A Look in the Housing History Book: A Shining Birthday for Fair Housing Act

Credit: Greater Baltimore Comm. Housing Resources Board

April is National Fair Housing Month, a HUD designation with special significance this year as the Fair Housing Act turns forty-five. The Fair Housing Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 11, 1968 as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which expanded the protections from discrimination codified in the previous Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Act was a response to the "open housing marches", calls for fair housing legislation, and tireless advocacy on the part of civil rights leaders, including the recently assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on, race, religion, national origin, or sex." 42 U.S.C. § 3604 et seq. While it is often overshadowed by the other monumental civil rights legislation and Great Society programs of the 1960s, the Fair Housing Act has played a pivotal role in helping Americans of all racial backgrounds, ethnicities, and protected classes obtain equal access to a most essential and basic human need- housing. In 1988, the Act was amended to preclude housing discrimination based on disability or family status. The Act provided a federal statutory basis to counteract discrimination, abandoning the cumbersome "state versus private action" distinction that courts used to strike down racially restrictive covenants in the 1940s. See Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948). Throughout the past five decades, the Fair Housing Act has been used to shift the burden on landlords to provide a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason to deny access to housing to a member of a protected class, invalidate racial quotas in housing, and to provide compensation to minority homebuyers disproportionately affected by subprime lending practices. See Asbury v. Brougham, 866 F.2d 1276 (10th Cir. 1989); U.S. v. Starrett City Assocs., 488 U.S. 946 (1988); e.g., U.S. v. Wells Fargo Bank (D.D.C. 2012). Forty-five years later, the U.S. housing landscape, though far from perfect, is a much more equitable place thanks to the many years of fair housing advocates' tireless  efforts and the wielding of one lucite-stemmed pen.

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