Abstract

Will Interracial Housing Work?

With the enactment of the U.S. Housing Act in 1937, responsibility for building and operating public housing projects devolved on the local housing authorities, though the federal government continued to advance the money. No policy as to race relations was pressed on local authorities except that projects were to follow "community patterns and trends." The federal housing administrators had always viewed the racial issue in housing as an insoluble problem and gladly passed on the responsibility to the localities. The interracial housing does not work in the country. The indicated causes are mainly three varieties of fear, fear of losing social status, fear of losing established neighborhood associations, and fear of losing an investment.