Despite the existence of fair housing-based legislation that renders nearly all forms of housing discrimination in the U.S. illegal, discrimination in housing persists. This applied thesis examines housing inequality through the lens of a fair housing center based in Flint, Michigan. I designed and conducted ethnographic research on the fair housing center and its role in the enforcement of the Fair Housing Act (FHA) and related legislation through systemic, routine, and complaint-based investigation. Specifically, my research explores (a) the historical, economical, and political events that continue to impact access to fair and equitable housing; (b) the role non-profit private fair housing organizations play in enforcing fair housing laws; and (c) the ways in which law, policy, and lived experiences of housing discrimination intersect as well as recommendations on how they can be improved. To accomplish the aforementioned goals this project gathered and analyzed the experiences of civil rights testers, fair housing coordinators, and fair housing attorneys in their respective roles at the fair housing center for a bottom-to-top comprehensive analysis of fair housing enforcement in the U.S. Additionally, I drew on the results of this research to develop recommendations for new civil rights tester training, recruitment, and retention. The recommendations I provided may assist the fair housing center with its growing demand to enforce fair housing by increasing and retaining its current tester pool, thereby expanding its enforcement capabilities.

When the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed 47 years ago, the United States was in the midst of the civil rights movement and fair housing was identified as a pillar of equality. While, progress has been made, there is much work that needs to be done in order to achieve integration. As a country, the United States is a highly segregated country. It is important to understand the factors that contribute to this and it is important to understand the relationships that exists between them in order to attempt to solve the problem. While the legal barriers to integration have been lifted choices continue to be limited to families of color that lack the resources to live in desirable neighborhoods. The ultimate goal of this study is to examine the relationship between the impact of individual indicators and housing patterns in the greater Tucson/Pima county region. An affordability index, the DEYA index, was created to determine where affordability is at its highest. The index includes different weights for foreclosure, Pima County spending on affordable housing, the existence of Pima County general obligations bond affordable housing projects, land value and inclusion in the community land trust. Once this was determined a regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between affordability and individual factors that may be affecting integration. The indicators used were broken down into 3 categories: the categories were education, housing and neighborhoods and employment and economic health.

After fifty years of challenges to the color line in Montgomery, Alabama, the Metropolitan Statistical Area is more integrated now than it was in 1950. Through exploring the effects of Brown v. Board of Education, the bus boycott, school integration court cases, re-segregation of schools in city and suburban districts, and federal open-housing policies, the volatile transformation appears to shows how, after fifty years, Montgomery has moved from a segregated dual society to a partially integrated society in spite of the massive resistance to integration.

This essay aims to analyse the motives behind President Donald Trump’s choice to remove Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), a provision of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. The true motives are analysed through the lens of Rational Choice theory. The choice of theoretical framework can account as an explanation as to why the law was removed. The essay is moreover based upon drafts originating from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The public has since the removal of the AFFH doubted the motives presented by the President, thus giving room for further scientifical exploration on the subject. The author has chosen to conduct a quantitative text analysis to present the given arguments by the administration and the Republican party and furthermore to present alternative motives. The analysis presents an argumentation analysis to further explore the strength in the arguments presented from the relevant actors. The theoretical framework provides an explanation of the choices made, namely by offering a new dimension in which to examine the true motives behind the choice to remove AFFH.

abstract: Law and science are fundamental to the operation of racism in the United States. Law provides structure to maintain and enforce social hierarchies, while science ensures that these hierarchies are given the guise of truth. Biologists and geneticists have used race in physical sciences to justify social differences, while criminologists, sociologists, and other social scientists use race, and Blackness in particular, as an explain-all for criminality, poverty, or other conditions affecting racialized peoples. Social and physical sciences profoundly impact conceptualizations and constructions of race in society, while juridical bodies give racial science the force of law—placing legal benefits and criminal punishments into play. Yet, no formal rules govern the use of empirical data in opinions of the Supreme Court. My dissertation therefore studies the Court’s use of social scientific evidence in two key cases involving race and discrimination to identify what, if any, social scientific standards the Court has developed for its own analysis of scientific evidence. In so doing, I draw on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Institutional Ethnography (IE) to develop a methodological framework for the study and use of social sciences in the law. Critical Race scholars generally argue that race is a social and legal construct and racism is endemic, and permanent, while Institutional Ethnography provides a social scientific method for rigorous study of the law by mapping and illuminating relationships of power manifested in social institutions that construct consciousness and place for marginalized groups in society. Combining methods of IE with epistemologies of CRT, I propose Critical Race Methodologies in the study of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin and Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. These two cases from recent terms of the Supreme Court involve heavy use of social sciences in briefing and at oral argument, and both cases set standards for racial inclusiveness in Texas. Throughout this dissertation, I look at how law and social sciences co-construct racial meanings and racial power, and how law and social science understand and misunderstand one another in attempting to scientifically understand the role of race in the United States. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2017

The search for rental housing can be a very stressful and complex process for veterans with service-connected disabilities. This process requires the evaluation of different factors, such as one's credit score, housing costs in relation to income and employment status, space requirements, type of housing structure, quality preferences, and neighborhood preferences. The purpose of this study was to investigate and document the housing search and occupancy experiences of veterans with disabilities. The study describes the current rental housing situation of these veterans and examines their satisfaction with their current housing. The contextual framework of this study was developed based on Morris and Winter's (1975, 1978) theory of housing adjustment which identifies the key role of housing satisfaction as a measure to evaluate housing against housing norms and specialized needs. Issues associated with veterans with disabilities and their experience with accessibility, discrimination and Fair Housing Act provisions were integrated into the analysis of satisfaction. Three major hypotheses were tested. Data collection occurred employing a mixed-mode survey design via a self-administered on-line survey and interviews, between October 9, 2012 and February 2, 2013. Eighty-three surveys were collected through job fairs and veteran community sponsored events, the Virginia Wounded Warrior Program, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and other organizations. Descriptive statistics (frequencies, percentages, and means) were used to provide profiles of the respondents, including demographic information, search process, current housing situation, accessible features, satisfaction with current housing, awareness of the FHAA, and military experience. One-way ANOVA, t-test, and Chi-Square were used to analyze associations when testing the three hypotheses. The study results demonstrate that these veterans could benefit from increased awareness of the provisions of the FHAA. Further, findings suggest there is a need to educate veterans about the value of filing formal complaints about housing discrimination in order to potentially reduce the frequency of housing discrimination behaviors against veterans with service-connected disabilities. OEF/OIF veterans with trauma-related injuries were more likely to be dissatisfied with their housing and more likely to have experienced discrimination during the housing search process. The findings from this research are useful to veterans looking for rental housing, property managers looking to attract and maintain veteran renters, and organizations looking to assist veterans with housing related issues. / Ph. D.

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Embedded within the notably constrained American state, how can regulatory agencies ensure that enforcement goals are met? Some analyses suggest that this is not so easily done; rather, constraints on agencies' formal administrative powers are said to threaten their capacity for effective regulation. But recent scholarship contends that such accounts underestimate the pivotal and oftentimes `hidden' regulatory role played by less formal mechanisms of enforcement, such as private litigation. Building on this revisionist strain, this dissertation project closely examines the ways in which constrained agencies look outside themselves - and their formally granted administrative authority - for enforcement power by developing incentive structures that motivate private actors to engage in litigation that advances regulatory goals. Through an historical analysis of the development of the regulatory capacity of three agencies - the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Office of Equal Opportunity at HUD - this project uses qualitative and quantitative approaches to explore how and when regulatory agencies choose to focus their limited resources on mobilizing private enforcement of public policy. First, using a careful examination of agency and presidential archival materials, I specify the mechanisms by which agency actors promote private litigation and uncover the institutional and political conditions under which this legal enforcement strategy is employed over time. And then, from these archival observations, I construct original quantitative measures capturing the deployment of these legal enforcement strategies, and conduct statistical analyses to confirm the success of agency efforts to encourage private litigation over time. Ultimately, by reconsidering how to integrate informal mechanisms of enforcement, like agency-motivated private litigation, into theories of bureaucratic regulation, this research contributes to our practical understandings of day-to-day agency behavior and to our conceptions and assessments of state capacity, more broadly.

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