Essay On Housing Discrimination

The policies of criminalizing homelessness and poverty has been occurring, and invented in San Francisco, in 1876 with the introduction of the “ugly laws.” These laws particularly targeted those with disabilities, and restricted people’s ability to appear in public spaces (Punishing the Poorest 2015, 6). These laws have not disappeared, they have just been rebranded, and then redeveloped into even more specific laws directed at the homeless. In fact, the more recent introduction of “quality of life laws” are truly just a re--- of the ugly laws and the continued crusade against homeless people, rather than homelessness. These “quality of life” laws, are really anti-homeless laws; these laws place a housed citizens right to the city and life above those dispossessed citizens.

General Purpose: To inform my audience of Gentrification in the Norther part of Chicago around the 1960s.

Businesses opened in the DTES to help make money for the area to help people with less wealth

Lance Freeman, an associate professor of urban planning in Columbia, wanted to investigate if there was any displacement going on in two predominantly black neighborhoods that was briskly gentrifying. Much to his dismay, he couldn’t find any correlation between gentrification and displacement. What was surprising to Freeman was his discovery, “poor residents and those without a college education were actually less likely to move if they resided in gentrifying neighborhoods”. (Sternbergh, 19) Freeman adds, “The discourse on gentrification, has tended to overlook the possibility that some of the neighborhood changes associated with gentrification might be appreciated by the prior residents.” (Sternbergh, 19) Essentially, we can concur that a blighted neighborhood that goes through gentrification doesn’t displace the current residents living there, but in fact makes the residents want to stay. With gentrification the area becomes safer, more businesses open up and the neighborhoods become a welcoming, family friendly place to live. Without gentrification a blighted neighborhood stays, as is, a neglected area that doesn’t attract businesses or

The relationship between society and the law is direct, and housing in America is a conclusive example of that. As argued by both authors, once society has made up its mind about a certain group of people or place such as the ghettos, even the law can’t change those facts. It often happens that people of color and minorities get overlooked and stereotyped into something that they are not due to the hierarchical and discriminatory principles of the law. It has been engrained into society to think that minorities are poor, lazy, and overall less productive in the public

The issue of homelessness in America has been evident since the early 1600’s. Across the country men, women and children spend their nights on the streets not knowing when or if they will ever find a permanent home. States and federal officials or city councils have tried to alleviate or at least reduce the number of homeless over the last several decades at a city, state or national level but it continues to be an ongoing problem. There is a multitude of factors that account for the growing homeless population that affects each state in the country differently. Though there are many contributing factors that contribute to the amount of people living on the street at any given night in the U.S. An effective way to address the problem of homelessness in America is to continue creating affordable housing, maintaining assistance programs, and continue creating workforce

The public often stereotypes low-income youth of color as uneducated, lazy, lacking good family values, unintelligent, unmotivated, etc.. However, poverty among minorities in the United States is not the result of individuals, but rather is the result of structural, social issues that contribute to the poverty. New York City has some of the worst aspects of the American city when it comes to racial issues. In New York City, people of color have being unconsciously marginalized by using various tactics to isolate them. Studies have found that more than half of black and Hispanic youths are terrified of discrimination. White supremacy is the belief that people with whiter skin are superior in this nation, which has the effect of disdaining other races/ethnics. The political policies also play a role in this problematic structural inequality. They allow privatization and deregulate the balance between the lower end of the class and the upper end. Although federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender, race, and national origin, the public policies and urban developers favor the mass of the affluent class. Those who born in a poor family are less likely to overcome their low social status. Poverty is not the result of individuals, but rather it is the result of structural factors. The affluent classes are attempting to keep minorities locked into an impoverished political and economic position by using strategies such as gentrification, discrimination, and segregation. Those in position of authority use social profiling and “zero tolerance policies” as a primary tool for enforcing traditional discrimination. In theory, public space welcomes everyone. However, the power structures existed in the society demonstrate a social trend where wealthy people and caucasian move

After recent protests in Baltimore, Badger (2016) explores the nature of policies set in the early 1900’s that have shaped the city of Baltimore, and that continue to have an effect on their quality of life. Actions such as redlining and urban renewal have perpetuated poverty and segregation in the same neighborhoods today as 75 year ago. This article calls attention to the effect of system-wide race discrimination in Baltimore, and how policies create a cyclical link between race and disadvantage in communities.

They argue that institutional racism in the housing market enacted by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), private loan and real estate institutions and actors, and white residents effectively and permanently isolated African Americans. Institutionalized racist practices of the housing market such as redlining and steering, coupled with white flight and structural disinvestment in African American neighborhoods, effectively isolated African Americans and further contributed to the creation of black ghettos. Thus, residential segregation concentrates poverty, erodes institutional and economic support, and ultimately causes its residents to normalize their problematic social environment of high levels of joblessness, teenage pregnancy, drugs, and violence. If the segregation of African Americans were to be resolved by their economic achievement and class mobility, middle-class African Americans should be able to enter white neighborhoods of comparable income levels. However, as Massey and Denton show, once the threshold of “too many black families” is crossed, white flight occurs and poorer black families move into the neighborhood, creating (and expanding) racially segregated

On a normal scale, measuring the association between two subjects, one would assume gentrification and school segregation are not related in any sense. In fact, most would argue that school segregation ended in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education. This assumption would be incorrect. Deep within the American society lies a new kind of segregation that is neither talked about nor dealt with. Segregation is a result of gentrification—the buying and renovation of houses in deteriorated neighborhoods by upper-income families or individuals—thus, improving property values but often displacing low-income families. It is this displacement that causes segregation in cities like Cleveland, Ohio and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. However, if the meaning of gentrification is changed, and people work towards making sure the upper-income families and the underprivileged are able to live together in the same community, segregation would subside.

Public housing has affected Cleveland since the 1930s beginning with the 1937 Housing Act. This act stated that “for each new public housing unit created, a unit of substandard quality must be removed.” The quality of housing would be increased, but not the quantity (1937: Housing Act (Wagner-Steagall Act), n.d.). The establishment of public housing, made specifically for those with low income, has been involved in political issues ranging from the national level to the local level. Cleveland, the city in Ohio in which public housing legislation began, has faced a number of challenges from the beginning in financial, social, and home design aspects.

Massey and Denton’s book, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, hits strong on this topic of “residential segregation”. Massey and Denton, both went hand and hand with what Jackson was saying. This is a well organized, well-written and greatly researched book. The two authors among the help of other outside sources, researched the several main factors that have forced different groups of people into their “ghetto”. There are many reasons for the creation of ghettos such as oppression, economics as mentioned in the book, all except one main reason. Some people just prefer to live with people like themselves

Gentrification is a fast growing process in most cities today. Displacement through gentrification has many side effects for low-income families. Gentrification is a major problem; it is the displacement of people of lower socioeconomic status and replacing them with people of higher economic status, raising the property rates on these gentrified properties so that the lower classes can no longer afford to live there and further creating social inequality among the citizens of our community. We take broken parts of town and convert them into lavish attractions for visitors and natives. These so-called broken parts of town have residents who can no longer afford to live in these parts. This displacement pushes the lower classes out and forces

Golash- Boza explains, “Residential segregation happened when different groups of people are sorted into discount neighborhoods” (271). It is because of housing segregation

In the most segregated cities, it is common for poor families to be spending as must as 80 percent of their income in trailer parks and houses in poor conditions, where landlords may end up evicting their tenants instead of making reparations