Desegrating Westchester

by Leigh Graham

categories: Cities, Federal, Government, Housing, Policy, Race Ethnicity Class & Gender

Published August 11, 2009 @ 07:07AM PT

From the NYT:

Westchester County entered into a landmark desegregation agreement on Monday that would compel it to create hundreds of houses and apartments for moderate-income people in overwhelmingly white communities and aggressively market them to nonwhites in Westchester and New York City.

The lawsuit was filed by a non-profit advocacy group known as the Anti-Discrimination Center, which states that the multi-year affordable housing production plan to be paid for the county is not a guarantee of racial desegregation, but opens up the possibility of such an outcome.  I'm a bit confused by the equivocation there, but what's more interesting is how an affordable housing program to racially desegregate communities points to the nefarious intersection of race and class.

Most of Westchester County, New York (just north of NYC) is affluent; it also, as a result of the wealth gap in the U.S., is mostly white.   Blacks comprise fewer than 3% of the population in targeted towns, and this is likely due to the confluence of a) the prohibitive cost of these neighborhoods for the average African-American homeowner or renter and b) the subtle steering away of blacks, people of color or other potential residents who don't fit the desired make-up of these homogeneous, well-off neighborhoods.

Sure, the well-to-do black attorney or doctor or banker may buy into the neighborhood, but occupations have different racial (and gendered makeups - think of nurses vs. doctors, for instance; who earns more and can buy more house?) make-ups, which affects levels of household income that constrain where folks can afford to buy houses.  Racial residential segregation persists strongly today because of these reinforcing intersections.  Such that we end up mandating homes affordable to nurses, teachers, firefighters, mechanics, mid-level union workers, etc. in white neighborhoods so that more families of color can move in.  It's a very tricky process.

Enforcing fair housing is a key, often overlooked, element of affordable housing policy and practice in the US.  As Change.org'ers could tell you, housing discrimination extends to people with disabilities and even families with children (a perennial problem in my neighborhood overrun with absentee landlords and students).  This program in Westchester responds to negligent housing discrimination, and in doing so also points to the ever sticky issue of confronting racial inequality in our anti-poverty activism.

(Photo by dandeluca)