In the 1960s, housing was a focus of both the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act. Both were created to prohibit discrimination “on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” The Fair Housing Act, specifically, prohibited this discrimination “by direct providers of housing . . . as well as other entities . . . whose discriminatory practices make housing unavailable to persons” based on the aforementioned characteristics. Now banks and homeowners could not discriminate based on race, and planned developments were forced to start integrating in their home sales. As with the Highway Act, the “blighted” areas targeted were overwhelmingly Black communities, a further ripple effect of redlining and local governments’ refusal to acknowledge and respect Black citizens, even with the passage of codified rights.
While these policies created a process to challenging racist housing practices, the impact of prior, predatory policies — and increased savviness in wording of local ordinances — entrenched inequities. This led to a great disparity in homeownership and wealth along racial lines that persists today. In 1968, when the Fair Housing Act was passed, nearly 66 percent of white families owned their home, as did just over 41 percent of Black families. By 2020, Black homeownership went up to just over 43 percent, while white homeownership increased to over 72 percent. In 2023 alone, there were more than 34,000 housing discrimination claims filed in the United States, though this does not encompass all the claims that likely went unreported that year.