Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs Of Housing Discrimination

Nearly three decades after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, illegal housing discrimination against blacks and Hispanics remains rampant in the United States. Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost reports on a landmark nationwide investigation of real estate brokers and landlords, comparing their treatment of equally qualified white, black, and Hispanic customers. The study reveals pervasive discrimination. Economist John Yinger provides a lucid account of these disturbing facts and shows how deeply housing discrimination can affect the living conditions, education, and employment of black and Hispanic Americans. Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost provides a history of fair housing and fair lending enforcement and joins the intense debate about integration policy. Yinger proposes a bold, comprehensive program that aims not only to enforce laws against discrimination in housing and mortgage markets but also to address the underlying causes of discrimination by attacking racial and ethnic disparities and supporting community efforts to promote integration. He urges reforms to strengthen the enforcement powers of HUD and other agencies, provide funding for poor and integrated schools, encourage local housing and race-counseling programs, and shift income tax breaks toward low-income home-buyers. This volume speaks directly to the ongoing debate about the nature and causes of poverty and the underclass, civil rights policy, and the plight of our nation's cities.