National Fair Housing Alliance

This post is part of an ACSblog symposium in honor of the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. The author, Cedric Ricks, is the communications associate of the National Fair Housing Alliance.

I still believe that freedom is the bonus you receive for telling the truth.  You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.  And I do not see how we will ever solve the turbulent problem of race confronting our nation until there is an honest confrontation with it and a willing search for the truth and a willingness to admit the truth when we discover it. -  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Grosse Pointe, Mich., on March 14, 1968

One week after the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the federal Fair Housing Act Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.  It took the loss of King and the resulting uprising to convince a timid Congress to act on behalf of millions of African-Americans living in substandard housing conditions in segregated communities. It’s fitting that more than 40 years later the nation now honors Dr. King with a memorial on the National Mall in the nation’s capital.

The tribute is a time for celebration at the National Fair Housing Alliance, but also a reminder that despite some real successes much of King’s vision, especially in achieving fairness in housing, remains a work in progress. In January 1966, Dr. King moved his family to the tenements on Chicago’s West side to dramatize the city’s deplorable segregated housing conditions. King used the rental experiences of black and white volunteers to prove that realtors were systematically denying African-Americans access to housing in Chicago. His call for making Chicago an “Open City” for housing and the subsequent riots that followed days later in the summer of 1966 were a sobering reminder for Americans that discrimination and bias in housing existed in areas other than the South.

In weeks leading up to his death, Dr. King spoke of the sad dualism of American society that allowed millions of people to “have the milk of prosperity and honey of equality” while millions of other citizens lived a daily ugliness that turned hope “into the fatigue of despair.” He described an America where almost 40 percent of African-American families lived in substandard housing conditions, thousands of youth attended inferior segregated schools and were deprived of an adequate education and a society that allowed millions to languish in unemployment or toil long hours for earnings that didn’t offer a livable wage. Life is arguably different, yet also strikingly similar for millions of Americans more than four decades after King’s inspiring journey.

The Fair Housing Act grew out of the Civil Right era, but it has been expanded over the years to protect individuals from discrimination based not only on race, color, and national origin, but also religion, sex, disability and familial status. In the future, protections may also be offered based on source of income, gender identity and sexual orientation. The law applies to housing and housing-related activities, including apartment and home rentals, real estate sales, mortgage lending and homeowners insurance.  But the act does more than just eliminate discrimination - its initial and continuing intent is to promote integration.

Today, legalized segregation in housing and many other aspects of American life has fallen away. But even with our steps toward equality 65 percent of Americans living in metropolitan areas still reside in areas of high segregation. There are also at least four million acts of housing discrimination every year. We know that where one lives still determines so much in life including education, access to health care and job opportunities.