Featured Idea: Create Stable Diversity by Prioritizing Integration

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published December 02, 2008 @ 07:08AM PT

The people behind MoveSmart.org are passionate about helping foster diverse and thriving neighboorhood communities. To celebrate (and hopefully influence) the new administration, they created IntegrationAgenda.org to help people learn more about and get involved with fair housing policies. Their work is taking an innovative approach to the structures that perpetuate racism. Check out their Idea for Change in America here, or take the Pledge to Support the Integration Agenda.

MoveSmart.org's Justin Massa wrote a bit more about the idea:

What's the idea?

The new administration should build stable diversity in neighborhoods by prioritizing residential racial, ethnic, and economic integration. Promoting integrated communities will de-concentrate affordable housing, promote balanced economic development, support equitable school improvement, and developing sustainable growth patterns.

Where does the idea come from?

More than 40 years ago, the Fair Housing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968) was passed to replace our severe segregation with "truly balanced and integrated living patterns". Despite this goal, most neighborhoods across the country remain separate and unequal. The efforts of fair housing advocates for the previous four decades have focused on enforcement of anti-discrimination laws - a vital task that is far from complete. But in order to build stable diversity in neighborhoods we must look beyond enforcement to policies that affirmatively further fair housing.

What role could the Obama admin have in the project?

The administration could fund affirmative marketing efforts that focus on building neighborhood diversity, make "increase neighborhood diversity" a metric of success for all housing-related policies, provide affirmative counseling and relocation assistance to individual recipients of housing subsidies, enforce the requirement that Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) recipients "affirmatively further fair housing" in their expenditures, and/or appoint a task force to analyze how other federal policies might be refined to further encourage diverse neighborhoods.

Why should this be a priority?

The President-Elect has made it clear that an early goal of the new administration will be a massive economic relief bill which that will doubtless have an enormous impact on who lives where and why. An influx of new jobs, new investment, and new public works projects will further transform an already foreclosure-impacted housing landscape. Prioritizing integration isn't incredibly expensive, nor does it require the creation of any new bureaucracy; rather, it simply requires that the federal government finally work towards its 40 year-old promise to build balanced, integrated neighborhoods.

Further links:

• http://www.change.org/ideas/view/create_stable_diversity_by_prioritizing_integration
• http://www.integrationagenda.org/advance/changeorgideas/
• http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/actions/view/support_the_integration_agenda