One of the original goals of the Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) program was to racially integrate the country – but instead it’s become a driver of segregation, said Philip Tegeler, president and executive director of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council.
“It’s the program that gives us the most immediate ability – as public officials, as policy makers, as advocates – to change some of the patterns of segregation,” Tegeler said at the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council’s 18th annual Regional Fair Housing Training Conference on April 10. The day-long event was held at the Missouri History Museum.
Tegeler showed two maps – one that highlighted the most racially concentrated neighborhoods in the St. Louis area, and another that shows where Section 8 vouchers are being used. They were almost identical maps. When the Section 8 program was rolled out during President Richard Nixon’s administration, it was partly a Republican response to public housing, he said. They wanted to use private market and landlords to provide housing.
“It was also a reaction to the intense segregation in public housing,” Tegeler said, “and the idea that people should have a choice in the market to move into lower-poverty areas.”
However, 2.2 million families participate in the program, and the maps look very similar nationwide. Tegeler said he has been shocked to see some of the apartment listings that housing authorities hand out to families. The lists are disproportionately housing units in high-poverty areas.
“It’s akin to steering the real estate market,” he said. “This is a practice that needs to end. It’s a practice that violates the Fair Housing Act. And it goes on and on.”
Both the city and county housing authorities have the ability to cut the rents and discourage families from moving into housing in the worst areas, he said. The systematic segregation of the federal housing programs bleeds into many other areas. The pattern of school segregation mimics the housing segregation, he said.
Tegeler said, if successful, the housing voucher program would help to integrate the school systems. Yet, the schools are even more segregated than they were in the 1970s, when school desegregation programs began. In the 1990s, the U.S. Supreme Court began pulling back from school desegregation programs, and the effects were grave, he said.
Following Tegeler’s keynote speech was a panel discussion looking at local views of modern segregation. Rigel Oliveri, a University of Missouri-Columbia law professor, spoke about the discriminatory impacts of occupancy permits. Throughout the St. Louis region, both tenants and home owners are required to request occupancy permits from a local municipality before occupying their homes. In some municipalities, there are requirements about what a “single family” looks like. Oliveri said this poses a problem because of the growing rate of blended families, or live-in couples with children who aren’t married.
One such family in the City of Black Jack was denied occupancy to live in a home they purchased. The city now faces legal action.
Oliveri said these permit processes pose several problems, including invasion of privacy, infringement of liberty and excessive government oversight.
Representatives from the St. Louis Association of Realtors, Gail Brown and Denise Outlaw-Adams, talked about the need to take proactive steps to stabilize North County neighborhoods after the Ferguson unrest.
They are planning an open house tour in Ferguson, and they invite anyone to lend a hand and volunteer.
“Whatever happens in Ferguson happens in St. Louis,” said Outlaw-Adams, earning applause. “It’s not just a Ferguson thing.”
