Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Side By Side: Revitalizing Urban Cores And Ensuring Residential Diversity, Andrea Boyack
Side By Side: Revitalizing Urban Cores And Ensuring Residential Diversity, Andrea Boyack
Faculty Publications
Fifty years ago, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed a hope that someday people of all races would “live side by side in decent, safe, and sanitary housing.” Residential patterns in America today, however, remain highly segregated by race and income. The Fair Housing Act outlawed overt housing discrimination and unjustified discriminatory impacts, but zoning laws and housing finance structures have continued to impede housing integration, leaving communities nearly as racially homogenous as they were in the mid 20th century. These separate neighborhoods are far from equal. The majority of people who reside in financially distressed city-center neighborhoods are …
A New American Dream For Detroit, Andrea Boyack
A New American Dream For Detroit, Andrea Boyack
Faculty Publications
The problem of neighborhood deterioration is keenly visible in Detroit today, but Detroit’s housing struggles are not unique. Like most of America, the Detroit metropolitan area is racially fragmented, and minority neighborhoods are the most likely to be impoverished and failing. Detroit’s problems of housing abandonment and neighborhood decay are both caused and exacerbated by decades of housing segregation and inequality. The “American Dream” has always been one of equal opportunity, but there can be no equality of opportunity when there is such stark inequality among home environments. Detroit’s neighborhood decline is a symptom of the city’s population loss and …