The Unintended Consequences of Fair Housing Laws
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Description
Alan Jenkins, the executive director of the Opportunity Agenda, has written an all too one-sided defense of the fair housing laws. His major error is to assume that the goals of the law, however laudable, can be achieved by the coercive means that the government wishes to employ. The legal issue at stake in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project is whether it is possible to prove a violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 without producing any evidence of an intention on the part of government authorities to engage in acts of discrimination. I have written at length elsewhere on the technical aspects of this case and the complex statutory framework in which the federal government closely monitored the distribution of federal funds into certain low-income areas. It simply challenges credibility to think that the Texas Department violated the Fair Housing Act because of its good faith effort to comply with the complex dictates of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. Imposing any comprehensive federal judicial oversight on how Texas should run its program would require a huge expenditure of state and national funds that could be spent far better in dealing with the housing needs of the poor. It is simply false to assume that a statement of laudable ends of social and racial integration insulates the means chosen from criticism by those on the other side.
Source Publication
The Dream Revistied: Contemporary Debates About Housing, Segregation, and Opportunity in the Twenty-first Century
Source Editors/Authors
Ingrid Gould Ellen, Justin Peter Steil
Publication Date
2019
Recommended Citation
Epstein, Richard A., "The Unintended Consequences of Fair Housing Laws" (2019). Faculty Chapters. 360.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/360
