One of the commitments that attracted me most as I made the decision to join the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD's) Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) a year ago was PD&R's aggressive, long-standing program of research and knowledge building on a variety of race/ethnicity, fair housing, and neighborhood integration issues. In our own research over the past few years on the controversial but very constructive housing and school desegregation in Yonkers, New York, my colleagues and I wrestled with the difficulties of understanding both the practical (programmatic) and social science implications of mandates to fulfill our Nation's commitment to fair housing. The most important issues hit home "above and below the neck," as one teacher I know likes to say. That is, these issues challenge not only our concepts and methods, but our emotions and values as well. We all know that much remains to be done and to be learned if we are to function as "One America," in President Clinton's words.
The collection of essays in this issue of Cityscape provides eloquent and forceful testament to HUD's commitment to the struggle for equal justice in housing. This volume includes reflections by two of the main congressional architects of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, Senator Edward Kennedy and Former Representative Charles Mathias, who convey their sense of the importance of this landmark legislation enacted just days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In addition to these legislators' reflections, a distinguished group of social science researchers, civil rights lawyers, and activists offers their views about both of the topics that should concern us at this historic juncture -- both how far we have come and how much remains to be done to ensure continued progress. This discussion is particularly crucial in an era that has challenged core notions of civil rights protections and of how far we should go in America to promote equality.
Here at HUD, we have updated and strengthened a program of research in the area of "Promoting Equal Housing Opportunities" -- one of seven key policy areas on which this office will focus over the next several years. Our first and foremost interest is tracking the nature and extent of housing discrimination as currently experienced by the Nation's major racial/ethnic groups: Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, and American Indians. Just recently, HUD announced a $7.5-million effort to test for such discrimination in urban, suburban, and rural communities around the country. This is an effort to create the first-ever "report card," at both the local and national levels, on the state of discrimination in housing rentals and sales. We are pleased that HUD's pioneering approach to "audit testing" will very likely be emulated in the nonhousing arena of economic life and in other parts of the Federal Government in years ahead.
As for other areas of interest, we have research aimed at identifying how we may broaden the housing search and expand the housing choices of some of this America's poorest families, most of whom depend on private, nonsubsidized rental units for basic shelter, family well-being, and access to economic opportunity. Additional research is aimed at understanding how the real estate and mortgage-lending industries have responded to the challenges of fair housing. Because the will and the capacity to affect positive change are both dependent on good information, we believe that knowledge-building is central to the task of addressing the persistent problems of discrimination and segregation that troubleAmerica's housing markets and community life. As such, we welcome suggestions for additional areas of inquiry from scholars, advocacy organizations, and others with the vision to understand and shape the role of knowledge-building. We welcome the investments of new partners in these efforts to build and use knowledge creatively.
I close by commending the guest editors for this collection -- our own Dr. John Goering here at PD&R and Gregory Squires of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee -- for convening this panel of experts and offering so many important thoughts on speeding our Nation's progress toward social justice, with fair housing as a key part.
Xavier de Souza Briggs
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research, Evaluation, and Monitoring
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