws prohibiting certain violations of the rights of in-dividuals or classes of people who have been subject to discrimination. Integration is neither mandated nor prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the Fair Housing Act, or the Civil Rights Act of 1866. These laws and others at the state and local levels relate to in-tegration by providing for open housing, but do not attack such problems as resegregation and self-steering which prevent integration.