Unfair Housing: How National Policy Shapes Community Action

Extract

Unfair Housing: How National Policy Shapes Community Action. By Mara S. Sidney. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003. 200p. $35.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.

In this well-written book, Mara Sidney skillfully utilizes the “policy design” approach developed by Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram (Policy Design for Democracy, 1997) to elucidate the relationship between national policy decisions and local political struggles surrounding the implementation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. The 1968 Act made housing discrimination against individuals because of race, creed, color, and national origin illegal. The 1977 Act was aimed at preventing credit discrimination (redlining) against geographical areas within cities. Sidney argues that the type of local groups that emerge to influence enforcement, and the strategies they utilize, are shaped by the resources built into the legislation's policy design, as well as by local political conditions. Case studies of two cities—Minneapolis and Denver—illustrate the impact of policy design in different local circumstances.