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This chapter explains the nature of American interest in international housing conditions after World War II, as well as the mechanisms by which Americans funnelled aid abroad. American aid flowed primarily through the international division of federal housing agencies, or the various agencies tasked with bilateral aid outside the Department of Defense. Americans also contributed to a wide array of international, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental bodies, exerting varying degrees of influence within each. This chapter details the various modes of American leadership and participation and then offers a short summary of the overarching organization of the book.

Chapter Four looks at database requirements for HUD-funded agencies. Despite concerns of “big brother” spying, the chapter argues that the new standardized measures of services and outcomes actually serve to regulate agencies more so than clients, producing a kind of domestic structural adjustment context in which agencies are “free” to innovate to survive.

This chapter reviews the history of cases supporting housing integration. These case include: (1) Shannon v. HUD (1970), a decision outlining the civil rights siting rules for federally subsidized housing; (2) Keyes v. School District No. 1 (1973), the first city school desegregation case outside the South; and (3) South Burlington County NAACP v. Mount Laurel (1975), a state court case interpreting the housing obligation of cities and suburbs in a metropolitan area under New Jersey's general welfare clause.

This chapter reviews the federal Empowerment Zones (EZ) application guide, which illustrates the strategic planning process of the EZ initiative. The guide noted that “[the initiative's] goal is to provide...the flexibility [needed] to plan more strategically through a community-driven process.” It stated that the initiative would “outline the investments [a] community is willing to make in revitalization and the commitments—financial and otherwise—from the private, nonprofit, and public sectors.” To assist communities in preparing strategic plans, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) held over a dozen regional workshops across the country. The department also collaborated with the Rockefeller Institute of Government in a field network evaluation to study the EZ initiative.

This chapter describes the advantages that Atlanta gained by competing for Empowerment Zones (EZ) designation. These included extensive experience with federal urban programs and a high profile antipoverty initiative. Atlanta's EZ designation Housing and Urban Development (HUD) assistant secretary Andrew Cuomo called Atlanta “the Michael Johnson of Empowerment Zones,” a reference to the American sprinter who won gold medals. However, when its EZ activities had expired, Atlanta returned $29 million in unspent EZ funds to the federal government. The remainder of the chapter attributes Atlanta's poor EZ performance to the weaknesses and deficiencies of its local governance.

In the late 1960’s it was common knowledge that the nation’s urban areas, mostly inhabited by African Americans, were plagued by poverty and unrest. The Lyndon B. Johnson administration felt the urban housing issue could be solved with a marriage between the private and public sectors. For decades the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) barred African Americans from homeownership by claiming they were too financially risky to receive the same services from the real estate and banking industries as Whites. The passing of the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Act of 1968 eliminated this perceived risk by allowing low interest mortgage loans that were fully backed by the federal government. Finally, African Americans were given access to conventional real estate practices and mortgage financing. However, ingrained racisms within the government and private sector ensured African Americans were incorporated into the housing market on more expensive and unfair terms than White Americans. The author refers to this phenomenon as predatory inclusion.

One major problem with the HUD’s response to the urban housing crisis was the quality of the homes made available to working class and poor African Americans. While affordable housing was a government goal, it relied on private businesses that operated in the interest of profit. Additionally, the business of home appraisal was based on the assumption that property value decreased with proximity to African Americans. This racist ideology greatly limited the housing options of working class and poor African Americans. Homes with major issues were deemed inhabitable and sold. Unsuspecting buyers often did not have the disposable income to keep up with home repairs and mortgages. Mortgage lenders made a habit of profiting off houses that went into foreclosure quickly. The HUD was unable to effectively address the predatory practices of the private sector because of low staffing, over-extension, and anti-black racism within the organization.

As the HUD failed to provide adequate housing for African Americans, officials and media increasingly placed the blame on the African American homeowners. In many cases the focus was on African American women. Instead of attributing an abundance of foreclosures to the selling of dilapidated housing and the inability of tenants to pay for extensive repairs, people claimed African American women were not knowledgeable enough about home maintenance and budgeting to own homes. In some places, potential low-income home buyers were educated on budgeting and home maintenance. However, the assumption that counselling could lead to better home retention ignored the systematic issues that placed Black people in inferior housing. Stories about low-income homeowners, mostly women, suing organizations for tricking them into poor residences, helped undercut the unsophisticated buyer narrative. Additionally, reports of scandal and corruption within the HUD cast a negative light on the response to the urban housing crisis.

Policymakers tend to focus on federal programs as remedies to poverty. While important, the largest of these programs do not combat poverty’s geographic aspects. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) imposes an affirmative obligation on banks to meet the credit needs of low- and moderate-income (LMI) neighborhoods. The act is designed to promote affordable housing and economic development by combating lending discrimination, thereby alleviating poverty and building wealth in LMI areas. Federal CRA exams rate banks on their loans and investments in LMI neighborhoods. By promoting responsible lending, the CRA has increased homeownership and small-business ownership in those neighborhoods. However, the act’s full potential to combat concentrations of poverty has not been realized. This chapter explores how improved examination procedures can make the CRA more effective in promoting integration in gentrifying and distressed neighborhoods and how the CRA can be combined with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s recent fair housing rule and other anti-poverty programs to combat concentrations of poverty.