Author Jessica Trounstine describes segregation by design as the process in which federal housing subsidies, state regulation, and local zoning laws have collectively planned and created an environment in which segregation thrives. Trounstine expounds on the ways that different cities provide for their people differently: “poor and minority neighborhoods received fewer and lower quality services...some people have access to good schools, well paved roads...public parks...others do not” (Trounstine, p.2). Beginning with segregated blocks, then neighborhoods, and now cities, we have come to a society with increasingly homogeneous communities and high inter-city income disparities. Due to the way a tax base works, wealthier communities have more money to spend in their budgets and their public services are likely to be high quality. Lower income communities have less money to spend and their public services are likely to be lower quality. In this book, Trounstine reveals that this is no accident.
Trounstine first disproves several theories of government operation including: pluralism, which only works if everyone can participate; structuralism, which assumes the interests of white property owners are the interests of all; and coalition politics, which gives too much credit to democracy in failing to realize most power eventually rests with private interests.
Historically, the United States federal government has subsidized mortgages and home buying heavily in the interwar period. However, nearly all these subsidies went exclusively to white communities (Trounstine, 2018). In addition, home buying was and has stayed the most reliable investment one can make and is likely “the single largest component of household wealth” (Trounstine, p. 12). These two factors compounded to make it extremely difficult for people of color to obtain and retain intergenerational wealth through homebuying. This fact has separated the United States by class and is more likely to set people of color up to fail. Trounstine (p.12) writes, “segregation causes higher poverty rates for blacks and lower poverty rates for whites, lower high school and college graduation rates among blacks, higher imprisonment rates, and higher rates of single motherhood among blacks.” Segregation creates long term cycles of poverty in communities of color by directly depriving them of fundamental resources needed to succeed, principally a decent education. Trounstine later explains that black neighborhoods have historically suffered from significantly greater class sizes, lower school funding, and lower teacher pay than white schools. All this long-term inequality begins with segregation, as designed by zoning ordinances.
Beginning with the federal government, “slum clearance” subsidies and “public housing funds” were given out in the 1930s, segregated by race (Trounstine, p. 6). When federal highway Interstate-95 was built, deliberate efforts were made to destroy black and Latino parks and neighborhoods (Trounstine, p.7). Additionally, because federal funds were focused on white homebuying and single-family homes, it forced suburbanization and segregation as well as cemented the intersection of race and class in society. In the 1960s, fair housing legislation was enacted but strongly opposed. However, opposition was due to the idea of individual property rights, not due to outwardly racist beliefs. This same argument is present today in many suburbs where public housing has been suggested as an option but emphatically struck down, including my own, Weston, Florida.
The state’s role in segregation was influential in how localities could raise and spend their monies. Additionally, the state regulated local government’s control in zoning using a template given by the federal government in 1922 (Trounstine, p.83). Even though outright segregation was illegal in many states by 1947, states still enabled racist zoning laws. Segregation was just as much state-sponsored as it was sponsored by the federal government.
Once away from the central city, white suburbia had free reign of local government zoning ordinances to “engage in exclusionary zoning practices” (Trounstine, p. 40). White communities have purposely formed their own cities outside of places of color to protect their property values. This has become a political buzzword for suburbs as people move to suburbs for the amenities which are publicly funded, influenced by property values. Property value preservation creates a scenario where the “white population...gets a vested interest in separation” (Trounstine, p.103). Historically, white communities used residential segregation to segregate schools and communities legally. There is often rhetoric that white communities feel they are paying for the public services of communities of color and, in a world of limited resources, they are being directly harmed by contributing to one collectively diverse tax base.
Race and class as variables of segregation have become intimately intertwined because of the way race has affected class in this country. Through purposefully racist lending, housing, incarceration, defunding of community resources, and more, communities of color are significantly more likely to be in a lower socioeconomic class than white communities. Through deprivation of opportunity to build intergenerational wealth, race has become nearly synonymous with class in most cases. The overlap between race and class has become so extensive that many people assume people of color are of lower socioeconomic status. The painful truth is that there is a chance that assumption is correct because the United States continually deprives communities of necessary resources for socioeconomic mobility through deeply institutionalized racism.
This book teaches important political context in US housing policy by providing historical context for why we see residential segregation today and why it persists. One of the most important lessons from this book is that the policies we see today that may not be explicitly racially charged are derived from racist ideas that people of color were not deserving of public amenities like parks, good schools, paved roads, or sewers. This created lower income cities with poor public amenities and no integration. As white communities wanted to separate themselves from poverty and people of color, they migrated to suburbia where they could control zoning policies and legally discriminate against people of color through manipulation of already institutionalized racism. To finish it off, this book was highly informative and dry at times. Nevertheless, it proves the clear point that governments at all levels and city planners have a lot to answer for when it comes to racist zoning.
This was another course reading. Thanks Dr Suarez!
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