Creating Stable Racially Integrated Communities: A Review

ABSTRACT:

Policies aimed at eliminating racial discrimination in the housing market are not sufficient to achieve stable racially integrated neighborhoods. The latter require active intervention into local housing markets so that demand by both whites and blacks, at levels that represent stability, are maintained. This paper explores these intervention efforts and examines the prospects for their success in relation to seven topics: the goals of an integration strategy, the definition of stable integration, the types of communities in which integration should be pursued, the guidance given by theories of neighborhood change, the types of policies and program design, and the content of federal policy in support of integration. The paper concludes that weaknesses and conflicts within each of these areas, in conjunction with powerful forces in support of continued segregation, make the creation of stable integrated neighborhoods very difficult.