LINK to summary from the June 2016 ULI Minnesota Housing Summit, Furthering Fair Housing: The Important Role of Mixed-Income Development

On June 8^th, 2016 the Urban Land Institute Minnesota (ULI MN) hosted its 8^th Annual Housing Summit, an event made possible through the generous funding and collaborative partnership with the Family Housing Fund. The event was titled “Furthering Fair Housing: The Important Role of Mixed-income Development” and attracted a packed house of leaders from the private sector, government and non-profit community across the Minneapolis–Saint Paul region.

The event featured one of the Minnesota’s best-known leaders as one of two keynote speakers–former US senator and Vice President, Walter Mondale. He was joined by Case Western Reserve University professor Mark Joseph, a national expert on mixed income development and Director of the National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities.

Mr. Mondale was on hand to discuss his role in the development of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, a landmark piece of legislation that arose during the civil rights movement and still impacts communities today. He recalled sitting on numerous committees for civil rights as a young senator, watching as “a door of opportunity to protect civil liberties opened after 200 years of injustice. All for the better and much delayed,” he said.

A cross-section of Americans was assembled to talk about housing, and Mr. Mondale described the Senate testimony of a young and rising military officer with a lovely family–seemingly ideal rental tenants–who struggled to find housing they would otherwise qualify for because they were black. They would respond to apartment listings and be invited to see them only to be told there was nothing available when they arrived. Housing was indeed personal, and it was stories like these that helped change minds.

Unfortunately, such testimony was not enough to get the job done on its own. It took a national tragedy to finally get the bill across the finish line. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and ensuing protest and civil unrest created enough of an outcry to at last enable passage of the Fair Housing Act.

It’s quite a story, yet it was when the former VP pivoted to what followed the passing of the bill that the continued importance of fair and affordable housing really came through. He discussed the good start that Minnesota and other places got off to after the bill became law, but he also noted disappointment that we have not come further in the nearly fifty years since. While still proud of what the bill accomplished, Mr. Mondale acknowledged that it was not perfect, that it could have been better, and that much remained to be done.

Still, Mondale ended with a hopeful message–and a categorical imperative for the audience. He noted that the Supreme Court in 2015 settled a longstanding debate about the law when it upheld the disparate-impact provision of the of the Fair Housing Act, a key enforcement mechanism, by confirming that discrimination need not be intentional in order to be illegal. This decision, he said, provides renewed strength to the bill he worked so hard on as a young senator, leaving him hopeful for its continued ability to make a difference.

And therein lies his imperative as well. We must use the Fair Housing Act to continue making our communities more welcoming places. “When I grew up it was a question of how the Norwegians and the Swedes would get along here in Minneapolis,” the former Vice President joked. “Go downtown now. We have become one of the favorite destinations for immigrants in this country. We need to strengthen our institutions. We need to try to make certain that they have a chance to live in a more open, unsegregated environment.”