Report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
July 14, 2022
Submitted in Response to the 2021 Periodic Report of the United States of America
Submission prepared by: Robert Lindsay, Janelle Taylor, Maryam Ibrahim, Peter Kye, and Philip Tegeler of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council Natalie Maxwell of the National Housing Law Project
Submitted by: Poverty & Race Research Action Council National Housing Law Project Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Racial discrimination in housing is a pervasive issue in the United States, present in nearly every city and region in the country. Housing discrimination harms communities and prevents the full realization of other human rights, with negative consequences for minorities regarding the right to education, health and access to healthcare, exposure to crime and violence, and access to employment opportunities. This Shadow Report evaluates the current state of housing discrimination and segregation in the United States and the federal government’s failure to fulfill its obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
For decades, de jure segregation at all levels of government was the dominant mechanism of spatially separating Americans into different neighborhoods based on race. Federal, state, and local policies like government enforcement of racially restrictive covenants, the use of zoning ordinances for exclusionary purposes, segregation of public housing, redlining, and explicit racial requirements in the Federal Housing Administration’s mortgage insurance program helped to entrench residential segregation in American cities. The historical practices explicitly supporting housing segregation continue to impact the current state of racial discrimination in housing and contribute to concentrated poverty in minority communities.
Today, that system has been replaced with nominally racially neutral policies that nonetheless serve to segregate communities. After the CERD Committee’s 2014 Concluding Observations, the United States government began to take steps to come into compliance with CERD and begin to counteract these harmful policies, including issuing guidelines and rules from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to affirmatively further fair housing and implementing other policies that promote access to opportunity.
From 2017-2021, the Trump Administration frustrated these efforts by suspending or rescinding some of the most impactful HUD rules and in some cases replaced them with rules that severely undermined attempts to combat racial discrimination in housing.
The Biden Administration has responded by promising to reinstate regulations and increase funding for federal housing programs. While these actions are commendable, they are incomplete and insufficient. Despite the current Administration’s push to advance racial equity, the United States has failed to reverse the damage done in the prior years, and to fully redress the continuing harms of racial and economic segregation. Serious steps need to be taken in order for the United States to come into compliance with CERD.
