Trends in Black and Latino Segregation in the Post-Fair Housing Era: Implications for Housing Policy

Abstract

Despite the enactment of fair housing legislation during the 1960s, decades of restrictive access to communities outside of traditional minority neighborhoods have reinforced highly segregated residential patterns within U.S. metropolitan areas.' Although levels of Black/Anglo segregation have declined markedly since 1968, Blacks still are highly segregated from nonLatino Whites (Anglos),2 regardless of their socioeconomic status.3 Moreover, Latino segregation from Anglos has increased in a number of metropolitan areas during the past 20 years.4 Further, the level of interminority (i.e., Black and Latino) segregation has remained moderate to high.5 Rather than disappearing, segregated residential areas have become permanent fixtures in urban areas. As Moore and Mittelbach6 argued on the eve of the Fair Housing era, the urban ghetto was a device by which certain residents (most notably, Blacks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and American Indians) became trapped in subordinate positions within society. Housing segregation became a convenient way of ensuring the continuity of the status quo. A resurgence of interest in both the effects of sustained segregation and the causes of the increased impoverishment of minorities in America's central cities has propelled scholars to reexamine the importance of place as a