Wednesday, July 01, 2015

SCOTUS: "Exclusionary housing practices that result in adverse racial segregation are unconstitutional."

Those "other" Supreme Court rulings overshadowed this one.

The Supreme Court Keeps the Fair Housing Law Effective, by the Editorial Board of the New York Times

 ... Explicit, legally sanctioned racial segregation in housing may be over, Justice Kennedy wrote, but “its vestiges remain today, intertwined with the country’s economic and social life.” From discriminatory lending practices to zoning laws that favor higher-income home buyers, persistent patterns work to hurt minorities and other vulnerable groups the law was written to protect.

At City Lab, the crux of it.

The question at the heart of the Supreme Court’s decision in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project was whether Texas could concentrate low-income housing tax credits in poorer minority neighborhoods—away from wealthier white neighborhoods. The answer is no: Exclusionary housing practices that result in adverse racial segregation are unconstitutional.

In a city like New Albany where virtually every resident has an opinion about sewers, public housing or both, it's hard to see how this does not pertain to us, and yet the topic remains divorced from public discussion.

$20 million on parks.

Housing? Pins drop and crickets chirp.

Wealth Doesn't Trickle Down, But the Effects of Housing Discrimination Do, by Kriston Capps (City Lab)

From 1990 to 2010, wealth has accumulated in ever-richer neighborhoods, thanks in part to exclusionary housing practices.

The opinion with the greatest impact from the Supreme Court’s latest term may very well be the case that decided the future of fair housing. The Court’s decision last week in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project affirms that it is unconstitutional to set housing policies that discriminate implicitly against a protected minority.

This decision is as wide reaching as the court’s mandates on healthcare and marriage equality, yet its impact can be harder to understand. That’s because economic stratification and racial segregation have been built into our neighborhoods over the course of many years, even decades.

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