Content area
Abstract
This dissertation contrasts the establishment of affirmative action in employment with the failure of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to establish aggressive, race-conscious policies attacking residential segregation. While recounting the involvement of the federal government in race and housing from Reconstruction to the current day, this research focuses on the Nixon Administration. During this time, a newly passed fair housing law, increased governmental involvement in housing production, and a body of court decisions supporting bold measures by civil rights agencies provided an unparalleled window of opportunity for the federal government to address this important policy issue. Making use of previously untapped archival sources from HUD and the Nixon Presidential Materials, this dissertation argues that the key to understanding the divergent outcomes in housing and employment is consideration of these policies' “institutional homes,” which have both direct and mediating effects on policy development. Bureaucrats in the employment bureaucracies had singular missions and clear career incentives to devise aggressive approaches to employment discrimination. In contrast, the fair housing staff at HUD found itself in a disjointed bureaucracy comprised of many formerly independent agencies with multiple missions. A disadvantaged institutional home, like that faced by HUD's fair housing staff, will tend to: encourage policy feedback that constrains rather than enables aggressive action; dilute the impact of institutional activists; increase the threat of Presidential sanctions; and enhance the risk of “delegitimation” by other political actors and the media. This dissertation illustrates how HUD fell prey to these dangers, as scandals at the Federal Housing Administration gave President Nixon the political justification to freeze housing funds and consequently derail the agency's desegregation efforts.
