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68 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 89 (1993)
Affordable Housing, Exclusionary Zoning, and American Apartheid: Using Title VIII to Foster Statewide Racial Integration

handle is hein.journals/nylr68 and id is 105 raw text is: NOTES AFFORDABLE HOUSING, EXCLUSIONARY ZONING, AND AMERICAN APARTHEID: USING TITLE VIII TO FOSTER STATEWIDE RACIAL INTEGRATION JAMES J. HARTNETr INTRODUCTION The devastating riots in Los Angeles in 1992 caused America to fo- cus, at least temporarily, on the intractable problems of the urban ghetto.' Many of these problems, such as pervasive crime, widespread drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, and structural unemployment, have been much discussed, and various solutions have been proposed.2 However, a major cause of many of the ills afflicting American ghettos has not re- ceived sufficient attention from the media or the public-at-large-the sys- tematic exclusion of low-income and minority people from most subur- ban communities across the country. At the same time that this pattern of exclusion has been neglected, a parallel and related phenomenon afflicting the middle class-the afford- able housing crisis-has received considerable attention. As typically defined, the affordable housing crisis centers on the fact that the new generation of young, middle-class Americans cannot afford to purchase the same types of homes as those in which they were raised.3 These two phenomena are really opposite sides of the same problem; both result from public policies that have promoted segregation along racial and class lines. This pattern of segregated housing, although con- I In April 1992, Los Angeles, California was rocked by the most violent urban riot in American history. Fifty-one people were killed, and property worth more than $750 million was destroyed. See Jack Miles, Blacks vs. Browns: The Struggle for the Bottom Rung, Atlan- tic Monthly, Oct. 1992, at 41. 2 See id. at 44-45 (discussing mainstream interpretations of causes of riot). See generally Daniel R. Fusfeld & Timothy Bates, The Political Economy of the Urban Ghetto (1984); Michael H. Schill, Deconcentrating the Inner City Poor, prepared for the John M. Olin Foun- dation Conference on the Law & Economics of Urban Issues at the University of Virginia School of Law (Nov. 8-9, 1991) (on file with the New York University Law Review). 3 See Paul K. Stockman, Note, Anti-Snob Zoning in Massachusetts: Assessing One At- tempt at Opening the Suburbs to Affordable Housing, 78 Va. L. Rev. 535, 535 (1992) (Many children of the suburbs find that they no longer can afford to live in the communities where they grew up. Teachers, firemen, and policemen often cannot afford to live among those they serve because of the restrictive costs of housing.). 89 Imaged with the Permission of N.Y.U. Law Review

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