African Americans
African Americans living in inner cities are forced to put up with harsh housing conditions. African Americans have been forced into ghettos by policies enacted during the twentieth century. Much effort has been made to ensure that equality is achieved. Today everyone is free to achieve the American Dream. African Americans however, are still suffering from segregation policies that placed them on a back foot. This discussion will highlight and draw key lessons from the laws.
In the mid-20th century, African Americans faced segregation boundaries; there were racial boundaries that prevented them from moving into white settlement residential. Public work Administration segregation policies ensured they got confined to inner cities where they congested and suffered poor housing conditions. The federal and local governments came up with regulations like the federal housing policy that prevented the insurance of African American housing properties. The move waded off banks from giving loans to African Americans. The local governments came up with circulating restrictive covenants to prevent African Americans from moving into white settlements. The covenant came with the deeds; they prevented owners from selling or renting out their properties to African Americans. The congestion of African Americans into ghettos where the government enacted policies that restricted services like garbage collection made it easier for housing agents to create a blockbusting narrative where they bought of properties from whites near the black neighbourhood and sold them to African Americans at exorbitant rates. The congestion in ghettos created the challenge of unemployment, leading to the rising of violent behaviours. The violent behaviours promoted the superstitious narrative that African Americans were violent; hence they shouldn’t be absorbed into white neighbourhoods.
From the narrative, it is clearly evident that African Americans suffer as a result of segregation that happened before. While whites enjoyed the freedom to purchase houses during the Levittown builders, African Americans weren’t allowed to make any purchases. The houses only cost 9,000 dollars at the time. Today those houses cost close to $600,000. Owners can use them to secure loans and better themselves the unfortunate truth is that no African Americans can enjoy the benefits. We learn that Africans are still learning from past policies. African Americans have no leverage to offer banks for investment capital. Their restrictions to ghettos limit the job opportunities they can exploit since they can’t seek jobs from far. Inadequate access to essential government services like garbage disposal makes their living conditions hostile.
The federal government needs to start addressing the situations the African Americans face today. Instead of concentrating their efforts into fighting crime and violence in ghettos, they should try to find the root cause of the problem. They need to st6reamlign some policies to give a fair opportunity for housing acquisition. Mandatory Fair Housing Act Enactment should be implemented to break the existing restrictive covenants in places deemed as white residential. The federal and local government should come up with policies ensure banks offer loans/mortgages to African Americans to enable them to push out of their confined settlements. The most pressing issue today is how to improve the livelihood of African Americans in their homes. The federal government should come up with a plan to improve the African American community homes. They should invest in improving the housing conditions and also extend the services enjoyed in other settlements to their communities.