---
title: "The Fair Housing Act and Housing Segregation"
description: "The Fair Housing Act was the movement's final major legislative victory, confronting residential segregation, the most personal and enduring form of inequality."
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/lessons/fair-housing-act"
---

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The Fair Housing Act

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Lesson 12 min 20 XP

# The Fair Housing Act

How the civil rights movement's final major legislative victory tackled the most enduring and personal form of American segregation: where you live.

## The Architecture of Residential Segregation

American residential segregation was not an accident — it was deliberately constructed through federal policy, state law, and private action over decades. Beginning in the 1930s, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation drew color-coded maps of American cities, marking Black and mixed-race neighborhoods in red — hence 'redlining' — and deeming them too risky for mortgage lending. The Federal Housing Administration, which insured the mortgages that built suburban America, required racially restrictive covenants in the deeds of homes it financed, explicitly prohibiting sales to Black buyers.

Private industry reinforced these policies. Real estate agents steered Black families away from white neighborhoods through a practice called 'blockbusting' — frightening white homeowners into selling cheaply by telling them Black families were moving in, then reselling to Black buyers at inflated prices. Banks refused loans to Black borrowers for homes in white neighborhoods. Suburban communities used zoning laws — minimum lot sizes, bans on multi-family housing — to price out Black families without mentioning race.

The result was two Americas: white suburbs with appreciating home values, good schools funded by property taxes, and access to jobs; and Black urban neighborhoods starved of investment, with declining property values, underfunded schools, and concentrated poverty.

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