and to its promise of employment and opportunity. In 1910. 73 per cent of the Negro population lived in the rural areas. Yet, so vast has been their urbandirected migration that more than 73 per cent of the Negro population now lives in urban areas.

Regardless of their wealth or position, however, Negroes were barred from participation in the process of suburbanization and denied access to the quality housing, schools, hospitals and recreational facilities characteristic of suburban areas. These citizens were also restricted to circumscribed areas and generally already deteriorated sections of the city proper. The percentage of nonwhite suburban population actually declined between 1950 and 1960.

As a result of the free mobility of whites and the in-migation and confinement of Negroes in the urban core, the central cities of the United States have increasingly become the habitat of the nonwhite poor. By 1960 the nonwhite population of Washington, D.C. had reached 54 per cent; of Atlanta, 38 per cent; of Philadelphia, 27 per cent; of St. Louis, 29 per cent; and of Newark, 37 per cent. Moreover, the nonwhite population of our cities has continued to grow sharply in the 1960's, at the same time that the white population has continued to decline. A recent survey of population movements in New York City, for example, found that 400,000 whites, mostly of child-rearing age, left the city in the years 1960-1964; their places were taken largely by the in-migration of older white families and by the increased population growth in the Negro and Puerto Rican communities.

Additional evidence of the growth of segregation in the 1960's is revealed in the special Federal census taken in Los Angeles after the riots of August 1965, which showed residential segregation to be increasing in each of the 7 neighborhoods that make up the Negro ghetto of South Los Angeles. In the Green Meadows section alone, nonwhite occupancy rose from 58.9 of all dwelling units in 1960 to 79 percent in 1965. By 1980 many of our larger urban areas will be more than 50 percent nonwhite.

The magnitude of housing segregation is more than matched by the difficulties involved in eliminating it. In Washington, D.C., for example, it has been calculated that the number of nonwhite households is increasing by about 6,000 annually. If the ghettos were frozen at their present size and these 6,000 families only were dispersed throughout the community, it would be necessary to accommodate 8,800 additional nonwhite families anually in Washington's suburban areas. George Schermer, the nationally-recognized expert on matters related to race and housing, has also shown that if a goal of a 50-50 balance of white and nonwhite population was set for the District of Columbia for the year 2000, it would be necessary to accommodate an average of 12,000 nonwhite families on a dispersed pattern in the suburbs every year for 35 years, and to attract 4,000 white families annually into the District of Columbia. At the present time, however, because of discriminatory housing patterns, approximatley 100 Negro families a year are able to find really integrated housing in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.

In 1959, the distinguished Commission on Race and Housing concluded the report of its five-year study with the statement that: "Housing is the one commodity on the American market that Negroes and persons belonging to certain other ethnic minorities cannot purchase freely." Regretfully, the situation has not changed in the intervening years. Indeed, while a degree of progress has been made under anti-discrimination laws affecting voter registration, public accommodations, and--to a lesser degree employment and education, segregated housing remains the one area where Negroes continue to be excluded from the mainstream of American life.

The impact of the rapid urbanization of low-income Negroes has ramified beyond the individual nonwhite family to the city itself. For the increasing proportion of minorities, the poor, and the elderly in the city's population and the accompanying shrinkage of its tax base have gravely endangered the city's ability to deal adequately with the needs of its residents, whether white or Negro. This, coupled with the failure of municipalities to actively combat the effects of racial prejudice, whether in education, housing or job opportunities, has called into question not only the viability of central cities as governing units, but also their commitment to bring about a general rise in the standard of living of the Negro population.

In the past, the problems of Negroes in cities can be attributed to the extraordinary rise in the need and demand for municipal services that has occurred

simultaneously with the white exodus and with the decline in the municipal tax base. Moreover, as the level of services deteriorates, and additional whites flee the city, the city's financial base worsens. Negroes and other minorities, herded together in ghettos and shackled with discrimination, cannot provide the financial resources required to improve the quality of urban life. However, even if suffi cient funds were available to enable the city to confront its problems, there is little likelihood that such a confrontation would proceed in a nonsegregated

manner.

At long last our leading urbanists have come to see that "the single most striking fact of the American city," to use Secretary Weaver's phrase, “is that its fate is indissolubly tied to the fate of Negroes." For today's urban problems, whether of education, employment, housing, alleged police brutality, etc., result, in large measure, from the discriminatory and wholly artificial restrictions which the larger society places on the mobility of Negroes. So long as these restrictions continue, the Negro will be deprived of the power and the training necessary to participate fully in all aspects of urban life, and to contribute to the solution of his and the city's social and economic problems.

DISCRIMINATION AND THE GROWTH OF THE GHETTO

To get at the truth about the racial ghetto, we must first disabuse ourselves of the myths that surround the question of Negro residential clustering. The Negro ghetto is not a voluntary grouping of people seeking to live only amongst themselves. The existence of numerous and subtle mechanisms intended to keep Negroes out of certain areas is evidence enough that the Negro's own preference cannot account for the continuation of racially-segregated areas. Nor can the growth of the ghettos be attributed to the poverty of Negroes as a group, although these citizens are certainly one of the most economically disadvantaged groups in America. In using census data to determine the relationship of Negro poverty to housing segregation, a recent scientific investigation concluded that "economic factors cannot account for more than a small portion of observed levels of residential segregation." Regardless of their economic status, the study found, Negroes "rarely live in 'white' residential areas, while whites, no matter how poor, rarely live in Negro' residential areas." The study showed that, while Negroes have won major improvements in their economic status in the years 1940-1960, continuing "economic gains by Negroes are not likely to alter substantially the prevalent patterns of racial residential segregation."

The truth of the matter is that the racial ghetto results from an all-encompassing system of discrimination, and more directly, from discrimination in the housing market. Negroes live in ghettos, despite their expressed wishes to the contrary, because white Americans keep them there and away from their own (white) residential areas.

The massive residential separation of Negroes and whites really began in the 1930's when the Federal Government initiated a policy of apartheid in the use and disposition of Federal housing, renewal and insurance funds. The Federal Housing Administration, through its insuring and underwriting programs, and the Federal highway agencies, through their road-building activities, jointly underwrote and made possible the growth of the lily-white suburb. Negroes who were able to afford suburban housing were restricted to an all-Negro subdivision; the mass of low-income Negroes and other minorities, the urban poor, were left to pile up in the central cities. In pursuing its goal of racial separation, the Federal Housing Administration gave offical recognition to the restrictive covenants, promoted by real estate interests in all sections of the country to confine Negroes to the least desirable parts of the city. FHA went so far in this direction that its underwriting manual warned prospective builders that "if a neighborhood is to obtain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial group." The Manual also advised appraisers to lower property valuation in interracial neighborhoods, often to the point of rejection. Leaving nothing to chance, FHA furnished a model race restrictive covenant and in effect refused to insure loans for home construction without the imposition of that, or another acceptable restrictive agreement. "By 1947," as NCDH Vice President Loren Miller puts it, "FHA had become more sophisticated. It substituted the terms 'user groups' and 'incompatible groups' for bald racial designations, but policy remained unchanged. It was not until eighteen months after the 1948 court decision barring judicial enforcement of these restrictive devices that FHA forbade imposition of racial

covenants on land on which it insured home construction. In the fall of 1949, it announced it would not insure loans where such covenants were imposed after February 15, 1950, but the change was more apparent than real."

Mr. Secretary Weaver, in his book The Negro Ghetto, written in 1948, attributes governmentally-sanctioned racial restrictions to the partnership between FHA and its constituents, the private mortgage lending agencies, which had long been following a policy of racial separation. Mr. Weaver pointed out that, "The financial institutions through which the FHA operated and through which most of its key officials in Washington and in the field were recruited, were the very financial and real estate interests and institutions which lead the campaign to spread racial convenants and residential segregation."

The FHA was not alone, however, in encouraging racial residential separation. Veterans Administration benefits established after World War II differed from FHA in that down-payments were lower or not required, and it guaranteed rather than insured loans for home construction. Negro veterans more than any other group needed VA's assistance. The benefits were small compared to the need. The widespread existence and enforcement of racial covenants, in their proper turn respected and sanctioned by VA, plagued Negro veterans. Unrestricted tract sites were hard to find. As with the FHA, the VA tolerated imposition of written covenants until 1950. Thereafter, subdivision restrictions approved by VA could not contain discriminatory clauses, but, again like FHA, VA took no effective steps to eliminate the practices of discrimination by homebuilders operating under VA programs. As a result, the Federal Government encouraged a gigantic home construction program for white veterans, while Negro veterans were left to search for homes in a limited number of developments built on the edges of existing Negro ghettos. There were white projects; there were Negro projects; there was virtually no integration because the Government insisted that it could not exert its power to shield its veterans against racial discrimination.

While the Public Housing Administration from its inception authorized some racially-integrated housing projects, the PHA everywhere attempted to build separate but equal facilities. In 1951, PHA formally adopted a statement of policy that said, "Programs for the development of low-rent housing, in order to be eligible for PHA assistance, must reflect an equitable provision for eligible families of all races determined on the approximate volume and urgency of their respective needs for such housing." Today, 80 percent of the low-rent public housing units in the United States are racially segregated by deliberate choice of the Federal Government.

Finally, the Urban Renewal Administration, bowing to local prejudices, permitted city after city to practice wholesale Negro removal under the guise of community renewal. In concert with Federal roadbuilding agencies, the Urban Renewal Administration has wreaked havoc upon countless Negro communities throughout the country.

But this is not the whole of the story. For even after the Federal Government, under instructions from the courts, espoused racial neutrality in projects built under its jurisdiction, Federal housing and renewal agencies continued to authorize the construction of dwelling units which they knew would remain segregated--indeed, which would extend segregation. They continue to do so at the present time despite President Kennedy's Executive Order 11063 and the clear and unequivocal command of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

While official enforcement of racial residential separation came to an end 18 months after the decision in the restrictive covenant case, Shelley v. Kraemer, segregation grew as the "private government" of the real estate industry managed to keep Negroes and white apart. Brokers, mortgage lenders, banks, insurance companies, aided and abetted by local representatives of FHA, PHA, VA, and URA-all were part of a conscious conspiracy to create a dual housing market and maintain a residentially-segregated society.

The economic structure of the housing industry is such that the person who nominally controls sales and rentals, that is, the owner of the dwelling unit, is usually not free to abandon community patterns of discrimination. In actual practice, the marketers of housing-brokers and salesmen, in large measure determine the racial composition of neighborhoods. However, there is increasing evidence that the American people, and the organized real estate industry, have differing views on who should live where in our free society. A recent national survey conducted by Look Magazine, for example, found that more than 80

per cent of the American people, in all sections of the country, would not abandon their blocks if a Negro family moved next door. In commenting on the poll, Look said, "This unexpected response to the Negro as a neighbor does not mean that Negroes will receive a warm welcome from white real estate dealers. It does suggest, however, that many Americans are willing to accept, in theory, an idea that seemed unthinkable to most of them a few years ago."

Similarly, the California Real Estate Association has stated that reports from member boards show 99.5 per cent of owners list homes for sales with no racial conditions. This would suggest that the organized real estate industry and its allies in the lending and financing fields are the perpetrators of housing discrimination in the United States. They increase the size of the ghetto to exacerbate the social tensions that already exist. For whenever a real estate broker refuses to show a house in a white neighborhood to a Negro family, he adds to the ghetto. Whenever a bank refuses a mortgage on property in a white area, it adds to the ghetto. Whenever the Federal Government permits Federal monies to be used to confine Negroes to their existing neighborhoods, it adds to the ghetto.

The racial ghetto, the dual housing market, and the lily-white suburbs are all part of the general pattern of discrimination which the Federal Government, aided and abetted by the real estate industry, has imposed on the country.

STATE AND LOCAL FAIR HOUSING LEGISLATION

In the absence of affirmative Federal action to eliminate housing restrictions based on race, concerned citizens in states and cities throughout the country began to work for the passage of legislation to reaffirm the Negro's right to equal opportunity in the housing market. One of the earliest anti-discrimination laws, antedating Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), adopted in New York State in 1939, provided that "no person shall because of race, creed, color or national origin be subjected to any discrimination" in housing built under state housing statutes. The statute referred primarily to public housing administered through state-authorized public housing agencies. A number of other states adopted similar laws affecting public housing: Massachusetts in 1948, Connecticut and Wisconsin in 1949, New Jersey in 1950 and Rhode Island and Michigan in 1952. These laws accomplished very little in the way of preventing discrimination, owing largely to the absence of effective enforcement provisions. However, as publicly-assisted housing came to play an increasingly important role in the new housing market, public demand grew for legislation covering this area also.

The first comprehensive statute prohibiting discrimination in publicly-assisted housing was passed in New York State in 1950. The law applied to all housing receiving tax exemption, land write-downs and condemnation powers. The State of New Jersey adopted similar legislation in 1950. Three years later, Connecticut amended its civil rights law to prohibit discrimination in publiclyassisted housing.

By 1954, however, it had become increasingly evident that publicly-financed housing and redevelopment housing (authorized under Urban Renewal) constituted a minor portion even of the publicly-assisted housing that was offered for sale. For the great bulk of the housing units built with government assistance were aided not by direct grants, but by the provision of federally-guaranteed mortgage insurance. New York City was again the first governmental jurisdiction to bar discrimination in housing receiving VA or FHA mortgage insurance. In 1955, tthe New York Legislature banned discrimination in new apartment housing and in sales housing in projects of ten or more units, aided by government-insured mortgages. Also in 1955, the Connecticut Civil Rights Commission ruled that the prohibition against discrimination in publicly-assisted housing applied as well to housing receiving FHA or VA assistance. In 1957, additional states, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington, prohibited discrimination in housing receiving federally-insured mortgages.

Until 1957, however, state and local laws barring discrimination applied only to various forms of governmentally-aided housing. In that year, New York City adopted the first law in the United States to prohibit discrimination in the private housing market. This ordinance applied to rentals in structures containing three or more units and to sales of one and two-family homes in developments of ten or more units. The following year a somewhat broader ordinance was adopted in Pittsburgh.

In 1959, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Oregon adopted fair housing laws covering varying percentages of the privately-financed market, and California enacted legislation applying to government-aided housing.

In 1961, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania enacted measures reaching part of the private housing market. Also in 1961, New York City's ordinance was broadened to cover all residential property sales and all rental accommodations except units in owner-occupied two-family houses and rooms in private residences.

In 1962, Alaska adopted an all-inclusive fair housing law, with no exemptions either in sales or rentals.

In 1963, California passed the Rumford Fair Housing Act covering sales or rentals in buildings with five or more units. The same year, Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut expanded their statutes to embrace all residential property placed on the market for sale and all rentals except apartments in owner-occupied two-family houses and the rental of rooms in private houses.

In 1964, Michigan's new Constitution went into effect setting up the machinery to prohibit discrimination in all sales and all rentals without any exemption. In 1965, Indiana, Maine, Ohio, Rhode Island and Wisconsin joined the roster of states barring racial and religious restrictions in portions of the private housing market. Also in 1965, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Hampshire and New York enacted measures extending the scope of their laws or strengthening enforcement procedures.

This year, 1966, New Jersey expanded her 1961 statute to cover all residential property sales and most rental housing.

Meanwhile, during the last eight years, municipalities across the country followed the lead taken by New York City and Pittsburgh, and adopted various types of fair housing ordinances affecting both publicly-assisted and privately-financed housing.

To sum up, by June 1, 1966, 17 states and some 36 cities, including the District of Columbia and King County, Washington, plus the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, had enacted fair housing legislation applying to both government-aided and privately-financed housing. Three additional states and a number of cities have laws affecting only certain types of publicly-assisted housing, and more than 50 additional cities have taken some kind of official action aimed at eliminating racial, ethnic and religious restrictions in the housng market.

Without commenting on the testimony of the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) or of the various state and local real estate boards that have appeared before this committee in opposition to Title IV, we think it appropriate to point out that these groups (which have a long history of opposing legal protection of the right to acquire property, while embracing the legal right to dispose of it) have repeatedly condemned what they regard to be the racial and innovative character of the President's fair housing legislation. From their statements it would seem that the Johnson Administration, in urging passage of this legislation, is determined to violate the Constitution and to abrogate the sacred right of realtors and their clients to freely discriminate in the sale or rental of property.

The fact is that more than 110 governmental jurisdictions including the largest and most populous states in the Union--have already taken official action to combat racial discrimination in housing, and bring about an open housing market. Indeed, one-fourth of the American people presently live in nine states that prohibit discrimination in all residential property put on the market for sale.

CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE LAWS

Under our system of government, the courts are charged with protecting the integrity of the Constitution. What have the courts said about the validity of anti-discrimination housing legislation? Unlike their predecessor laws in the areas of employment, public accommodations and education, the fair housing laws have been the subject of substantial litigation in which their constitutional validity has been repeatedly challenged. Nearly all of the suits brought against such legislation have been based on the allegation that fair housing laws violate the rights of property owners to dispose of their property as they see fit. These laws have also been condemned as constitutionally unsupportable extensions of the police power. Members of this Committee have heard the organized real estate industry level these same arguments against the proposed Federal fair housing legislation.