Understanding and acknowledging past injustices is the first step toward making homes equitably available to all families. Efforts to make changes come from multiple directions. There are legislative changes (some which have passed and some that are proposed), and nonprofit agencies and advocacy groups that work both legislatively and with direct action. In addition, there are grassroots efforts to change neighborhood dynamics and to add resources.

Updating the Fair Housing Act with the Equality Act

Activism, pictured in Figure 8.16, contributed to the passage of The Fair Housing Act in 1968. It originally banned the sale and rental of housing (and other housing practices) indicating preference or discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin. In 1974, it was amended to include sex, and in 1988, people with disabilities and people with children. To date, it does not include gender identity or sexual orientation. To date, the Fair Housing Act does not protect gender identity or sexual orientation. Only a handful of states have made it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity and that creates a challenge for LGBTQ+ families and couples (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, n.d.).

In 2016, a rule by HUD ensured equal access to Community Planning and Development programs regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or marriage status, nonconforming gender individuals may find it difficult to access services as this rule applies to one specific program (and not to other public or private programs) (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2016).

Figure 8.16. Many years of social activism, including protests, contributed to the creation and passage of the Fair Housing Act.

The 2019 Equality Act is an attempt to make all Americans equal in work, housing, and other public environments. The Equality Act has been proposed multiple times since the 1970s, the most recent a 2021 bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would amend the Civil Rights Act to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of the sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition of an individual, as well as because of sex-based stereotypes.” This act was sent to the U.S. Senate most recently in March 2021 and was reintroduced in both chambers in 2023. It has not yet passed (Equality Act, 2021).

Addressing Houselessness: Housing First

People who are houseless can experience an overlap of social problems, such as poverty, untreated mental illness, unemployment, and addictions. Traditionally, programs attempt to help people become “ready for housing” via support and criteria that may require multiple moves. For example, the person must become sober or employed first. A relatively new and innovative approach called Housing First sprung from grassroots efforts as early as 1988 in California and 1992 in New York. Simply put, Housing First prioritizes providing people with stable housing, which makes solving other problems more likely. Having a secure home, consistent access to schooling, transportation and support services means that people can be more successful in addressing overlapping issues such as mental health, addiction, and seeking employment.

Review the first page of the Housing First: National Alliance to End Homelessness, which is a nonprofit organization that exemplifies the approach to end houselessness. The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness has endorsed the Housing First approach. HUD estimates that houselessness costs the government between $30,000 and $60,000 per person annually, due to emergency room visits and jail time. A less expensive solution is to actually provide people with housing.

Various communities have adopted the Housing First approach, and it looks different depending on the resources and principles of each location. Utah’s Housing First approach is a model for how these services can be made available. Through the collaboration of many local organizations and donations from local churches, real permanent semi-communal housing is provided, along with services such as counseling. A true success story, Utah was able to reduce its houseless rate by 91% and the rate remains low, eight years later. For example, Grace Mary Manor in Salt Lake City is a permanent affordable housing facility for 84 chronically houseless individuals with a disabling condition. One resident, Joe Ortega, talks about the 1,000-piece puzzle he has laid out in his room, describing it as his “new addiction.” He was able to move into Grace Mary Manor, and then address the drinking and drugs he had used to deal with life. Through programs like this, Utah was able to decrease their houseless population by 91% (Mcevers, 2015).

If you would like to see a local organization in action, check out this Portland group founded in 1992. They report that they supported 1,377 people leaving the street for permanent and stable housing in 2018. One year later, 83% of those families remain stable (Join, n.d.).

Standards to End Houselessness

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness has determined criteria and benchmarks for communities to achieve the goal of ending chronic houselessness. Standards are important because they help us identify what we are working toward.

These criteria are summarized as follows:

1. The community has identified and provided outreach to all individuals experiencing or at risk for chronic houselessness and prevents chronic houselessness whenever possible.
2. The community provides access to shelter or other temporary accommodations immediately to any person experiencing unsheltered chronic houselessness who wants it.
3. The community has implemented a community-wide Housing First orientation and response that also considers the preferences of the individuals being served.
4. The community assists individuals experiencing chronic houselessness to move swiftly into permanent housing with the appropriate level of supportive services and effectively prioritizes people for permanent supportive housing.
5. The community has resources, plans, and system capacity in place to prevent chronic houselessness from occurring and to ensure that individuals who experienced chronic houselessness do not fall into houselessness again or, if they do, are quickly reconnected to permanent housing.

These goals are considered met when the benchmark of maintaining these criteria has been met for 90 days. Though likely not achievable, the goal of zero houseless individuals in a community is aspirational (U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, 2016).

Changing Opportunities

We’ve discussed at length redlining and the continuing effects on people of color. How can the effects of so many years of institutionalized discrimination be undone? Analysis and action can contribute to change. Communities across the United States have been analyzed by The Opportunity Atlas, which identifies neighborhoods from which children are most likely to rise out of poverty. Click on the link to assess your own community from a variety of social characteristics, including race, sex, and income (U.S. Census and Opportunity Insights, n.d.).

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management partnered with the Seattle Public Housing Authority and King County (WA) Public Housing Authority and used The Opportunity Atlas to create a pilot program that offered families using housing vouchers to move into “high opportunity neighborhoods” as defined by the Atlas. Research shows that each year spent in a high opportunity neighborhood increases the likelihood of children going to college and total lifetime earnings by at least $200,000 (Chetty et al., 2016).

In the Creating Moves to Opportunity project, families received additional basic services, such as education on the location of opportunity neighborhoods, personalized rental application coaching, housing search assistance, and financial assistance. Fifty-four percent of the families receiving this assistance chose to move to opportunity neighborhoods compared to approximately 14% of families who received standard services. This demonstrates that families using housing vouchers are not choosing lower opportunity neighborhoods because of preference; when given education, means, and the choice to move to higher opportunity neighborhoods, they are more likely to do so. This still in progress project offers hope that there are ways that federal housing voucher programs can change the course of intergenerational poverty via investments in families who use vouchers (Delvin-Foltz, 2019). In 2019, HUD funded a larger version of this project (Bell, 2019).

Community Efforts

Individuals and communities are taking initiative to improve their neighborhoods aesthetically and with increasing resources that benefit families, such as informal libraries, green spaces, and art houses.

For example, Theaster Gates, a University of Chicago professor who is also a potter and social activist, started by drawing attention to one rundown home that he refurbished, and gradually organized multiple grassroots efforts that have used culture to transform the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood in Chicago (Figure 8.17; TED Talks, 2015).

Figure 8.17. Theaster Gates organized multiple grassroots efforts that have used culture to transform the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood in Chicago.

In the video in Figure 8.18, Gates discusses how imagination, beauty, and art can revive a neighborhood.

https://www.ted.com/talks/theaster_gates_how_to_revive_a_neighborhood_with_imagination_beauty_and_art?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Figure 8.18. How to Revive a Neighborhood: with Imagination, Beauty, and Art [TED Video]. Theaster Gates discusses how he has transformed abandoned buildings into create community hubs that connect and inspire those who live there (and draw in those who don’t).

Another organization, the international organization Firmeza Foundation based in the Netherlands, works with local neighborhoods to create community artwork. Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn (aka Haas and Hahn) work on the designs with community members, then hire and train local residents to complete the painting. Dre Urhahn describes the impact of the attention and love that community members pour into their neighborhoods, as well as the resulting beauty, as transformational aspects of the projects (Urhahn, 2017). Two well-known projects are the favela paintings in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Northern Philadelphia in the United States.

Licenses and Attributions for Community Efforts to Improve Housing Access

Open Content, Original

“Community Efforts to Improve Housing Access” by Elizabeth B. Pearce, Katherine Hemlock, and Wesley Sharp. License: CC BY 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

Figure 8.16. “Fair housing protest, Seattle, Washington, 1964” by Seattle Municipal Archives. License: CC BY 2.0.

Figure 8.17. “Theaster Gates” by Locust Projects. Public domain.

Figure 8.18. “How to Revive a Neighborhood: with Imagination, Beauty, and Art” by Theaster Gates/TED Talks. License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

References

Bell, A. (2019, February 15). HUD funding bill will launch housing voucher mobility demonstration. CBPP. https://www.cbpp.org/blog/hud-funding-bill-will-launch-housing-voucher-mobility-demonstration

Chetty, R., Hendren, N., & Katz, L. F. (2016). The effects of exposure to better neighborhoods on children: New evidence from the moving to opportunity experiment. American Economic Review, 106(4), 855–902. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20150572

Delvin-Foltz, S. (2019, February 20). The new mobility demonstration puts opportunity within reach for children across the country. Opportunity Insights. https://opportunityinsights.org/updates/the-new-mobility-demonstration-puts-opportunity-within-reach-for-children-across-the-country/

Equal access in accordance with the individual’s gender identity in community planning and development programs, 24 CFR § 5.106 (2016). https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-24/subtitle-A/part-5/subpart-A/section-5.106

Equality Act. (2021, March 17). https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5.

Mcevers, K. (2015, December 10). Utah reduced chronic homelessness by 91 Percent. Here’s how. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how

Join. (n.d.). About. Retrieved May 15, 2020, from https://joinpdx.org/about/

Rosenbaum, R. (n.d.). Sustainable living wages and income. CREA. https://crea.org/sustainable-living-wage-and-income/sustainable-living-wage-introduction/

TED Talks. (2015, March 18). Theaster Gates. Retrieved May 15, 2020, from https://www.ted.com/speakers/theaster_gates

Urhahn, D. (2017, November 10). How can public art projects transform rough neighborhoods (G. Raz, Interviewer)? NPR. Retrieved May 15, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/transcripts/562877158

U.S. Census and Opportunity Insights. (n.d.). The opportunity atlas [interactive map]. Retrieved May 14, 2020, from https://www.opportunityatlas.org/

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (n.d.). Housing discrimination and persons identifying as LGBTQ. https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/housing_discrimination_and_persons_identifying_lgbtq

U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. (2016, June 1). Criteria and benchmark for achieving the goal of ending chronic homelessness. https://www.usich.gov/resources/uploads/asset_library/Chronic_Homelessness_Criteria_and_Benchmark_Aug18.pdf