A Legacy of Segregation, A Push for Mix

In the United States, both public and private housing policies have, at different times, actively enforced racial segregation and later tried to reverse its effects.

From the 1930s, a federal practice known as redlining marked certain neighbourhoods, mostly home to Black and immigrant families, as too risky for mortgage lending, cutting off entire communities from homeownership for generations.

Private developers reinforced this system with restrictive covenants, clauses in property deeds that explicitly forbade selling homes to Black buyers, a practice the Supreme Court only declared unenforceable in 1948.

The consequences of these policies did not disappear when the practices themselves were banned: many American cities remain deeply segregated by neighbourhood today.

A History of Segregation

housing policy : la politique du logement
racial segregation : la ségrégation raciale
redlining : la pratique du "redlining" (discrimination au crédit immobilier)
to be denied access to : se voir refuser l'accès à

Concrete example: redlining maps drawn by federal agencies in the 1930s labelled Black neighbourhoods as high-risk, denying their residents mortgages for decades and locking in patterns of segregation still visible today.

Towards Greater Social Mix

urban renewal : la rénovation urbaine
social mix : la mixité sociale
to foster togetherness : favoriser le vivre ensemble
public housing : le logement social

Concrete example: the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere programme, known as HOPE VI and launched in 1992, funded the demolition of segregated public housing towers and their replacement with mixed-income neighbourhoods.

Critics of HOPE VI point out that many displaced families never returned to the rebuilt neighbourhoods, showing that fighting segregation on paper does not always guarantee it disappears in practice.

Key takeaways

Redlining : 1930s federal practice that denied mortgages to Black neighbourhoods.
Restrictive covenants : private segregation clauses banned by the Supreme Court in 1948.
HOPE VI (1992) : federal programme aiming to replace segregated housing with social mix.

Exercise: Guided Writing Practice: Can Policy Fix Housing Segregation?