I’ve long been a huge fan of the weekly radio program “This American Life” on National Public Radio. I’ve always found it interesting and thought provoking.
I often peruse the show’s archives to try to catch a show from days gone by on the Internet and last weekend I found a fascinating, if troubling, gem from 2013 about fair housing. The reason it was particularly interesting to me is that it prompted memories about something similar close to home 40 years ago.
Host Ira Glass went though the history of the Department of Housing and Urban Development with the program titled “House Rules.” His survey went back to the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration and the creation of the Fair Housing Act and addition of HUD to the cabinet.
The City of Detroit and many other urban centers were reeling from devastating race riots, leaving scores of people dead and may areas in ruins from burning and looting. As soon as the regrettable incidents were taken under control by police and even military troops, Johnson and others began to search for the root causes of such anger, hatred and unrest.
Officials learned that many back people were being kept from sharing in the American Dream because of long-standing practices such as redlining. Though the goal on the surface was to integrate schools and neighborhoods, underneath it all was a very quiet effort to keep the races “separate, but equal.”
One prominent official who recognized the problem was Michigan Gov. George Romney, a Republican who may have been Richard Nixon’s chief rival for the GOP nomination for president in 1968. Romney, yes Mitt’s father, fell short at the convention in the summer of 1968, mostly because of his “brainwashed” speech about Vietnam and because of his steadfast support of integrated housing.
Romney and researchers maintained that perhaps the biggest stumbling block to creating and encouraging neighborhoods with blacks and whites living together in harmony was the government. He said interest rates for house purchases discriminated against people of color, and even if a black family was able to become homeowners in a while neighborhood, it wasn’t salt and pepper for long. The phenomenon known as “white flight” kicked in, prompting the process today known as urban sprawl.
So whites fanned out to the suburbs and even into nearby rural communities (like Caledonia and Byron Center). Meanwhile, blacks and Latinos were left in the city ghettos and the dying suburbs (like Kelloggsville and Godwin Heights).
After Nixon was elected president, he decided to let Romney become director of Housing and Urban Development, thinking the Michigan governor had passion and expertise in the area. But Romney didn’t last long because he insisted on enforcing the Fair Housing Act and caught a lot of prominent people in awkward positions of discrimination against minorities and people of color.
Nixon asked for and received Romney’s resignation not long afterward.
The Fair Housing Act did inspire a few non-profit organizations that would hire young white and black people to pose as potential house buyers. Over the years, it was determined a number of potential rental landlords would tell blacks there were no openings while at the same time providing rooms to whites. The nonprofit made sure the black and white plants were very similar in economic abilities to pay.
I personally witnessed this “scam” in Albion in 1977. City Councilman Max Siefert, a bit of a scoundrel in my opinion, was nailed by that very sting. He was a realtor who was caught steering young professional black couples to very different neighborhoods that white counterparts.
I shed no tears for Siefert, but all he got as a penalty was a fine and he even got to keep his council seat.
“This American Life” indeed brought back an interesting, but unpleasant memory.
