Housing Segregation
Housing discrimination is still a significant issue facing minority communities in many societies despite the measures set to avert this problem. The practice often affects the minority communities of most nations. Thus, understanding the effects, disadvantages, future, and the relationship of housing segregation with minority groups is important in the realization of a peaceful environment for each community in the contemporary society. This paper will discuss the relationship of housing segregation to the minority communities, the effects, disadvantages, and the future of housing discrimination against minority groups in the contemporary society.
Relationship of Housing Segregations with the Minority Communities
The majority communities in the society are the main propagators of housing segregation through their policies and culture. Taylor (2014) notes that more often than not, majority communities form policies to distinguish themselves from the minority groups and protect their interests. First, they offer discriminatory mortgage loans to the minority groups to discourage the infiltrations of the minority communities into their societies (Carr & Kutty, 2008). These loans have high-interest rates that discourage the efforts of minority communities to own houses in the good neighborhoods where the majority communities live. For instance, banks such as Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase faced penalties for offering high-interest mortgage loans to African Americans even in situations when they qualified for low-interest loans (Taylor, 2014). These practices in the banking sector show how the society organs led by the majority are forming policies to avoid other communities’ infiltration into their neighborhood.
Second, housing segregation also results from regulating access to educational institutions. According to Carr and Kutty (2008), policy makers in America support the separations of regions into school districts. This promotes housing segregation since the school districts represent the different social classes in the American society. Furthermore, the states enhance this alienation by prohibiting students from attending schools outside their school districts. These actions limit the chances of minority communities to own homes in the rich neighborhood since the schools in these areas are well-funded and they offer a better education than those in their societies (Taylor, 2014). Thus, school districts promote housing segregation by discouraging the ease of access to quality education by the minority communities, which affects their ability to purchase homes in neighborhoods considered as areas for the wealthy.
Third, policy makers from the majority communities support residential discrimination by forming restrictive covenants. According to Taylor, the policy makers form restrictive agreements with clauses that discriminate against minority communities. Since the title deeds have these restrictive covenants, property owners have to deny minority communities the chance to own homes in good neighborhoods (Taylor, 2014). For example, states such as Michigan use these covenants to limit the infiltration of blacks into white neighborhood (Taylor, 2014). Since the clauses are state laws, the states can freely maintain the segregations by penalizing property owners who violate these policies.
Moreover, realtor companies promote housing discrimination through the discriminatory provision of broker services. According to Taylor, they racially discriminate against clients from minority communities and provide them with bias information about the housing market (2014). In turn, these results in the grouping of residents into groupings of the same race. For instance, realtor companies provided the white clients with full information about all the available home in white dominated regions. Contrarily, the realtor companies provided the African American customers with little information about available homes when they intend to purchase a house in white dominated regions (Taylor, 2014). Therefore, such discriminatory behaviors in the real estate market promote the grouping of places into segregations such as white dominated regions and black dominated regions.
Nevertheless, the realtors also support housing segregation through racial steering of clients. According to Taylor (2014), the realtors manipulate the clients from minority communities to make them buy homes minority community neighborhoods. They do this by only showing them home in the communities. This racial steering affects the decision of the clients and results in clients from particular communities staying separately from other communities. For instance, African-American realtors in America admitted to participating in racial steering to prevent these families from buying homes in white neighborhood (Taylor, 2014). Although most cases of steering often remain unnoticed, the act has a significant role in promoting housing segregation.
Effects of Housing Segregation
Housing segregation has a significant impact on employment opportunities that affects both employers and employees. To the employee, housing discrimination limits their access to information about employment opportunities since the employers advertise most jobs through help seeker signs, community newspapers, and bulletin boards (Carr & Kutty, 2008). Conversely, employers lose by failing to get a variety of job applicants with varied skills (Carr & Kutty, 2008). Thus, this limited skill set limits the variation of competence that these employees offer to their employers.
Similarly, housing segregation limits the access to quality education services by the minority communities. Since schools get their funds locally, most of those from poor school districts lack enough and proper equipment for the smooth running of education activities. By living in these poor school districts, students from minority communities are forced by state laws to attend the poorly funded schools in their school districts (Carr & Kutty, 2008). Thus, these state legislations that result from the school district segregation system limit their chance to access better education.
Additionally, housing segregations also limit the level of people’s social circles. Since the communities in the segregated societies do not interact much, people from these cultures tend to have a small social network (Carr & Kutty, 2008). They only know of people from their particular group such as race or social class. Consequently, they confine their interactions, exposure, and access to social and economic opportunities to those groups. Hence, the confinement limits the quality of the individuals’ social network.
Furthermore, housing segregations have resulted in the poor health status of the minority community. According to Carr and Kutty (2008), the minority communities have serious health challenges due to lack of access to proper medical treatment. The medical institutions in these communities lack enough capital to purchase sufficient equipments for the minority population. Since the communities are poor, the hospitals remain in poor states until they get help from government institutions and charity organization (Taylor, 2014). Due to the separation from the major communities, the minority communities continue to receive these poor health services from their local health facilities.
Moreover, the residential segregation has a significant impact on the economy of a country. Peterson, Krivo, and Hagan (2006) state that the segregation prevents the equal distribution of skilled workers in a particular society. For instance, the separation makes the regions that are dominated by the affluent communities to lack local manual laborers since most of the residents have white collar jobs. Similarly, the areas that are dominated by the poor people lack experts in technical fields that require higher levels of education since most of them are illiterate. This unequal distribution of the workforce makes access to workers hard.
Besides, the housing segregation encourages the high rate of hate crimes. The separation plays a significant role by physically reminding the communities of the differences between the different communities in the society (Ginty, 2001). For instance, residential discrimination promoted hate-related crimes in South Africa during the apartheid period. The crimes escalated since the segregations physically reminded the Africans of the inequality in South Africa (2001). Thus, housing discrimination is limiting factor of peace and security in a particular region.
Contrarily, housing segregation has a positive impact too since the separations help promote safety to the individuals of a particular community. According to Ginty (2001), the minority communities live together in the minority dominated neighborhoods to avoid threats such as hate crimes. This is due to the peace that they experience in their dominated regions as compared to the hate-related injustice that they face when they move out of their neighborhood. For instance, most blacks and whites avoid moving to each other’s communities due to the fear of racial-related murders and attacks. This restricts their movements to remain within their respective neighborhoods (Ginty, 2001). Their particular neighborhood serves as a sanctuary for them and their families.
Disadvantages of Housing Segregation to the Minority Communities
Residential segregation causes a significant threat to the security of the minority communities. According to Ginty (2001), this state of insecurity is enhanced by the awareness of the difference among communities that result from segregating residential areas. Since the minority communities are weaker, the rivalry between the two groups makes them to suffer more that the majority groups. Thus, the persistent residential discrimination is a constant threat to the future survival of minority communities.
In addition, housing segregation also promotes poverty among the minority communities. First, the separation limits the access of minority communities to information about job opportunities (Carr & Kutty, 2008). This makes them to remains unemployed and poor. Second, the segregation promotes marginalization of the areas inhabited by minority communities. This marginalization results in these regions lacking proper financial assistance to save the resident communities (Taylor, 2014). Additionally, Carr and Kutty (2008) state that the bias business practices such as predatory loan services to the clients from minority communities frustrate their efforts to realize financial stability. All these negative effects of segregation collectively encourage poverty to the minority communities.
Moreover, residential segregations promote illiteracy among the minority communities. The separation has a negative psychological effect on the morale of students coming from the minority communities (Davis, Ajzen, Saunders & Williams, 2002). These students lack positive motivations from successful and educated individuals since due to their small social circles. Such motivation can encourage them to overcome the discouragement from their neighborhood peers and elders who dropped out of school (Davis et al., 2002). Even if they struggle to remain in school, these students eventually give in to the pressure and drop out of school.
Besides, the students’ effort to get an education is always frustrated by the poor school conditions in the poor school districts. Due the students’ poverty, they often attend to public schools which are poorly funded (Taylor, 2014). Later, the schools terminate their education since most of them end up closing due to debts, insufficient teachers or lack of facilities. Thus, these challenges explain why a significant number of students from the regions dominated by the minority communities are illiterate.
Furthermore, the housing segregations have lead to poor quality of life to the minority communities. The poor state manifests in the failure of the minority communities to easily access social amenities as compared to the others from the majority community (Carr & Kutty, 2008). This is because the social amenities are absent or they are functionless due to poor maintenance or insufficient funds (Taylor, 2014). These minority communities’ lives would be better if restrictions to these amenities would be less.
Moreover, the residential segregations negatively affect the health status of individuals from the minority communities. This discrimination limits their access to well-funded and proper health facilities. The crowding of the minority community members to the few health facilities further limits their access to appropriate medical services (Taylor, 2014). For instance, minority community residential areas have few pharmacy due to the communities’ poverty. This limits the number of individuals willing to set up health institution at these regions to the charity groups and governments (Taylor, 2014). Thus, the health situations in these areas will remain poor if they remain separated.
The Future of Housing Segregation
Despite the persistence of residential segregation over the years, the practice is soon going to end due to the measures taken by government institutions and the society. First, states are developing laws that discourage housing segregation (Carr & Kutty, 2008). Moreover, they are forming systems to ensure that everyone respects these laws. For instance, the federal government of the United States of America has created the National Association for Advancement of Colored People to protect minority communities such as the African Americans from unfair treatment by the banks when they request for mortgage loans (Taylor, 2014). These measures have reduced the rate of housing discrimination in the society and will result at the end of the vice in the society.
Second, the emphasis put on understanding the housing segregation and the practice’s effect on the community limits the future of housing discrimination. According to Acevedo-Garcia et al. (2003), the research organizations are continually researching on the extent to which segregation’s effects become harmful to the community. They depend on these findings to form the future policies that will govern operation in the housing markets (Acevedo-Garcia et al. 2003). This means that even though segregations may persist, the practice will be highly regulated by the authorities to prevent unfair treatment.
Third, the protection of the minority communities by their real estate companies signifies the campaign of real estate companies against housing segregation. Carr and Kutty (2008) state that some realtors are offering protection services to clients from minority communities living among the major communities to promote social integration among their customers. This measure discourages hate related crimes even when minority communities infiltrate regions outside their neighborhoods. Therefore, the communities will freely interact regardless of their differences.
Fourth, popularizing the benefits of social integration jeopardizes the future of housing segregations. This is because communities prefer integration to segregations when they learn of the benefits of integration to their society (Carr & Kutty, 2008). Furthermore, research institutions use their research publications to help the communities stop house segregations by advising the policymakers in those communities to promote inclusion of other communities to their society (Acevedo-Garcia et al., 2003). This means that if the more communities adopt the researchers’ recommendations, then residential segregation will finally end.
Contrarily, some factors promote the persistence of residential segregation. For example, the continued avoidance of the white population to move to predominantly African-American neighborhood discourages the progress made against housing discriminations (Quillian, 2002). This is due to the white population fearing the high crime rates witnessed in the black dominated neighborhoods. Furthermore, they still fear being racially discriminated against (Quillian, 2002). In both of these situations, the resultant failure to move to the black neighborhood derails the progress made towards integrations of communities and promotes housing segregation.
Moreover, continued discrimination against minority groups by a small section of Realtors still encourages housing segregation. For instance, a small section of realtors still discriminate against African-American clients despite the clients’ financial capabilities. The brokers offer bias information to these customers to steer them towards African Americans neighborhoods (Carr & Kutty, 2008). This explains why they hardly buy homes in the white-dominated affluent areas even if they are financially capable of owning property in those neighborhoods.
Furthermore, the sense of security in staying among members of your community is a major hindrance to averting housing segregation. According to Carr and Kutty (2008), housing discrimination in intensely segregated societies is essential for the safety and security of the members. This has forced the various governments to support the practice by institutionalizing the segregations. Thus, convincing such communities to stop housing discrimination and start integrating is hard since the separation forms the basis of their security.
Conclusion
Housing segregations majorly affect the minority communities in the society and cause a lot of disadvantages to their lives. The majority communities and the major class of the society encourage housing segregation through biased policies since the separation protects their interests. Although residential segregation has few benefits, the society should discourage against future practices of housing discrimination by forming measures to curb the vice. This is because the disadvantages of housing segregation are more impactful than the advantages of housing discrimination. This will ensure that every community gets equal opportunities in the housing market and other sectors.
References
Acevedo-Garcia, D., Lochner, K. A., Osypuk, T. L., & Subramanian, S. V. (2003). Future directions in residential segregation and health research: A multilevel approach. American journal of public health, 93(2), 215-221. Retrieved from http://ajph.aphapublications.org/
Carr, J. H., & Kutty, N. K. (2008). Segregation: The Rising costs for America. New York, NY: Routledge.
Davis, L. E., Ajzen, I., Saunders, J., & Williams, T. (2002). The decision of African American students to complete high school: An application of the theory of planned behavior. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(4), 810. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/edu/
Ginty, R. M. (2001). Ethno-national conflict and hate crime. American Behavioral Scientist, 45(4), 639-653. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/home/abs
Peterson, R. D., Krivo, L. J., & Hagan, J. (2006). The many colors of crime: Inequalities of race, ethnicity, and crime in America. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Quillian, L. (2002). Why is black–white residential segregation so persistent?: Evidence on three theories from migration data. Social science research, 31(2), 197-229. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1006/ssre.2001.0726
Taylor, D. E. (2014). Toxic communities: Environmental racism, industrial pollution, and residential mobility. New York, NY: New York University Press.
