Research & Investigation
Many of the cases we bring require statistical investigations and historical research. For example, the Voting Rights cases require historical research linking present day election procedures with past racial discrimination. This will typically involve historical and current statistical analysis of voting results in a variety of elections to show White bloc voting against viable Black or Hispanic candidates. Williams v. City of Dallas, 734 F. Supp. 1317, 1389, 1394 (N.D. Tex. 1990). The municipal services discrimination cases require statistics showing the City’s unequal provision of adequate facilities and services and the history linking the unequal treatment to overt racial discrimination. The statistics show that if you live in a single-family zoned area and your neighborhood is adjacent to an industrial zoned area, the odds that you are living in a Black or Hispanic neighborhood are 50 to 1. The history shows that the City has consistently allowed industrial zoning next to Black and Hispanic neighborhoods going back to the time of overtly racial zoning and residence codes. Miller v. City of Dallas, 2002 WL 230834 (N.D. Tex. 2002).
Unequal neighborhood conditions in neighborhoods of color
The research often focuses on the continued disadvantages placed on neighborhoods of color and what we know about those disadvantages.
While these investigations and research may require the expense of using experts to present in court, many of these facts need to be known before a case is filed. In addition, some clients need the facts to present as part of their mission educating the community whether or not there is ever litigation. For example the location of housing in crime hot spots designated by the City as areas of high violent crime is a fact necessary for evaluating the addition of more low income tax credit housing in such a location. Other unequal conditions include industrial zoning, industrial land uses adjacent to residential uses, failing schools, low access to a supermarket or large grocery store, high numbers of other low income assisted housing, high poverty, low numbers of home loans, degraded environmental conditions, and other indicators of distress and blight.
Unequal neighborhood conditions of social vulnerability
For example, over one-half, 55%, of all Black and Hispanic Housing Choice Voucher families in the nation are in census tracts with the highest vulnerability to disasters such as disease outbreaks. The Center for Disease Control has been making accurate warnings about this vulnerability for a decade. The toll that COVID-19 is exacting from Black and Hispanic families is brutally documented in the news media every day. Had the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal housing agency, heeded the warning of the federal public health agency, the toll could have been avoided. The federally subsidized voucher program doesn’t have to work this way.
How do we know? We know because of the results HUD has achieved for hundreds of thousands of White voucher families. There are 597,351 White non-Hispanic voucher families in the HUD 2018 national database of 1,996,720 voucher families for which there is also a Centers for Disease Control Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) Risk level for the census tract. Less than one-third, 30% of these White voucher families, are in the high risk SVI census tracts and exposed to the accompanying hazards and risks, disease and death. This is drastically fewer than the Black and Hispanic voucher families living in the highest risk SVI tracts.
These White non-Hispanic voucher families have not been steered into the same areas which are stereotyped as the poor people’s neighborhoods and the only places where vouchers can work. The White voucher families are predominantly located in majority White census tracts. These tracts are 78% White on average. The White voucher families are located in low poverty census tracts. These tracts average less than 20% below poverty. Absent racial segregation by HUD and other responsible government actors, Black and Hispanic voucher families would have the choice and ability to move to low SVI tracts. [1]
We use the example of HUD housing vouchers because the racial segregation by government actors is easy to document. Learned journals and public news media have been bringing other examples to the Nation’s attention. Racial segregation increases the vulnerability of Black and Hispanic neighborhoods by putting noxious industries and other uses close and then refusing to enforce the environmental laws. Racial segregation uses the resulting lower residential property values in those neighborhoods as an excuse not to provide the necessary resources for neighborhood viability. The higher property taxes from the polluting and noxious sources are spent for services in the already favored residential areas.
Modern Federal Neighborhood Segregation
The federal government is the largest funder of affordable housing for very low and extremely low-income tenants today. This does not even include public housing. The three largest federally subsidized housing programs are the Low- Income Housing Tax Credit program, the tenant-based Housing Choice Voucher Program, and the HUD Project Based Rental Assistance (PBRA). These modern federally subsidized housing programs are concentrated mostly in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, often with many of the assistance programs overlapping at the same apartment complex or in apartment complexes across the street from one another. These three federally funded housing programs are responsible for concentrating affordable housing in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and at the same time, these federally funded housing conglomerations are excluded from White non-Hispanic neighborhoods. These federal programs work to provide decent housing in high opportunity neighborhoods for low-income White tenants, but these same programs do not provide the same opportunity for the majority of Black and Hispanic tenants.
The Modern Federal Neighborhood Segregation article by Laura Beshara and Michael Daniel describing in detail how federally funded Low Income Housing works to segregate low income tenants is here.
Research showing the exclusion of affordable housing from white areas
There are few private multifamily landlords in high opportunity areas in the Dallas area and suburbs that accept voucher tenants and participate in the voucher program. Daniel & Beshara research includes two landlord surveys to determine the private multi-family landlords who refuse to accept housing choice vouchers. The multifamily landlord survey of over 3,000 private multifamily landlords in 2017 and 2020 show that there are entire suburbs without any private multifamily landlords who accept vouchers. The results show that 90 to 100% of the private multifamily apartments in most of the predominantly White non-Hispanic suburban cities in the Dallas area refuse to accept voucher tenants.
Here is a chart of the survey results by City of the private multifamily landlords with Voucher eligible rents in Dallas area cities who do not accept vouchers.
Here is a chart of the landlord survey results by zip code.
The landlord surveys confirm the results of the HUD sponsored 2018 study “A Pilot Study of Landlord Acceptance of Housing Choice Vouchers” by the Urban Institute, 2018 that shows how difficult it is for a voucher tenant to find a landlord willing to accept the use of a housing choice voucher. [1] Voucher recipients are hard pressed to find a neighborhood that will accept their vouchers, especially in higher opportunity neighborhoods One of the five study sites was Ft. Worth where the denial rate for acceptance of vouchers by landlords in low poverty areas was 85%.
[1] Study available at https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pilot-study-landlord-acceptance-hcv.html