ya civilization education, we would be teaming up into little bands and troops defending ourselves against animals and other bapds of troops, because that is what our actual nature is. that is the point of lord of the flies. in lort of the flilord of the f have kids from british boarding school, and once you put them back, they kill each other antique each other. that's humanity. >> watch afterwards, sunday night 9:00 p.m. eastern c-span2 book tv. >> next, community leaders historians and policy makers gather for the discussion on 50th anniversary of the federal housing act and its aim too prevent discrimination. they spoke about the housing to

other issues, including education, transportation and employment. held by the atlantic. this is two hours. [ applause ] zb >> good everyone, i'm managing director of atlantic live and please ds to welcome great group this morning. at ln particular live is the live events and proud to bring this journalism to life on stage with most controversial issues of our time. today's program builds off of decade of programming on the atlantic on issue that is deeply personal to nearly everyone, housing. housing is a basic human need, but is also a commodity. one that is still not available to everyone in fair measure. we'll talked to about the legacy of the fair housing act, which came at a pivotal moment in the

civil rights moment of the '60s. once signed into law in 1968 act made it illegal to refuse to sale or rent a dwelling because of race or national origin. the laws language pursuit of justice and equity for all people in the united states. and as we look back today, we ask how the fair housing act's original intent has weathered the past 50 years, what have we accomplished in combatting housing discrimination and segregation, and what remains to be done. so this morning, we'll hear the stories of people who are pursuing solutions on local and national levels, and thinking through the big questions that impact us all. before we begin, i'd like to thank our underwriter fannie mae for making today possible. and before we jump in, a few housekeeping notes. if everyone could silence their cell phones but keep them out to

follow the conversation on twitter using atlantic building equity. and we also want to hear from everyone in this room today as well. so we'll take questions throughout the morning as the panels end. so let's jump in. we'll begin today's program with a look back at what was happening in many american community ns the 50s and 60s when segregation was the norm. it was under these circumstances that many americans of color faced grave challenges, trying to purchase a home of their own. the following atlantic video introduces the story of the contract buyers league. a group of residents in chicago who banded together to fight discriminatory housing practices in their neighborhood. let's take a look. >> the question of housing is one of the major problems this country faces. by and large, blacks live in

substandard housing. those who manage to fight their way out of it frequently pay a large penalty to do so. i came from birmingham, alabama, but i came to chicago for better living and a better job. i bought this house in '58. it ain't nothing to brag about, but it's mine. >> my name is it clyde ross. i was born in mississippi. i bought this house in 1958. >> i moved in this house in 1957. it was mostly a white area. and when they said that the

niggeres was coming and they start movings was coming and th start moving away. mostly everyone that was black, they had been sold a contract. if you missed a payment, in three months they could take the property back. no lawyer, no nothing could help you. that was it. >> there are blocks like this scattered throughout the lawndale section of chicago west side ghetto. the people who live their bought their homes from real estate speculators double or triple value and they bought on contract because they couldn't get conventional mortgages. under the contract they make installments at high interest.

if he defaults one payment during any time during the contract, he loses the property and everything that's heed paid into it. >> paid 6,000, that means i was overcharged quite a bit. and the contract situation was so bad that when something broke down you had to fix it. you had to pay water and gas. and electric. and tax it is and everything else. but you didn't have ownership. >> how could we be charged like that if that wasn't a law? and the law let them do that? but they said it was their property and they had ta choice to sell it at whatever price you wanted to. and if you bought it, that was on you. >> it was a house. i worked at campbell soup, post

office. for 45 years. i get home at 10:00 the other night, you know, leave home 6:00 every morning. kids would be asleep. they don't see me. and when we did see them on the weekends, i tell them something, they look to their momma, should i do it or not. i was a stranger in my own home because of that contract signing. relevant will i a stranger. i said this is not going to work. >> these people who have cheated us out of more than money. we have been cheated out of the right to be human beings in a society. we have been cheated out of buying homes at a decent price. now, it's time now, we have a chance now, the contract buyers league has presented a chance for these people in this area to move out of this grip of society.

to move up. stand on your own 2 feet. be human beings. fight for what you know is right. fight. [ applause ] >> i really believe that, you know, ultimately what we are after is some kind of communication among human beings, but that can only be affected when people can approach each other on the basis of equality. >> you know, even though you are keeping within the law, this is really war, isn't it? >> yes, it is. >> the colleague students and i went up and down the streets and asked people if they bought on contract, and we discovered that the average overcharge was $10,000. and then computed the monthly payments so that we knew white folks are paying race tax about

$20,000 per family. >> to continue this story of the contract buyers league, please welcome to the stage ralph blessing, who volunteered at the contract buyers league as a student organizer, and sandra york, a daughter of ruby york, who bought a home in north lawndale, and decision to participate held the organization make history. and to lead the organization, please welcome atlantic staff writer van newkirk. van, please take it away. [ applause ] >> so, ralph, we in that video, we just saw that race tax of $20,000 per family. you got involved with the contract buyers league after they found that out. what was the contract buyers league, what were their objectives? and how did you meet those objectives? >> well, the objectives

originally were of the organization, were to discover that type of data, which in today's dollars doesn't sound like a significant at the time if you saw those houses prices on that list, imagine what that would be in today's dollars. it amounts to roughly a 75% markup on average between what the sellers paid for the property often just days earlier and turned around and sold it to a black family at an inflated rate. so this took a while to get that information out of the community, because there was a hesitancy to basically admit that you were taken advantage of. but when you're desperate for housing and desperate for a place to raise your kids.

sometimes you may not even think it's a viable solution, but you sign on the dotted line and you had a house. only later did they find out that they and their neighbors were really the result of -- it's not illegal, certainly unethical, campaign by blockbusters and people who were willing to take of them because of the color of their skin. >> so you had a house, but you weren't building equity, right? >> exactly. >> were they withholding their payments, correct? >> that was not the initial step

presented them to the sellers, i guess and requested that they renegotiate the contracts and make them closer to a mortgage if not in fact an actual mortgage except for one individual apparently who had a come to jesus moment and woke up and his wife convinced him that they had cheated the buyers. the rest of the real estate folks just said it's legal, they signed it, tough nails, if you will. so when they resisted any effort to renegotiate, that is when this tactic came up of we will

withhold our payments, our mntly appella -- monthly payments. we'll make them into an escrow account so the money is there. it's not as if we're trying to pay the money, but we will not give it to them. that eventually enticed a number of others to enter into rene renegotiations of the contracts. >> this was considered to be a legal practice. you did take legal action, correct? there was a lawsuit. >> there was a lawsuit, actually two of them, one for the west side community and later on for a group of homeowners in the south side. these cases were dismissed, so they did not resolve the matter. i think renegotiations ended up

benefitting over 300 homeowners in the lawndale community over the course of the years that this process was underway. >> we talked about your family history yesterday. we had lunch. you were telling me about the roots of your family in mississippi and how they come up and get this home that's considered a part of the american dream, but it's on contract. >> yes. >> what have you learned from your parents about their story, about the motivation to buy a house, about how they felt after realizing this contract was just disadvantageous for them? >> i also indicated that my parents hid us from a lot of what was going on. but in asking questions later on

and just the unfairness of what happened, they just always told us to fight for what you believe in. that's what they did and they came out on top. >> do you think there was a sense in north lawndale of the sense of maybe shame? >> absolutely. my dad told my mom, do not go to those meetings. she was like no, i'm going. this has to be done. >> she we want ant anyway. >> she went anyway. >> what was the resolution? >> they actually did do the renegotiating and came out on top. i think it was in the range of $8,000 or something like that. >> then you growing up now with this $8,000 returned to your family, what was your sense of how it impacts your family's

sense of belonging, your sense of community and your love for north lawndale. >> i love the community. i loved being there. the family -- just the pride that they had in the community and we just felt like we could really stand tall because of what my mom and eventually my dad who did come along, they stood up. >> i think the line that gets me is the woman who said, it's not much, but it's mine. >> correct. they made us like we were rich. we had everything that we needed. that was the love and strength and their determination.

that's what we had. >> contract buyers league was an interracial effort. there were lots of people from lots of places, races, class bases involved in this. what about your own background, your family background gets you to go and volunteer for this organization? >> actually, i was only in with the other students for a two-week period during the summer of 1967. i went to work straight out of high school and was working at insurance company and my brother was part of that student group recruited by jack mcnamara. i thought what better way to start my summer vacation than hanging around lawndale. i did a bit of canvassing at

that point. i went into the peace corps and after returning contacted jack and said i'd really like to spend time working with cbl. by that time a fund-raising service had been established, so i ended up working there in effect as a paralegal with the legal teams that were doing pro bono work on behalf of cbl. it allowed me to interact with the buyers on a regular basis, interviewing them, getting the kind of data that would be needed to argue the case in court. what motivated me? i don't know. i was a kind of the '60s. i guess maybe that was it as much as anything. >> it doesn't just stop for you with the cbl. you live in a community now in d.c. that's also gone through similar changes, through similar instances of segregation. what's your lifelong experience

and engagement and interface with the housing segregation been like? and now that we are decades p t past, looking back what have the trends been? >> i grew up in a very working class neighborhood where i was told the original settles for the african-americans who were next door and a couple of doors up that my dad knew growing up. it was sort of that struggle between my white classmates at the catholic school i attended and the folks i knew from childhood who were my neighbors. but i eventually just as a civil

rights movement took hold, it really resonated with me and i just felt it was the way to go from my own personal convictions and practices to the extent possible. >> sandra, you've since moved on from your parents' home, from that contract house. what emotions did you have when you bought your own home and thinking about legacy and inheritance and that same sentiment of it's mine? >> yeah. the feeling was just -- i don't want to get emotional either. i knew that my mom and dad would be very proud that i had the support from so many who made sure that i didn't go through

what they went through. >> we talked about how you were advised when you went through this process not to seek an fha loan. >> correct. >> coming back in history, right? >> exactly. it's coming back. >> ralph, i want to get your sense of -- we're sitting here thinking about this now 50 years on. the impact of the cbl, not just in north lawndale, not just in chica chicago, but in how we think about this problem today nationwide. >> i guess i wish i could say it had a distinctly positive impact. but just from what you hear in

recent months, years even during the housing crisis how people lost their homes to begin with and how properties were gobbled up and resold in some cases if not contracts, something very much like a contract. so i guess the greatest impact would be the awareness that organizations like cbl have helped create in a population as a whole. the fact this this many people would come out to listen to a discussion like this, it's just two steps forward, one step backward. it's an ongoing struggle. >> sandra, i think the fact that you're here is is an optimistic

sign. we talked about this again yesterday, how you had a chance to talk to and engage with that video, the supplement to his ground braking case for reparations. i think people nationwide are now considering even if housing segregation is still entrenched, thinking about solutions. how do you see that movement, the impact of what your parents went through and advised you on beyond your own experience to the young folks now in your community? >> exactly. make sure you check all avenues, do your homework. there is resources out there, people who will help. you just need to just say

something. a lot of times from back then people just didn't share. it wasn't that they didn't want to share, but people just felt hike -- >> what we passed down, especially the black folks, what are you telling young people who are seeking out homes? there's still this very american sense that you have carved out your space and done what you need to do as a good american. what are you warning people against? what are you telling people is the right way to go? >> just letting them know, one, keep good credit.

two, just knowing your kopgss, knowing what's out there, fha as opposed to conventional. you know what may work better for you as opposed to what worked for me. there's particular situations, how much help they want, where you want to move to. i'm having those conversations quite often. >> okay. >> i used to work in politics in georgia. one of the main things i saw as far as taking housing away from people was the privatization of tax collection. i was wondering if y'all have had any experience with that, if the accountable government officials just outsourced the

collection of past due property taxes, then it makes it easier to avoid accountability for pissing off a big group of people that they screw over. >> i'm not familiar with that myself. >> neither am i. great question. i'm going to keep it in my back pocket for a story maybe. [ laughter ] >> anyone else? >> i'm debra cole. i was just wondering, did that exactly end the contract buying process where other homeowners going forward, were they offered regular mortgages or did it just ease the terms of the contract, and did they continue? >> my understanding since i was no longer in chicago at the time

is that once this matter was being resolved for the original group of homeowners through renegotiations, that the fha admitted the error of its ways to a certain extent. the banks in chicago were willing to lend a hand. much more so than it may have been in the past. we know it's still not totally a level playing field. when you've got wealth that's accumulates generation after generation, when two groups of

people are on different tracks, the credit worthiness, if you will, is identified in this manner versus that manner. it's not just the financial aspect. as clyde ross said in the video, when you are away from your home 80 or 90% of the time, what does that do to family life? we know how important it is to have a male figure in the house and yesterday if the kids look at him and say, who are you, you know? so it's a widespread issue.

it's more than a dollar cents matter. >> as an economist, i quickly adjusted the $8,000 that you got back for inflation. that's about $70,000 depending on when exactly year we're speaking. which is a fraction of the wealth gap today between black families and white father-in-laws. -- panels. >> certainly didn't. i benefitted from it in terms of of course my dad supported us. but he keep it close to the vest.

>> and other ways that people are involved in closing it. you'll actually hear some more of that later today. >> 70,000, if you had that money back then, you could have grown that money. it's not just a stable or a static number, which again helps explain the disparity, the white/black disparity in terms of accumulated wealth over generations. >> i want to thank you all for you amazing questions. that question was great. thank you to ralph and sandra for coming and sharing your insights. thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ]

>> now for a conversation on the legacy of the fair housing act, please welcome howard husic, vennita gupta and dave stevens, president and ceo of the mortgage bankers association. please welcome atlantic senior editor jillian white. >> good morning. i want to start with a little bit of a framing question that i want to put to all of you. to what extent frhave the goalsf the fair housing act been achieved over the years? >> i think it's a mixed story. i think on one hand there's clear lawed in place that eliminate or at least make it legally culpable to discriminate

based on race, sex, et cetera, sexual preference. but we still live in a world today where the opportunity for homeowner ship and safe housing has great disparities in it. it's an area that needs a lot of work. in many ways we're in a housing crisis when you look at the cost of housing and who's getting access to it. there's massive disparities. that's something that needs a lot of focus. >> i think the promise of the fair housing act remains to be realized. obviously when it was enacted a week after martin luther king, jr.'s assassination, came after many years of advocacy to try to get it enacted. it holds a lot of important

principles. the reality is that there have been a long series of decades of federally engineered segregation. and we remain deeply segregated in housing, which has impacts on education, transportation, access to employment. studies show that black homeowner ship ratship rates ar level they were 50 years. despite the progress made, the housing crisis wiped that out and the recovery has not been felt through all communities. the fact remains that when laws don't get fully implemented -- and i think the fair housing act is one of the laws that probably has been the most subject to political whim of a landmark civil rights legislation. it leaps forward and back administration to administration. it's really halted the ability

for the act to be fully implemented with the ri gore that was intended by the folks who have been pushing for it. there's a hot of work to do to address profound segregation. it's manufactured by human beings and therefore to been done requires an explicit and intentional set of policies and practic practices. >> i think one would have to be incredibly naive not to think and understand that it's more difficult and more complicated to rent or buy a home if one is an african-american. however, there has been some important changes. a colleague of mine ed glazer who was an economist at hazard and another who was an economist at the university of washington,

looked at the seine sus dcensus. there are black residence departments in virtually every census tract. that may not mean a lot, but all white neighborhoods in the united states are effectively extinct, even in chicago. if you look at what economists call the dissimilarity index, how different is one neighborhood from another neighborhood. is it all one race or is it all one other race? overall dissimilarity in chicago known as one of the most segregated cities in the united

states has declined between 1970 and 2010 by 25 percentage points. agreed, work to be done. and the government may not have done a good job implementing the law, but mortgage bankers all point that sign up, fair housing act. it makes a difference. >> one point -- there's a lot of data and you can say that's gentrification and affordable housing that's creating this change in certain communities, particularly in urban communities. one of the things i look at which i think is a real testament to the challenge that we face is the median score fie co-score for african-americans in this country is 624. the median fie cco score is 719.

you end up finding it harder to access credit. a large percentage of that population that's below 620 has less than two reported credit histories. if you're an uber driver, uber doesn't report your loan for your car. your rent payments aren't reported. your car loan that you got from a used car dealer or sub prime auto dealer, those typically are not reported to your credit histories. so you end up with a reality that the lack of credit also created bad credit. the question is, we can talk about the problems, but we need to be talking about the opportunities. i think unfortunately some of the square peg, square hole underwriting mentality that we

created eliminates subjectivity. at the other end how do we solve it if the system being used ultimately causes these incredible disparities. >> whose responsibility is it then to help fix that? as you said, we have a thin credit file problem that tends to afflict people of color more so. that means they cannot get houses or conventional loans. that is how families build their wealth. it creates a cycle where it becomes impossible or near impossible to build the kind of wealth to have a home someplace it's going to appreciate in value. whose responsibility is it to fix that? >> there's tipping points on all sides. when i came into the obama administration in 2009 as federal housing commissioner, there was a program called --

which was seller funded assistance that was an effort to help people buy a home. that cumulative default rates of about 35% and that was heavily concentrated in minority communities who were preyed upon by people who saw an opportunity to use that program. the outcome was real. we've got to be careful about those tipping points. i do think one of the great opportunities right now is to be looking at the buyer of today who have multiple sources of income in their household, some of which are not reported in traditional ways. we've talked about those who drive for uber and other kinds of self-employed vehicles or rent out part of their homes through some of the services online to generate income. all of this leads me to start off with something at its base level. why are we still relying on a traditional credit scoring methodology that underscores

demographics that may just simply not have the traditional way of establishing a credit score when that is one of the primary drivers to getting a prime rate on a mortgage. i'm way overlooking affordable housing stock and wage separation and all these things that pile on. what we really need is we need a universal focus to say, we're in a housing crisis. believe me, when you look at the of the levels of those who can't even afford minimum rents today, it's dramatic. i'll shut up. at the end of the day we've got a lot of work to do. >> i think that i agree with that lot of that. the responsibility is a shared one. i agree that we don't feel like

we're in a crisis on housing, but in communities of color and certain other communities we are in a profound crisis. i headed up the civil rights division for the last almost 2 1/2 years of the obama administration where we enforced the fair housing act and there were efforts by hud at that point to put out rules that were giving teeth to the fair housing a act. there were a number of things that were happening around government. the federal government has a huge role to play x because they also had a huge role to play in fuelling segregation and segregated housing and unequal access to credit and the like. you can't undermine that. the role in the federal government to give meaning to the fair housing act remains still alive. there's also a great responsibility among banks. i think that there's -- for

lending institutions to engage in the effort -- and we've seen a lot of banks really take initiative in leadership to address these issues. there's been more of a move to address how criminal convection and criminal records are also creating the vast racial disparities that we're seeing in barring people from accessing everything from public housing to private housing and to credit. i think there's been a lot of leadership among some key banks recently to deal with that in the absence of the federal government that has made this a priority. there's a lot of shared responsibility here. i think it's absolutely true that given the importance of house in our lives and communities, there needs to be a much greater focus on what's happening right now. >> on the credit score issue, i want to link that back to the point about the high foreclosures and the financial crisis and how that's disadvantaged wealth creation in the minority community. i couldn't agree more with that. i think we have to be very

careful to the point that high foreclosure rate on the experimental hud program. we do not do anybody a favor if we relax credit requirements too much, right? asset growth, wealth creation happens when whole neighborhoods remain good. the worst thing i remember in the early days of the housing crisis in the back of the yards also in chicago and going door to door talking to people for a magazine article about what did it mean to have a foreclosed house next to you. decimating. working class people who have the house next door be vacant, that is a nightmare for them. we have to protect them by making sure that good credit is extended to people who are credit worthy. that has always been a protection for neighbors. do we have to be expansive about understanding who is a good credit risk? yes. but when we have affordable housing goals, sometimes we may

stretch those too far. we have to be careful, not because we're worried about banks, but because we're worried about minority homeowners. in that context of wealth creation, we do have to keep in mind, the faa back in the bad old days red lined and had a lot of the discriminatory practices we heard about in the first panel. at the same time, when it comes to wealth creation, we have to remember what a nightmare public housing was for minority people. we don't want to think of it that way. if you look at the pruitt project in st. louis, the neighborhoods that were wiped out there, my own census research found that 21% of the homes were owned by minorities. they were torn down to make public housing in which nobody could own anything. we have to be careful to bring in the government to fix the problems, because the government doesn't have a great track record of its own. >> i want to talk about what would constitute keeping a neighborhood good. because historically keeping a

neighborhood good in the united states has meant making it more white than it is minority. >> absolutely not. >> you say absolutely not. >> that was historically true, there's no doubt about it. i think we have to make sure -- to me, the core of the fair housing act was anybody who can afford to buy or rent, must be allowed based on their income to do that. that is the core of the fair housing act. >> this gets back to the question of what is the core of the fair housing act. some people would say the core of the fair housing act is simply to prevent discrimination. others believe it's implicit also to focus on integration. >> i think there's a dual mandate for the act that is often ignored. there is a focus on the anti-discrimination principles which is more at the individual level. but that integration mandate of the fair housing act is one that has often got left behind or

ignored or rendered invisible through some of the work that's been done. it's a crucial mandate that requires a look at the structural things that are preventing communities from true integration. the one thing i want to add is we also have to remember the fair housing act obviously was seeking to address and remedy deep racial segregation, but it also was an important tool for addressing the barriers for people with disabilities, for women, for people who didn't fit the traditional family status. the integration mandate is one that is a broad mandate. >> how much time do we have?

look, if you look at the department of labor savings statistic research the level of inherented wealth ee eed -- in is -- we've disenfranchised minority communities for decades in this country. i think it's going to take affirmative efforts to try to create opportunity. to your point, there's no separate but equal. we've proved that in education. we've proved that in other areas where there's good research. you have to create opportunities -- >> did i say separate but equal? >> no, you didn't. >> i worry about what efforts we have going forward in terms of making sure there's available affordable housing stock, that we look at underwriting the way we underwrite families in america today and recognize that there are differences in diverse

communities versus traditional underwriting standards of how families were approved. you talked about the banks doing more. almost every bank today doesn't hold their loans anymore. those rules are established by the regulators involved. you make a very good point that you don't want to go so far that you create another failure which we saw in communities like detroit and others who were so concentrated in the housing collapse in terms of adverse outcome to minority communities. we can't use that as an excuse to say we've got a real problem here. this millennial generation is not white. it's 2/3 minority. our economy depends on thinking differently about how we move forward. i think that has to do with how

fannie mae and freddie mack underwrite. all of these have come down to local policies. i think it does start at the federal level. it's going to take a concentrated effort to help identify the areas, which is why i keep going back to the fact i think this is a crisis. we need to focus on this area. i've called for this for years, that we need someone to focus slo solely at the federal level reporting to a president who has teeth. i don't think we have that evident underw effort underway today. it's getting worse. >> i want to respond to that, but also go back to the point about the dual mandate of integration. i think that is the dual mandate, but we have to think deeply about what makes integration happen and be sustained. and so affirmatively furthering

fair housing focused a lot -- it was implemented to its greatest extent in westchester county, new york, under a court order. let's build affordable, which means subsidized rental housing for the most part in affluent areas. sound goos good. it's not a way for renters to establish and build wealth, because they don't own anything. i think we are better off focusing on zoning change at the local level. i think we all understand that one of the reasons we have a housing crisis -- why is this such a housing crisis in a rich place like san jose, california? because 70% of the community is single family homes. not everybody wants a single family home anymore. we have diverse buyers. at the same time, the hardest thing to convince affluent suburban communities,

predominantly white perhaps, communities is they should accept subsidized housing, people who are much poorer than we are. >> i want to let the audience know we will be coming to you for questions in just a moment. so if you could think about those, i would greatly appreciate it. >> i just wanted to quote the dean of american sociologists who has written experience with residential integration in many communities understo communities indicates it can be achieved without problems when the two races are similar in socioeconomic level. i think that is really important. how do we sustain integration and minimize any tension? do i wish that we didn't have to reassure white people? i do wish that, but that is a reality. that's what we've had over the many years. i think what we need to do is

open up zoning, convince these communities you need more two family homes, you need more three family homes so that people of more modest means can live in your community. that's definite than saying let's build a 12-story public housing project. we just saw in liberal california overriding zoning to build mid range development, voted down by the general assembly. >> i would just say it shouldn't be an either/or proposition. i think that there are multiple tactics that need to be deployed. there is a role absolutely on the local side on these local ordinances where local governments do have a particular role to play in furthering fair housing. to me, it doesn't remove the responsibility of the federal government to really seek to enforce the federal fair housing

act in the way that it's meant to. some of that requires having those kinds of goals to do so. >> quick response? >> hook, you know, in 2009 secretary donovan took a group of us down to new orleans because it was the response to the hurricane. i visited ed parish after paris. those were heavily concentrated with minorities. at the end of the day you're talking about the westchester county case as an example. if you go to larchmont high school, you're going to end with a better education. all of this trickles down. i think this area needs focus and needs to be prioritized by the president and people need to start calling for it and talking

about it publicly that this is too important for the u.s. economy, because at the end of the day as we look forward and look at the diversity of the generations that are going to be running this country, you have to create opportunity or our economy is not going to be what we want it to be. it's an economic discussion as much as it is a sociological one. >> good morning. antwon thompson, executive director of the national association of real estate brokers. i just wanted to say a couple quick things. two questions. first is for the panel. if you all could shed some light on america's historical role in providing access to land for white americans for hundreds of years through the homestead act, through land disposition

agreements for developers and ldas and things like that and the risks that we aoften allow for whites to be successful and unsuccessful and we're a little more critical when african-americans are -- the other thing i would say is out of the great depression is a lot of programs came into existence to help create suburban america, that this was orchestrate d subu suburbia was created by the federal government. we look 70 years later. now we have the massive homeowner shiship gap. how do we fix it? >> we want to make sure that we get other questions in. so could just one person answer

the question. >> fha was created in 1934 to offer title one loans to rural communities and farmers and ranchers. that's right. to your point, the reality is that we do have decades of disparities and it's not a matter of fault. it's just a matter of reality. we need to be thinking about public policies and help create opportunity for those who have been neglected in the past. >> my question is, do you think technology and innovation has an opportunity to be an equalizer in this field? >> maybe focusing on the wrong thing, but we should talk about this, because i think right now there are -- we have to also

address that the venues for accessing housing and ads and where ads are placed is all playing itself out online in a really big way. now i can't remember the percentage of housing ads being placed at facebook right now in terms of really owning the market around some of these issues. there have been a very long, pretty rich concern about facebook's own ways that they're engaging in racial discrimination, discrimination to prevent certain people from -- giving hosts the ability to click on who's going to receive which ads and the like. that's the negative side of the kind of changing nature of where housing and housing access is playing itself out. so i think that's a huge area that we have to focus on, the leadership conference has been long engaged with air bnb and facebook. there's a whole economy taking

place that has so far been relatively untouched by the fair housing act. that will become a huge loophole that will have huge consequences on our economy. >> in new york we did a paper that shows there's a good deal of naturally occurring affordable housing, housing in the private market that was as affordable of subsidized or low income housing. but people don't know about it. i think city governments can work with zillow and organizations like this to say you may not know there's a house or apartment you can afford, but there is. i think the technology could be a reach out mechanism in that kind of way. >> i know we could talk about this all day. but please join me in thanking our panel. [ applause ] >> please welcome carlos campbell, former assistant

secretary for economic development at the department of commerce and a key witness for the fair housing act. and jeffrey hayward, executive vice president and head of multifamily at fannie mae. [ applause ] >> i'm just delighted to be here today and have an opportunity to have you all see me ask carlos campbell a couple questions. what i think about most when i think about the work that you've done is that leadership really does make a difference. i'm thrilled that i get to work at a company that through housing we get our opportunity and duty to lead is there. carlos, i'm going to ask you my first question here. i hook at all the work that you've done as being terrific work. but there are three moments that really stick in my mind. when you got home from duty,

you're off holooking for an apartment. what happened and what inspired you to not just take it but go and do something different? >> well, thanks for that question and thanks for this opportunity. a couple of things happened. i had been flying in the reconnaissance business, which is a very dangerous business. we were dancing around the soviet air spaces. i won't say we deliberately violated their air space but we were collecting intelligence. when you're in that business, you've got migs on top of you like during the cuban missile crisis. and you know that your butt is on the line. during the cold war we lost over 500 aviators in that business. you feel like you stepped up when you were called. you come back to the united states. you're married with a baby and you're looking for housing. my options were open. i could have had an apartment, a townhouse or a single family.

i'm looking around and i'm being rejected, rejected, rejected in uniform. i went to a place called americana fairfax owned by carl friedman. i walked into the lobby. here is a south vietnamese avenue army officer checking his mail. i walked up to get an application and a woman looked at me with impunity and said, i'm sorry, we don't practice open occupancy. that blew me away. i eventually got a place. there were several things that drove me to persist and write letters and try to get some of the policies reversed. because of the help of an attorney who won the loving case and that good support system including my father who was a close friend of the administrator robert weaver, we were able to get some traction and get some things turned around. once i moved into the area near

mount vernon off the memorial parkway, the place where we lived immediately, the people could not have been nicer. but when i'd go out in the morning because i was still on flight status to do my morning run at the crack of dawn, the police would stop me and they would say somebody reported a suspicious person in the neighborhood. the other thing is that the community of african-american off yeai ye -- aviators in the navy was a small close nknit community. we lost one of our superstars. his wife told me what happened and i rushed over to the house in southeast to try to console her. another friend ben cloud was a

fighter pilot. he came over and so we consoled her and we walked out to leave and this kid came up to the passenger side of the car and he said, mr. campbell, kwhwhy did father die? i couldn't answer that. when carol received a flag at arlington, she was 8 1/2 months pregnant. i looked at her face and i said she could not walk out of that cemetery and buy or rent a house without any hassle. that just really kind of drove me to the edge. i couldn't let this rest. so when i had to move two years later, i thought if i could get a place at the river house next to the pentagon i could at least stop off and have dinner with my family because i was going to graduate school at night. i walked into the lobby again. i'm told with impunity, i'm sorry, sir, we don't practice

open occupancy. i wrote a letter to secretary of defense mcnamara, a one-page letter asking him to desegregate river house, which was 1661 units. i said it would be inappropriate to do any business with the company unless they capitulate. he called in the secretary and they decided to capitulate. all total with just a few letters and a lot of support from people that had their hearts and heads in the right place, we got several thousand units desegregated. but i was driven because of the hostility. the hair salon wouldn't do my wife's hair. the woman refused. and my wife would not leave. the woman called the police and the police said uh to do mrs. ka

bell's hair because there's a public accommodations act. my daughtedaughter, they wouldn her wade in the water in a private pool and they shut the power off. we got through all that stuff, but that's what the environment was like. >> right before the act, you testified in front of congress. you were still in the navy. talk about kind of what your superior officers thought about that and kind of what sacrifice you had to make to go and be able to testify. >> let me put this in context. after the busboy cot in montgomery, alabama, dr. king came up to michigan state university and he spoke with reverend abernathy.

he told the people they had a choice between riding in humiliation or walking in dignity. that was one of my personal drivers. the other thing is i worked for a very interesting admiral from georgia, admiral steve morrison. his son was jim morrison of the doors. admiral morrison told me in no uncertain terms he did not want me using my position as a naval officer to advance civil rights. so i said, you're talking to the wrong guy. normally i wouldn't wear my whites in the summer time. i put on my whites and my gold wings and went up and testified in front of the committee and told senator my story, what i had to deal with. it was about ben cloud and the

resistance, bill normal, frank peterson. we all had to adapt. when you traveled across country and you didn't know where you could -- you slept in your car just because you're black. you didn't know what hotel was segregated. i didn't want to stay in any segregated places. those were the kinds of things that drove me. >> fast forward, the act is passed, thank god. and you're working at hud as secretary. talk about what kind of environment that was like and what fuelled you to try to get some things done once you arrived there. >> well, i worked for a very progressive and committed assistant secretary samuel c. jackson from kansas. he was a reason. i had no affiliation at all. but he convinced me to come and

work for him. he was determined to be very aggressive in turning the place around, as he used to say. secretary romney from michigan had been the neighbor of my first boss out of michigan state, so i had sort of like a side channel to the secretary, who was totally committed. he tried to use the law to integrate various communities. the most famous of which was warren, michigan. he had john mitchell on board, the a.g. but the president of the united states richard nixon, he came out with this term. he said he did not like the idea of forced integration. nobody's talking about forced integration. we're talking about the law of the land. you take an oath, defend the constitution, all the laws et cetera. so i was out of hud. hud was a very -- it was an agency in transition. i'm not going to say it was a

racist agency, but culturally it was a racist agency. [ laughter ] hud build tt the ghettos of america. my ex-wife now, she grew up in public housing. and i know a lot of great people, physicians, attorneys that came out of public housing. so the housing -- >> just so you know, i came out of public housing. >> i'm setting you up, bro. i know that. i know that. and i think because of that experience, you have the empathy of what you need to turn the whole system around. hud -- i'm looking at the regulations and they talked about in the fha regs, maintaining neighborhood stability, which no black folk, okay? so it's an education.

but i'm convinced that secretary romney was probably -- and i knew about half of the secretaries over the years. i worked with jack kemp was a good friend. city council together. excuse me, i'm sorry. so everybody wanted to do the right thing but very few people did. secretary romney, i think, went way out, went as far as he could go and i respect his legacy. but the rank-and-file people, they're committed to the status quo and hud is a tough bureaucracy. and let me say this. i've been in washington a few years. there's a force in this town, they're called lobbyists, they're over 10,000. they generate over $6 billion a year in revenues. i was correctly quoted once

because i said, at its worst, government is about deception. and power is about abuse. and you don't see change in the demographic pattern because the desire for the change is not there. there are not enough black people in the united states to scare all the white people that are scared. we don't have enough black folk to scare each other, okay? so, i don't get it. i've never quite understood the resistance to change. a lot of people move into communities because they don't want to raise their children in a segregated environment. they want diverse communities. but -- you look at the resistance. >> so let me ask you a question, about leadership and going forward. so what you did at least in my view and i think in the view of many, many folks, is that you at

the moments where you could make a difference, you took that opportunity to do so. if you're advising us, who we're housing practitioners, this is the work we do every day, how would you advise us as leaders to make more progress and to really live up to what the fair housing act aspired to do? >> well i'm going to have to put my hat on as an aviator. first thing do you when you go into a target is you want to know what the resistance is. one of the countermeasures you're going to need. and a lot of the great leadership challenge comes from edmund burke. you know all it takes for the triumph of good over evil is for good men to do nothing and you have to commit yourself. and i come from a family of a lot of ministers and in my micah it says we're here to pursue justice, embrace mercy and walk humbly.

and two of those i got right. so in the navy, you are taught that the first principle of leadership is setting the example. and what you do for example, obviously you have a well-earned outstanding reputation. which is the case with you know fannie mae and every day you have to be challenged. the great psychoanalyst eric erickson said without a challenge, you regress. and so you challenge yourself every day. and life is a lot different if you wake up in the morning and you say -- what is my challenge today, and the challenge may be to hire two or three people or to make sure that the system is not clogged up. so applications get through. and to make the world a better place. so you feel like i think king

wrote his dissertation on tillock. he said the great anxieties in life are death, hope and meaningfulness. what challenges do you want to take on? if people did one-tenth of what you're doing, the world would be a better place. >> well i'm going to stop us there. why not. >> well that's what you wrote. >> that's what i -- and say thank you very much, carl for being here. >> thank you. [ applause ] up next for a conversation on national challenges and local solutions, please welcome rob braymeyer, executive director of the oak park regional housing center and maria tore or he is, commissioner for housing preservation and development. back to lead the conversation, the atlantic's jillian white. >> soy think thus far we've been

able to talk about the fair housing act kind of at the bird's eye view and also we've had personal stories, i want to you discuss a little bit about your role in thinking about fair housing and then implementing that in your cities, maria, you want to start in. >> good morning, everyone. so i'm the commissioner of new york city department of howser preservation and development. our work is to advance the housing plan in new york. where we've set ambitious goals to build and preserve affordable housing, it's about 300,000 homes through 2026. and really, the work that we do, the agency together with many different sister agencies, reflects in many ways what the story is of new york and so on one hand it's a story that continues to be one of growth, all-time population high. all-time high in terms of jobs, continues to be a city that has

an embarrassment of riches in terms of cultural institutions, et cetera. but of course it's also a story of too many inequities, of incredible rent burden, for instance, on the part of too many new yorkers. it's a story that reflects the story of many city ace cross this country shaped by a history, legacy, decades of inequities and discrimination. so as we 50 years, it's been spoke an lot about today, after the passage of the fair housing act, we believe that our work has to be not just about reflecting on that history, the good and the bad, but really about taking it as far as we can, advancing the work as far as we can, in order to create inclusive communities, to promote choice, to make sure we're really increasing access to opportunity for new yorkers.

and it, and it's grounded really in a balanced approach. in making sure that we're doing from a housing policy perspective, all of the things that we need to do in order both to give people the ability to reach a little bit higher. to access opportunities in neighborhoods across the city, we do that through a number of programs, changes in zoning. that insure that we have affordable housing in higher-income neighborhoods. while at the same time looking at play space initiatives where we're building affordable housing, pairing that with investments in infrastructure and parks and schools and a lot of work to combat displacement. because part of the choice that we want to make sure exists in new york, is the choice to be able to stay and live and thrive in neighborhoods that new yorkers have really built. and they, they were there in good times and in bad times. and so it's really for the

combination of those tools. that we hope that we don't squander this opportunity that we have to keep furthering this really important, but challenging work. >> can you talk a little bit about your work in the park? >> i run a nonprofit organization that exists in oak park, illinois. we got started, almost about 50 years ago. the work that we do is based on a mission to achieve meaningful and lasting racial diversity in the community. and so oak park, if you don't know it, is right next to the city of chicago. we board ter directly to the west and it's about 52,000 people in four and a half square miles, so it's a moderately dense community it feels like you're still in the city. the l goes to it. so we had to make sure, we came up with a plan that as the city of chicago changed on the west side from being basically 990% white to 90% black in a very, very quick period, the folks in oak park recognize that that was probably going to happen there, too. and instead what we could do is

try to figure out a way to embrace intent sbeg ratigration means we have people from all diverse back grounds. and we can build a community where they all live together. in other words we don't have a segregated part of our community where one group lives and another group lives somewhere else. and that has helped us build a community culture around the idea that this should be a place that's inclusive. that we should be trying to build more equitable structures. and that everyone has a place to, to, everyone has a way to become part of our community. >> maria, new york has decided to move ahead with furthering fair housing despite the current administration's decision to kind of push that deadline back. i want to talk a little bit about why new york chose to do that. and what it means to be doing that despite kind of the lack of a federal push to do that. >> yes. so we, the original deadline for

our submission of our assessment of fair housing was 2019. we learned earlier this year that the hud has chosen to delay the implementation of the rule. we in new york are moving forward. because for two main reasons. one is a real recognition on the part of the leaders of the city and the community and certainly us at hpd, that this work of furthering fair housing, this is, it's certainly a marathon. but it really, what it is, it's a relay. and that we have now, me and my role, i've been given the batten. i'm not going to drop it and the work takes a long time. and the decision to delay the implementation of the rule, we think is irresponsible. decision, that really rolls back a lot of the progress and a lot of the commitment. it is not the time to put the

brakes on this work. it doesn't mean that the work is going to be easy. we just launched as you mentioned, our comprehensive fair housing planning process, we're calling it wherever you live nyc. two years of not just policy analysis, but really engagement with the community. because part of what i think really needs to be central to this work as it has been in so many communities, but for us, in new york, it's of course a very different context. the neighborhoods in new york are very different from each other and very different from neighborhoods across, across the country. we need to engage real human beings in what it means for them to live where they live, what that means in terms of access to opportunity. and what they want and what they believe needs to be done, given that experience. not just by local government. local, state and federal government in order for us to

make sure we actually have as much as we can diverse and livable neighborhoods. and so we're moving full steam ahead with that work. we've already launched the engagement process, and at the end of the process in 2019, the original deadline, our commitment is to make sure that we will not have just run a robust and meaningful process. but we will have recommitted ourselves to very specific goals, very specific strategies, to continue this work. as i mentioned, we have a balanced approach right now it doesn't mean we have all the answers. but it's critical to us that we are really engaging our citizens and are as aggressive as possible in the furthering of the work. >> rob, you talked a little bit about the goal of sustained integration and how it requires being proactive versus reactive. which i think is what ends up happening in a lot of

communities. can you talk just a little bit about how you think about being proactive and then also what those conversations actually look like on the ground. >> this is genius of what we created. so when oak park started this work and the housing center was created, the community was 99% white. we knew that change was going to happen and we knew we needed to embrace that change in way that was going to be beneficial for the community. as well as the new people who were moving into the community. and so what we decided to do is instead of come up with a typical -- only have an enforcement mechanism, right we do have enforcement mechanisms if people are discriminated against, there's a way to go about making a complaint and remedying the situation. what we do in addition to that and the housing center is critical to this, we engage people when they're searching for housing. at the beginning of our time, we hit both in the home ownership and the rental market. now we basically have trained our real estate agents and the community to take on the home ownership part for us.

we just dot rental side. so we will so if we're in that rental situation, oak park, even though it's sort of a middle class, upper middle class community, it's 45% rental as well. so we have a lot of rental apartments to work with. when people want to move to the community. can come to us and they can talk to us about what they're looking for. all the landlords in the community work with us, too. they give us all their listings and tell us what's available and they will tel us all about the apartments. it's almost like we know what's happening with that apartment. we can connect people really quickly. we can get them exactly what they're looking for, what they can afford and put that together. in that process what we have to do is deal with implicit bias and what the research shows is something kind of like an a racial blind spot. where even today, 45 to 50 years after we started this process, people still move to oak park, when they first move they have this idea that it's a diverse place. but because most places in america that are diverse are segregated, they assume oak park

to be segregated as well. they're race to find where they belong in oak park and where they should avoid and that constantly happening to us. so we have people who are helping them, right. we don't just say here's your listings and on your way, thank you very much. we talk to them for a half an hour or so. and work through this process with them. and hear what those reservations are and hesitations are and we get to learn about where they're trying to avoid and those sorts of things. we can talk them through actually looking into those parts of oak park as well. so this is almost always racially based. and it has a lot to do with the fact that we're surrounded by more racial and segregated places. the neighborhood in chicago to our east is 90% african-american. there's a community to our west that's 85% white. there's two communities to our south that are 60 and 90% latino so everyone thinks we must have that pattern within oak park as well and that's not the case so we can talk that through and explain it to them. their initial hesitation and/or

just ignorance of the parts of oak park that they were avoiding goes away. we can add to the number of options that they would have thought about in the first place. and get them to think about moving in a way that would sustain our integration or improve it we're always trying to improve it. we're looking to figure out ways to help people think about that all the time. just really quickly. if we do that. we know that about 68% of the time they'll make a move that will either sustain or improve our integration it keeps it going and keeps improving. if they don't use us and we know this partly from the data of when an owner rents to somebody that we didn't provide to them and they let us know that the unit has been closed out, it happens less than 50% of the time. so if it's under 50% of the time segregation continues so we have to have this intentional mechanism in place in order to keep this going. >> so before i ask you guys a few more questions, i want the audience to know that we'll be coming to you for questions. so start thinking about them now. you've all already heard my

spiel and can you get your hands up and we have mic runners in the audience. i want to talk about the issue of affordability a little because it feels like we would be remiss to leave that out. there's a ton of debate out there about what affordable housing that works actually looks like. both in sustaining actual affordability and in integrating communities. i'm wondering how you guys are thinking about that as you move forward and what you think the most successful models are. >> so what we're pursuing in new york and of course, like with many cities the affordability crisis, is quite dire. we've been in a housing emergency for three decades. it continues. 30% of our renters are severely rent-burdened. paying more than 50% of their income on rent. and so we have as i mentioned earlier, what we believe to be the most ambitious plan to create and preserve affordable

housing. i get asked all the time, affordable for whom. what does that really look like? so there is the plan is intended to meet the needs of a wide variety of families from different income levels. because the need is really dire. not just for extremely low income families, but for working class people in new york city. the firefighters, the nurses, the teachers. who built the city and feel like they're losing their grip on it. so that thus far a third of the units that we, the thoems that we've produced, about 88,000 so far, are for people who are extremely low and very low income families. and in the last year it's close to 50%. so we understand that we have to provide the types of homes for those who are most rent-burdened. there's a big piece of this, given the commitment to fair

housing, that's making sure that the homes are built in all of the neighborhoods in new york. is and so there are places where we have land. or where land costs are reasonable enough, such that those are the projects that get assembled by our development partners and we provide subsidy and build affordable housing there. but one of the key policy initiatives of the de blasio administration, which we really believe will pay dividends into the future, is our new mandatory inclusionary housing policy. so now anywhere in the city that is zoned for new residential growth, you have to provide affordable housing. 20 to 25% permanently affordable housing. this is anywhere in the city. and of course, this means that we're able to get affordable housing in higher-income neighborhoods so that it's a key policy. it pairs with all of the work that is happening in other neighborhoods in the city.

and an important part of this is where, where we're building in lower-income neighborhoods, it's not just the housing. i think a big part of this work is understanding that we have to connect the dots. connect the dots between housing and health and jobs and safety and parks. and the last thing i'll say, because the affordability crisis in new york is of a particular type, there's a lot of work anti-displacement. that we, really been focusing on. providing for example free lawyers if you're a low-income residents in housing court. insuring that we're combatting harassment. against landlords who are using unsavory practices. so all of those tools come together. and it's not, it can't work everywhere. i'm sure there are things that we still need to do in new york. but those are the main levers that we're pulling.

>> over the last ten years, affordable house something more top of mind for residents in the community and the reason is going back to our racial integration strategy, that's a situation in which as we became less white and more diverse and more integrated, we started to see our property values go up. so and they went up at a fairly rapid rate. it was because we were creating community that there was much more demand for than we had supply of. in other words there are a lot more people who want to live in a place like oak park, than there are oak parks in the world and there certainly are no other oak parks there are a couple other communities in the chicago region, much smaller than oak park, 10,000 to 12,000 people. there's not a lot of opportunity for people to find a community like oak park. we have way more demand than we have the supply to deal with.

our property values went way up and that created some affordability issues. we've put into place very similar to new york city in this case, as far as the folks who were dealing with as far as feeling the displacement pressures are folks that are really like working-class to lower middle class folks, right? people who make between $40,000 a year and $80,000 a year. because they're not going to get any sort of subsidies or other help that we have in our affordable housing tool box that you know really starts at the federal government and works its way down. >> we have to figure out how we can do things to help folks in the middle. we have our own housing authority. even though it's only four and a half square miles, the housing authority has 520 voucher holders, about 6% of our rental market. that's a high number for a middle class community. it's usually under 1%.

we have mechanisms we put in place for the very low income folks in the community to try to figure out what to do around middle income is harder. there aren't federal ways to fund that. tough come up with local and private ways to do that. it's a bigger challenge than even the lowest income affordable housing issues. >> linda white. we keep hearing that integrated neighborhoods are better neighborhoods. i'm an integrationist but we've had a lot of all-black communities that have thrived. such as right here in washington. dean wood kingman park, river terrace in some locations historically, the black towns have been destroyed with the support of the u.s. government and secretary campbell said that even the government built the ghettos, so my question is since the federal government is so responsible for the inequity in housing, what do you think is the case for reparations for

housing? >> all right. >> does one of you want to take that? >> i'll try. >> so first i'll say that, yes, integrated neighborhoods are a really great thing. but they're not the only thing, right? we're not trying to say that every neighborhood has to look exactly like every other neighborhood. there can be variations on what integration looks like and what that sort of thing and there can be -- i think we all feel a lot more comfortable in the sort of civil rights field about a neighborhood that is majority black and we're figuring out how to make that thrive versus a neighborhood that's majority white and that's always happened, right? it doesn't feel like it's as big a win in the civil rights arena. but you know whether it's integrated or not, what we need to figure out is not only are we bringing people together and helping them live among one another, but are we putting the structures in place, that will make sure that we all get the full benefit of that, too,

right? so even in oak park after 50 years, we're still working on that. it's not utopia, we're workinging hard to improve on our strategy in most of america, if you have segregation, you also have two separate entities altogether and you have way different levels of resources, way different levels of opportunity, way different levels of power and influence. and that really sets us up for disaster essentially it doesn't hurt only the people in the communities that don't have resources, it hurts us all. because we end up paying for these bigger structural things that create more disharmony and pain than working together to figure out how to build that back so reparations in my point of view, there's two ways to look at it. one is can we do that because we're actually, it's actually not only moral victory, but it's an economic victory for the country. it will actually start to make things work out better. we can do it by trying to share and you know, leverage the

privilege that white people have. and bring other people into the community to take advantage of what's sort of natural for white people and make it natural for everybody. >> i think reparations is where we're going to end it today. i'd like to thank our panel. ed a now for a conversation on measuring the ripple effects, please welcome sheryll carbon, professor of law, civil rights and social justice at georgetown law, allison silverberg, mayor of alexandria, virginia. and sherylen eiffel. president and director counsel of the naacp legal defense hand educational fund to lead the conversation, please welcome back the "atlantic's" van newkirk. >> so we get to sort of wrap up

our conversation on housing equity. what it means, what segregation means. and what i want to talk about in this panel is sort what we really mean, what real he cans are of housing segregation and inequity and equity. i want to start by asking everybody on the manual one question. and that's when we talk about housing equity, what are we really talking about? i'll start with you, sheryll. >> well today, two-thirds of african-americans live in what would be described low-opportunity settings. 40% of black children live in very low opportunity settings. and they don't have much in the way of economic mobility. because they're living in a place where there's tends to be disinvestment, you know majority of black kids, are in segregated

schools. and what we have in this country is what i call opportunity hoarding. direct horizontal competition between high opportunity medium, and low opportunity places and we tend to disinvest. overpolice, we have a lot of black kids in schools where no one says this out loud but they say let's disinvest in these schools, give them the weakest teachers, often teachers who aren't certified to teach what they have. so everywhere you turn if you're in a low-opportunity setting, are you constrained in terms of access to jobs, access to education, access to networks. so that's, that's what i mean by housing inequity. >> we put a lot of this on black students, especially, we say the way out is to get a good education and to get through all these things, but you're saying this is the end result.

>> the combination of segregated housing and segregated schooling, i mean we have ordered ourselves in a way, particularly where schooling is not an engine of opportunity. it's an engine of a caste system in this country. america has rising socioeconomic inequality. and we haven't ordered our society the way that lives up to our values. >> so mayor silverberg, i want to follow up on that with you. when we are talking about housing equity. especially in the context of alexandria. what are we talking about? and what does it mean to your office and your policy? affordable housing -- is a top priority in alexandria. we're very lucky because it's a core value of the city.

we're right now discussing how to increase dedicated funding for the affordable housing fund which has existed for some 15 years. we just opened up a new building for about 93 affordable housing units and the building is stunning. and it was created by a nonprofit developer in partnership with the city of alexandria. and if you drive by the building you don't, you don't drive by and say there's the affordable housing building. that's not what i want for our city. we must have a place that is noble, really and is appropriate that you can't drive by and say, there's the affordable housing building. that's not right. so we're really committed to doing all we can for this crucial issue, it's a crisis for the country. and in terms of equity, you see it's about fairness.

that people need housing. and for those 93 units, some 2,000 signed up. in the past 20 years, we've lost something like 90% of our market rate of affordable housing units in our city. over 12 or 14,000 market rate affordable housing units. because reef development. so what we're doing now is we're, we're really reaching out and i've been committed to this for quite a while. where we're partnering with nonprofit developers. we can take funds from the affordable housing funds which i want to increase. and it's sort of like a lock box. and that's what other cities need, too, i hope. and so that -- was created so long ago, 15 years ago. and so now the community

embraces it. as far as education, i mean -- clearly the fair housing act, was signed into law and in late '60s, we're still feeling the effects. we still are feeling the legacy of segregation in this country. but we have an ability to right that wrong. and it has taken a long time. it is a shame, it's a dark chapter of our country. but now i think as a country, we are moving forward, and in the city of alexandria, i'm fully committed to, and i think the council that i serve with is committed to it as well. but mainly it's the community. and where the community kind of has a little bit of friction, i think with some of these redevelopments, is making sure that those buildings understandably fit in to the community architecturally. or that it doesn't you know,

overwhelm in height and density, that it fits in. so you can use project, you can do things architecturally. like making sure that it looks similar to the architecture around there. making sure there's a setback at the very top so they get it doesn't seem as high. but and -- that affordable housing building that i was mentioning to you in the green room was, it has 40% ami, 50%, 60%, but it's all affordable housing and what's going to come right across the way from this building, 50 feet away, nothing, is a building that's a market rate building and there are shared amenities. so, anyway. >> sherylen, i wanted to follow up with you. i've been following your work, i've been following the work of your organization for a while. it seems that fair housing or housing equity and housing

inequity are sort of at the root of a lot of what you do. so what we're really talking about when we talk about this? >> i think we're talking about two things, van, i want to go back to sheryl's comments about segregation, we talking about segregation and we're talking about this history. i want to put it just in context for a second in terms of thinking about this as an investment. you heard the earlier panels and the history of the role of the federal government in creating segregated america. this massive investment in segregated housing. and restrictive covenants to provide mortgage insurance and redlining and so forth. what that represents is a massive investment in creating the landscape of america that we now see and that we now accept. as though it's inevitable if you think about the investment in the interstate highway system which made the white suburbs possible. $25 billion invested in that's $230 billion in today's money in just the interstate highway. a massive investment.

all of these massive investments that went into creating landscape, the physical landscape that essentially expresses the racism of the early 20th century, right? we get to 1968, we pass the fair housing act. by the way, by one vote. a week after martin luther king jr. is assassinated. it's passed in shame by one vote. so it's not like there's this wellspring of desire to break down segregation. if there's blood on that fair housing act, right? so we get there and now it's 1968. how do you respond to the investment i just talked about? well you file lawsuits against active discrimination, you sue donald trump and his dad for not renting to black people. you do that. you create some of the measures that we've talked about. but you don't do a commensurate investment that balances the investment that was, was

expended to create the landscape that really made this kind of segregated america. and we still do this day have not met the investment that is required. the first thing is to think about what would it mean if we wanted to invest in truly desegregating america. if the federal government wanted to put its money where its mouth is, there's a number of measures that can be done. we're pushing back against them. but the issue of segregation. the second thing i would say, is that we can't look at housing separate from everything else. that housing actually is connected with almost every other issue we're talking about. if we didn't have segregated housing, we wouldn't have segregated schools. we know those two things are connected. we know how that happened. we know that the supreme court reinforced it. in 1973 with two cases, one san antonio school district versus

rodriguez when the court endorsed the idea that you could use property taxes to fund schools and two mill ken versus bradley when the supreme court said you could not require interdistrict bussing. so if you wanted to engage in white flight, could you get away from bussing. so we understand that. but what about transportation? the ability to move around a community? once you get out of the large cities of america and go to places like baltimore where we expend a lot of our energy and work there isn't a rapid transit system that would get the african-american community which lives along the east-west corridor back and forth and out to the jobs at johns hopkins, the largest employer probably in the state to their credit. actually employs ex-offenders, can you get to the job from west baltimore? and can you get there on time? can you get back home to see your kids after school? there's no real rapid transportation system in that town. issues of water. we've all seen what's been happening in flint, that's about

water poetability but there's also about water affordability. a lot of the work we're doing now is looking at this relationship between water affordability and home ownership and the loss of homes. water tax liens are becoming one of the highest causes of african-americans being foi foreclosed on because these water tax liens. they're auctioning homes woerks got a moratorium for a year in baltimore, on the sale of 1500 houses, flint regularly raises this issue of foreclosing on homes for water tax liens and there's not even poetable water there. this question of municipal services and the relationship between that and, and really having communities of integrity. what does it mean to be a home opener. what does it mean to have the services you need to be able to conduct your home? in legrange, georgia we just filed a brief in a case involving a challenge to the practice in legrange, georgia, of tying municipal services to

your payment of court costs and fees. now we're going to connect it to the justice system. if you haven't paid your court costs and fees, the municipal utility will turn off your water and your light and so forth. understanding how all of those threads bear on this question of equity in house something really important. you cannot consider it a loan. you have to connect it to all of the things you need to be able to insure that you can pay for your home that your home has the services, you can get to and from your job. that your children can be educated. it lies at the heart of a lot of what we do. >>cy want to follow up with you, especially about an issue that's on a lot of people's minds now and that's starbucks. you'll be participating in the next month's, the training people are doing. i don't know if people are understanding there is a housing element to thinking about the starbucks fen none nationwide. who has access to our

increasingly privatized public spaces, who has access to amenities, and who's considered to be in group and outgroup when it comes to our justice system. can you give us maybe a preview of what you're telling folks? what's your sense of this? >> the reason that i agree to try and help support the effort of starbucks to do what i, what i think this is one of their intention to do, is to address this issue of racial discrimination, is because this fws, the fair housing act. you have to add the civil rights act of 1964, which outlawed racial discrimination and public accommodations. i think we don't think enough about the reality of that law. first of all the fact that we needed a civil rights act of 1964 and that today you know i'm looking out at this room, we all, we all gathered here we all came here in ways that would have been very different in 1960, right? like where you could go and what hotel you stayed at and whatever

nice outfit you have on. whether you as an african-american could have tried on that outfit in the store that you bought it from. and what restaurant could you eat at and whether you could eat in the airport you know, restaurant wherever you came from. and we don't even, we just move through it and we accept it like air. but that had to actually be created. and that, too, is unfinished work, right? the question of who black people are in the public space and the ways in which your citizenship and dignity are implicated by your belonging in the public space really lies at the core and heart of the whole struggle around civil rights. and so to see what happened to those young men and i mean obviously we've done this work for a very long time. you know numerous cases, denny's and shoney's and we sued abercrombie and fitch and wet seal. you can do it that way. so this is an opportunity with a business that i think sincerely

wants to try to grapple with this. to think about what if we compelled or expected corporations to take responsibility themselves. for the public space and the public space which goes to your question is not just about what happens inside your store. it's also what happens outside your store and how do people interact with this this business that exists in 8,000 communities that when you create a public space, because that's what starbucks has created a public space, right? you come in and you're supposed to be able to sit there for a really long time and write your paper and write, you finish writing your screenplay and your roommate makes too much noise at college. you want to finish your paper and have a business meeting. that's a community space, that's a public space. woe have been contesting about the role of black people, about the place of black people in public space forever. it implicates all of those questions, just lastly what does it mean when a starbucks comes to your community. for an african-american it

probably means a change is coming to your community. there is, i was talking about this with my colleague, jenae nelson what it means when you see the starbucks and taking responsibility for that, for who you are in that space. >> one more question and i want everybody to cue up their questions in the audience. sheryl. you talk in your first answer about this change. this cycle of disinvestment, of how it affects children downstream. it seems to set every generation back a little more. how do you conceptualize breaking that cycle with every single turn of it sets each generation back a little more. >> so we have -- each time we think that we have put to bed an anti-black institution, we seem to create a new one. slave

slavery, jim crow, ghetto. these are intentional institutions. and the fair housing act had two norms. any discrimination norm and an integration norm which required the dismantling of segregation. and so you know, the good news is that there are 400, more than 400 local jurisdictions, like yours that are actively promoting integrated housing. the good news is despite the fact that the secretary of had you had is trying to delay the further, further and further fair housing rule, there are a number of jurisdictions that understand that integration when it's achieved, actually works, it works, you get higher rates of social mobility for children, you get lower rates of prejudice. you create spaces where people

interact with each other more based on familiarity than fear, right? so how you break it each generation we have to keep fighting the good fight for this idea perhaps a utopian idea, that it's possible to have a robust, multiracial, multiclass community, that includes rather than excludes. we need constituents to organize, there's a constituency out there. that likes diversity, wants it for their kids, in the neighborhood and schools, but the constituency for integration is not organized. meanwhile, when you try to do things without the organization, nimby-ism, there's still a lot of anti-black feeling and fear, but it's based on stereotypes people carry in their heads. i want to say in response to the starbucks thing this is not just about starbucks, right? everywhere you have a

gentrifying neighborhood, i have students who have written about that. it's kind of frightening, when you have people who have moved in to formally majority black and poor spaces, without a lot of cultural comfort, what we see is an increase in calls of police, mainly by white people who are not comfortable, you know, frankly with a dark-skinned black man sitting there, with you know, i thought it was a fly hairdo, just like yours, a lack of comfort. a lack of you know -- right. the good news is that there's an expanding group of what i call culturally dexterous whites that is getting experience with difference, liking it and seeing seize it and actually is getting comfortable with using the "r" word, that's racism and i disagree with it and we have to

create, keep fighting to create these kinds of integrated spaces. black folks do have allies, we need more of them. >> since 1990, we've been very proactive about testing with regard to the fair housing act. and we have a great office, office of housing in the city. of alexandria. and i'm really proud of that. second, i often ask myself, sort of a rhetorical question, what would dr. king say. what would dr. king say about what happened in charlottesville. what would dr. king say about this conversation? and from my part, in late november, 2016, i initiated and wrote alongside with our human rights commission, and office, a statement on inclusiveness and

the council and i signed it and it's on a poster all across alexandria. it's in english, very short. english, spanish, and arabic. and it's really been embraced by the city, posted not just in libraries and schools and rec centers, but also in people's homes and businesses. in the city hall for free. basically what it says is it addresses what we're talking about which is fairness, inclusiveness, equity and people want to live in a city that is inclusive. businesses want to place their workers and run their businesses in such a city. but it's the right thing to do. and i'm very proud of our statement on inclusiveness. and i'm encouraging other jurisdictions to write their own version of it. and basically what it says is alexandria is a city of kindness and compassion, and diversity is a core value of our city and yes we're tolerant. but we're not just tolerant.

we're embracing and accepting and that we denounce all hate speech and hate crimes and bias and discrimination in all forms. and that people -- everyone has a place at the table, regardless of their background, their race, gender, age, disability or ability. religion. immigrant status. on and on. it's very simple. yet it really crucial to create that core foundation. and housing is a part of that. school is a part of that. jobs, access to transit. in fact, sherylen when were you talking about transit. i totally agree with you. that's one of the first questions we as a council look at when we're looking at redeveloping a site. there's bus rapid transit that's going to be right near that new building that we just did the ribbon cutting for. >> one of the reasons why transportation is so important

is because we are operating on dual tracks in terms of the work we're doing at the legal defense fund. committing to the importance of integrated housing. we feel we have a commitment to helping people in african-american communities have strong, safe communities of opportunity. and so part of the reason why transportation becomes so important is you want to be able to live in your african-american community and still get to a job. that community ought not to be isolated. the reason we work on the water tax lien issue is because we want to make sure that african-americans who do own homes can hold on to their homes. there's two parts of this. it's not just about creating integrated communities. it's also about insuring that african-american who is live in african-american communities have the tools and the opportunities to have those communities be strong, be economically sound, be environmentally sound. have good schools. we consider it part of our education work. at the end of the day the school is surrounded by a community.

the strength of that community determines the strength of that school. i think we have to be able to keep those two things in our head at once. that people have a right to live in a way that's dig nyed to where they are and work to dismantdle the segregated landscape that was created by decades and decades of federal policy. >> time for one good question back here. ? my name is barbara mooreland. volunteer with the arlington virginia partnership for affordable housing. years ago when i became aware of commercial affordable housing being offered in our area, i was told that those affordable units would only be restricted to affordable housing for a certain period of time. and i'm interested to know if that's generally true with commercially developed properties that include affordable housing. and if it is, how jurisdictions

address the need to continue to have that many or more affordable units in their areas. and third, what happens to a person who is living in an affordable unit that gets transitioned to commercial value? >> in alexandria, we have a housing master plan that talks about a lot of these issues. we also have a one for one replacement. if something is redeveloped, we need to provide a space for the person who has to leave that site for redevelopment and we have to find a place for them. or give them a vouch fer they would choose to go elsewhere and finally it used to be that we require that the developer would only keep the units for say 20, maybe even 25 or 30 years. but now it's 40 or longer years. so it's, i think it was 20 years and now it's 40 or 50 years.

so it's -- it's just for the asking and that's what i would also like to mention, it's really just for the asking. we also in alexandria have a voluntary contribution, unless someone going to redevelop a regular site let's say right near somewhere off jeff davis highway then they frankly which is the name is going to be changed. that's a separate issue. finally got that done after 50 years of conversation. but sit, you know that that site is when they're building let's say a commercial property, has nothing to do with housing. but we asked those developers, we can't require it in virginia, but we can ask and we have a standard voluntary contribution formula for asking them to make a significant contribution, financial contribution and that money goes into the affordable housing fund. they can alternatively provide if they're building, building with units, let's say, it's

housing then they can provide a few units. either way they are participating in had process. do i think we should get more from them? frankly, yes. >> thank you so much for that question and we got one more. >> yes. bob woodson. the question that i have for the panel, in fact the whole day has been on race. the question as a civil rights veteran myself, why if we now have 10,000 black elected officials operating in most of these cities, most of the school systems, health care systems, juvenile justice, judicial systems are run by black people. the challenge, the question is why are our children and our people failing in systems run by our own people? if racism, were the issue? washington, d.c., we lead the nation in per-capita

expenditures on poverty and the greatest, income disparity is between low-income blacks and upper income blacks. if racism were the culprit, why aren't all blacks suffering equally? >> that's another conference. would love to participate. i would say my brief answer is, i reject out of hand the fear because you have a black mayor that means that you now can racism. i described to you the structural nature of racism and the deep investments, that's the part we doebts talk about. we don't talk about white supremacy and racism. as an investment. and so, to the extent those investments then become embedded, and then you, get to talk, you have things like what i talked about, supreme court decisions that aid and abet the kind of movement that happened as a result of people not wanting to attend integrated

schools urks constantly fighting this rear-guard action. until we face that, until we face the investment nature and the structural nature that's actually built into the physical space, i always say you know we think about racism in the past is like white water fountain the signs and it was physical. he we removed that it's still in the physical landscape. it was created based on those principles, until we're prepared to talk about what would it take to dismantle it, whoever is the mayor of your local town i'm thinking about baltimore. you know, and it's not any individual mayor that i could say is responsible for what has happened to baltimore. i'm not saying that. but if we begin to peel back the structural onion of baltimore, you should want to know not why did freddie gray just get arrested, but why was he living in that particular part of west baltimore. and would he have been able to get it a job on the other side

of town. and why were he and his sister lead poisoned in the 1990s. even though we know all we know about lead poisoning, we have to deal with those questions. so i'm going invite you to our next conference on this. >> can i add just one word to that? the word -- that's not there is ghetto. the turner commission said we need to dismantle the ghetto. concentrated black poverty is a government institution, and if you look, read james foreman's book, he basically said the inequality you talk about between upper income black people and lower income people, the structural thing, the structural consequences of concentrated black poverty. a situation where success is aberrational. only 1% of concentrated poverty

schools succeed, regardless of race. and if that structure exists, and sometimes upper income black people are participating in the othering. are supporting, this is what james forman's book is about. so there is a class dimension there. if you've got that structure of concentrated poverty and you're not actively dismantling it or actively giving the denizens of ghetto communities access, you're going to get more of the same. >> i'm going to invite you to our next conference on this. >> i thank you so much for the comment and for the question. and we will continue dialogue. thank you all for your questions and thank you, please give a round of applause for our panel. >> thank you. van, jillian and all of our speakers today and for sharing what is i think has been an

incredibly powerful conversation and for everyone sharing their stories. i would like to thank our underwriter fannie mae for making our time possible and i have one request, we have an email survey that will come out from me later today. there's copies in the room. we'd really appreciate your feedback, it's important to us. thanks again for being here. we hope you'll stay a little bit longer and get to know the great people in this room. thank you. here's a look at your primetime schedule on the c-span networks. beginning at 8:00 p.m. on c-span, recent commencement speeches from apple's ceo tim cook. ohio governor john kasich and on c-span 2, it's book tv programming. and on c-span 3, it's american history tv. with our series oral histories. we'll show you interviews with

search vietnam war veteran who is share their experience of fighting and living in that country. ♪ ♪ ♪ this weekend on real america on american on american history tv -- the 1988 u.s. moscow summit between ronald reagan and soviet leader mikhail gorbachev -- >> the way of democracy is sometimes a complicated way. and sometimes trying. but it is a good way and we believe the best way. and once again, mr. general secretary, i want to expend to you and to all those who labored so hard for this moment, my warmest personal thanks. >> watch real america sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv. on c-span3.

sunday, patricia o'toole discusses her book the moralist. >> there's a huge psychological literature about wilson. and i read it. but i have a sense that it just reduced him to tangles that i didn't feel i could deal with on the strength of my own knowledge of the theory. some people have said his stubbornness was a kind of reaction to his father's strictness. they can point to a story that his father made him revise. so the suppositions are that wilson resented this but he was a good boy and he put up with it. when you read every mention, in wilson's letters of his father,

they're worshipful. >> presbyterian minister. >> sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern c-span's q and a. now a look at current defense department innovation. we heard about the defense acquisition process, public private partnerships and the cyber security work force. at this hearing held by the house armed services committee. it is two hours. >> committee will come to order. for the last three national defense authorization acts reform, especially acquisition reform, has been a major priority. the purpose has to get more value for the taxpayers out of the money spent, but even more