Did He Really Just Say Geography of Opportunity??!

This week, I am at the annual conference of the National Fair Housing Alliance in Washington, DC. The conference is an opportunity for fair housing advocates to come together and get updates about how our work is playing out across the country. Fair housing work is intricately connected to the struggle against poverty because where you live determines your access to so many other resources.

One exciting aspect of this year’s conference is that the U.S. Dept of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Dept of Justice (USDOJ) are actively demonstrating a renewed commitment to civil rights after eight years of the Bush Administration’s apathy and hostility to civil and human rights. HUD Secretary Donovan and other new administration officials spoke at the conference, and their ideas, commitments, and knowledge were overall refreshing.

Some aspects of Secretary Donovan’s keynote address that were particularly exciting were:

• Announcing a commitment to affirmatively further fair housing- Advocates in the room collectively perked up as soon as Secretary Donovan uttered the phrase! It sounds like jargon, I know, but this basically signals HUD’s support for taking proactive actions to build healthy communities and open neighborhoods, rather than only supporting a minimal level of enforcement after someone has discriminated against a protected group or individual. An example of a concrete policy that would affirmatively further fair housing would be inclusionary zoning.

• Asserting that “we should not live in a country where you can predict the life chances of a child by their zip code”- Sure this sounds basic, but after eight years of Bush appointees, it was so refreshing to hear a high level federal official take this basic moral position.

• Interest in creating a “geography of opportunity”- At first, I was concerned that Donovan kept referring to the importance of using tools like vouchers to get low income people into “communities of opportunity.” I think this is a problematic paradigm. If we move the deserving poor out of unhealthy neighborhoods, what happens to the people that are left? Everyone deserves to live in healthy communities, and policies that simply move people rather than building power and access to resources in all communities miss the mark. Just as I wrote a note to myself about this issue, Secretary Donovan made a similar point and advocated for creating an entire “geography of opportunity.”

• Holding up the Harlem Children’s Zone as a model for how to build “geographies of opportunity”.

• Putting their money where their mouth is- Obama’s budget proposes to double funding for fair housing enforcement work and dedicates $150 million to create an Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities.

So I know it may seem like I drank the HUD Kool-aid. I haven’t. I witnessed the terrible things that HUD did in New Orleans after Katrina, the additional trauma that HUD inflicted on residents already dealing with the trauma of displacement. I spoke with public housing residents who were never even allowed in to their units to collect their belongings after Katrina, and I know how inefficient, malicious, and corrupt the Housing Authority of New Orleans is, even after several years of being in HUD receivership. I’ve also been to cities like Atlanta, Memphis, and Chicago and seen the terrible outcomes of HUD policies there. I will remain cautious if not suspicious of any department of the U.S. government. I don’t expect HUD to start funding radical housing co-ops anytime soon, and I would rather hear rhetoric about building community power than “geographies of opportunity”.

But I understand that federal policies have huge impacts on vast groups of people, both good and bad. Ultimately, Secretary Donovan’s policy ideas combined with what seem like solid fiscal commitments on the part of the new administration are a breath of fresh air and should provide a dose of timely and much-needed hope to anti-poverty advocates everywhere.

(Learn more about the National Fair Housing Alliance and Harlem Children's Zone.  Photo of demolition of Chicago public housing, with luxury high-rise construction in rear, by Payton Chung)