Poverty-housing industry silences the Black civil rights community

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On June 4, the Black civil rights community was mugged by the poverty-housing industry. This industry, which takes government funds to build subsidized housing, is a $300,000,000-a-year behemoth, with 8,000 well-paid employees, making big profits constructing low-income housing into segregated neighborhoods.

Earlier this year, the Rev. Alfred Babington-Johnson, leader of a coalition of more than 100 Black churches, testified before the Minnesota subcommittee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He said low-income housing was too expensive and was seldom built in white communities. Babington-Johnson testified that government affordable-housing programs were designed to provide jobs to low-skilled Black and brown workers, but that the poverty-housing industry mainly hired affluent whites.

But on June 4, the poverty-housing industry flexed its muscle and members of the civil rights committee struck Babington-Johnson’s testimony from the public record. The change was in response to heated pushback from the state housing agency and the repeated objections of coalition of housing developers called “Equity in Place,” which, among other things, argued that Babington-Johnson’s concerns were racially insensitive.

The body striking Babington-Johnson’s testimony was created by Congress to assure claims like Babington-Johnson’s were “thoroughly investigated.” The U.S. Civil Right Commission was designed to aid victims of discrimination, not silence them.

Babington-Johnson’s claims have merit. When the poverty housing industry builds a two-bedroom unit, on average it costs $500,000 and rents for $1,300, more than the average market-rate rent in the neighborhood. Without a government voucher, poor people can’t afford poverty housing industry rents.

Affordable-housing residents care about crime and schools more than any other neighborhood characteristic. Yet the poverty-housing-industry units are built in dangerous neighborhoods, served by schools that lead to dropouts and low-income jobs.

Poverty-housing-industry units, built at government expense, belong to rich developers, who will require continual a new subsidies to keep the unit “affordable.”

There’s a better way. The Dakota County Housing and Redevelopment Authority builds the same units for $220,000, with $850 rents. A poor person can afford it without a double subsidy. The Dakota County units provide children access to low-crime neighborhoods and high schools that lead to college and a middle-class income. Dakota County units belong to the public and stay affordable in perpetuity without new subsidies.

The poverty-housing-industry unit costs more because it requires many law firms and consultants to layer subsidies. They get built in poor neighborhoods because there’s less community opposition, meaning subsidies can flow faster.

To keep these low-income-housing dollars in their hands, the poverty-housing industry has become the primary political and legal force deepening racial segregation in Twin Cities neighborhoods.

Today, Dakota County, Edina and Minnetonka are stepping up, trying to build high-quality affordable housing at a fair price. The poverty-housing industry still captures much of the subsidy, however, and ensures less funding for these places.

Civil-rights advocates have struggled against the industry. After a series of legal actions starting in 2014, the state housing agency briefly prioritized subsidized units for areas with high-performing schools — a small but important civil-rights victory. A few years later, in 2021, those provisions were struck from the law at the urging of housing-industry groups.

While poverty-housing-industry employees dress and act like political progressives, their paid “experts” interpret American civil-rights law like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and former President Donald Trump’s Justice Department. Walter Mondale, the author of the Federal Fair Housing Act, declared on the floor of the Senate that it was designed to end residential segregation. Paid experts for the poverty-housing industry argue that Mondale never intended integration and federal courts are wrong to think he did. Moreover, they argue voluntary integration programs are illegal affirmative action.

While 85% of Black, Asian and Latino households want to live in integrated neighborhoods, the poverty-housing industry’s “experts” assert that Black, Asian and Latinos prefer to live entirely poor, racial separate neighborhoods.

There is scholarly consensus — comparable to the consensus on climate change — that racial integration is associated with huge gains in education, income and health for low-income nonwhites. The poverty-housing industry’s experts, however, are “integration deniers,” who assert that the best way for children to thrive is by building housing in poor neighborhoods with high crime and low opportunity schools.

To Babington-Johnson and the American civil rights community, Brown v. Board of Education correctly declared that “separate was inherently unequal” and the law requires “equity everywhere.”

Now poverty-housing industry groups assert that integration was a failure, that Babington-Johnson is out of touch, and that equal protection of the laws is better satisfied by Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” — or what they call “Equity in Place.”

Myron Orfield is the Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the University of Minnesota Law School. He is also the director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity.