Race and Housing

Property Values and Race.
by Luigi Laurenti.
256 pp.

The Demand for Housing in Racially Mixed Areas.
by Chester Rapkin and William G. Grigsby.
177 pp.

Privately Developed Interracial Housing.
by Eunice and George Grier.
264 pp.

Studies in Housing and Minority Groups.
by Nathan Glazer and Davis McEntire.
228 pp.

Residence and Race.
by Davis McEntire.
409 pp.

Each volume $6.00. University of California Press.

These Five Books comprise a most remarkable contribution to applied social science. Published for the Commission on Race and Housing, their high technical quality compares favorably with any study done in the social sciences, and, indeed, with most studies done in the natural sciences. Their conclusions provide definitive answers to current questions concerning the housing needs of minorities, the adequacy of the housing available to them, the effects of a Negro “invasion” upon a neighborhood, and so on. At the same time, however, these conclusions are not derived from or related to any general theories in sociology; no claim is made that the conclusions have any applicability to other societies, or even to our own society in the future. I would argue, in fact, that they can have no more than an antiquarian interest twenty, perhaps even ten, years from now. In this lies the main fault of the set; it makes a contribution to knowledge, but it does not make a contribution to science—a considerably more practical criticism than might, at first, appear.

In Property Values and Race, Luigi Laurenti answers the question: “Do real estate prices fall when non-whites settle in a previously all-white neighborhood?” Laurenti meticulously gathered data from three different cities on the sale and rental prices of homes and apartments within twenty neighborhoods entered by non-whites between 1945 and 1955. He did the same for thirty-four control neighborhoods which remained all white during the same period. He then compared any price shifts before and after non-white entrance in the changing neighborhood with any price shifts in the control neighborhoods. Thus the study provides as “beautiful” an example of “field experiment” as has ever been employed in the social sciences. By classifying his test neighborhoods according to percentage of non-white population, Laurenti shows that his statistical conclusions apply whatever the size of non-white influx: in short, “test areas in all ranges of non-white occupancy manifested both superior and inferior price performance as compared with control areas, but in every category, the majority of significant differences favored the test areas.” Examining all previous studies (done in other cities), Laurenti shows that they reach the same conclusions. There is, then, no factual basis for the belief that non-white entry into previously all-white neighborhoods produces a fall in property values; what results is a diversity of price outcomes according to circumstances, and such entry is more often associated either with price improvement or stability than with a price decline.

So research has laid another popular myth to rest. But will these careful studies convince those who now believe otherwise? That is, the findings are applicable to the postwar period of general housing shortage during which the unprecedented Negro demand for housing (generated by Negro population movements and rise in income) expressed itself. But can they also be considered true of 1961, when these particular pressures have eased? Moreover, couldn’t the same results have been just as easily deduced from simple economic theory? (In fact, they have been so deduced by Gunnar Myrdal and several others.) Why should a capable social scientist, spending so much money and effort, bother to do such a time-limited and culture-limited study?

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Rapkin and Grigsby’s The Demand for Housing in Racially Mixed Areas goes behind price movements to examine the demand for housing in areas undergoing racial transition. Four Philadelphia neighborhoods in which Negroes occupied 20—30 per cent of the dwelling units were analyzed completely for 1955. Two had good housing, two had poor; one in each pair was undergoing a rapid, the other a slow, transition. The main findings are:

1. More than one-fifth of the home buyers were whites—indicating that whites will buy in areas which Negroes have entered and where the proportion of Negroes is growing.
2. Practically all the Negroes (and 90 per cent of the whites) depend on mortgage financing. Mortgage lenders often take a dubious view of racially mixed areas, but in Philadelphia, financing was liberal and played a key role in sustaining demand and prices.
3. Negroes and whites received about the same value for their housing dollar, paying substantially the same prices for similar houses.
4. The white purchasers had no unusual characteristics or motivations which distinguished them from the resident white population in the areas into which they bought—thus exploding the myth that whites who voluntarily live near Negroes must be peculiar. They did not even express attitudes of unusual tolerance, although negative sentiments were rare; only 4 per cent of the residents voiced strong disapproval of Negro residence in the neighborhood. Thirty-one per cent, however, were strongly negative about having Negro neighbors next door.

In short, the Rapkin-Grigsby study provides statistically documented case studies of successful residential race mixing. Unfortunately, the fact that this study is limited to Philadelphia during 1955—to a city which happened to have an efficient, enlightened city government—imposes upon it a time-space limitation even more stringent than that of the Laurenti volume.

The investigation by George and Eunice Grier, Privately Developed Interracial Housing, has, in a sense, the same subject as Rap-kin and Grigsby’s but places it within a broader context. The Griers scoured the country to find examples of new, privately developed housing projects that truly mixed white and non-white purchasers or renters. They found 50 of them, totalling some 8,000 units, located mainly in the Middle Atlantic and West Coast states, and practically all built since 1950 (the study stopped in 1955, and 21 of the 50 projects began construction in 1954 and 1955, so that most of the experience with private mixed housing is very recent). They discovered that practically every builder had faced serious problems—in selecting and acquiring land, obtaining sufficient financing, and recruiting occupants—not usually experienced by those who build projects intended for only one race. “In part at least,” the Griers write, “these problems seem to stem from the fact that people—residents of the area surrounding the site, government officials, lenders, and prospective occupants—fear that difficulties will arise in . . . the experience of the development after occupancy. Paradoxically, that . . . phase is the one in which this study has found the fewest problems.” This is the chief conclusion of Privately Developed Interracial Housing, but in documenting it the Griers provide amazing insight into the difficulties American society places in the way of new, planned, interracial housing. One comes away with the feeling that the situation studied by Rapkin and Grigsby—unplanned movement into already available housing—will provide the major means, at least for a while, by which areas of mixed housing will develop in our society.

Still, the Griers’s study does demonstrate that new housing developments for an interracial clientele can be marketed under widely varying circumstances. The rapidity with which a project is filled (predominantly with whites, it is true) largely depends upon its management and promotion, the intrinsic suitability of the homes, the population of the surrounding area (it should not be overwhelmingly Negro), and the nature of the white market (it should consist largely of newcomers and temporary residents). Moreover, no distinctive characteristics single out residents of the interracial projects; they are not generally crusaders for racial equality. The Griers’s penetrating study, even though it lacks the methodological “neatness” of the other two, also illuminates the opportunities and weaknesses of “reform” groups, the interplay of economic motives and racial prejudice, and several other aspects of our culture. But once again, the authors do not fully draw out all the general sociological implications of their findings.

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The volume edited by Nathan Glazer and Davis McEntire, Studies in Housing and Minority Groups, consists of seven independent reports, which include a comparison of Negro housing in relatively liberal Atlanta and relatively illiberal Birmingham (by Robert Thompson, Hylan Lewis, and Davis McEntire); a description of the housing of Mexican Americans and Negroes in San Antonio and Houston (by Jack E. Dodson); of Negroes in New Orleans and the Miami area (by Forest LaViolette and Elizabeth Virrick, respectively); of Puerto Ricans in New York City (by Morris Eagle); and of Japanese Americans in the San Francisco Bay area (by Harry Kitano); and, finally, an analysis of a Detroit middle-class neighborhood now changing from white to Negro occupancy (by Albert Mayer). All these studies show the interplay of factors which create minority housing problems: poverty, prejudice, differing cultural backgrounds and values, and the economic interests of builders, financiers, agents, and residents.

In his introduction, Nathan Glazer tries to draw some general conclusions from the welter of local facts—that is, he tries to save something of all this research for “basic science.” The effort is a laudable one, even if one disagrees with some of the results. For example, Glazer says that “prejudice in its pure form . . . rarely plays a decisive role in the determination of the housing of minority groups,” and, “in the North the relatively small role of pure prejudice is even more striking” than in the South. The decisive factors in the former are “Negro economic weakness and white middle-class fears of the deterioration of neighborhoods on Negro entry.”

But what does Glazer suppose “pure prejudice” to be if it does not include such unjustified and unsupported “fears”? Prejudice is always rationalized, either consciously or unconsciously: no man has a prejudice without a “reason.” It is only when the “reason” is proved false without destroying the antipathy that we know we are dealing with prejudice. Actually, these studies reveal that minority housing problems are created in the North by more things than the two factors Glazer mentions. There is the white man’s fear that he will lose status if he has Negro neighbors; his belief that most Negroes are violent and irresponsible, that they would create a bad environment for his children; and there is his sense of being overwhelmed in a “black sea”—to mention only a few. And all these, even though some are partly grounded in fact, are facets of prejudice. In any case, the source materials with which Glazer is working (not to speak of the other studies McEntire brings together in his summary volume), do not demonstrate that the decisive factor in inadequate segregated housing for Negroes is their low economic status. Sometimes adequate housing is found in segregated areas; furthermore, economic status is tied up with other factors. (As a matter of fact, Glazer himself in effect drastically modifies his conclusion in another of his generalizations.)

McEntire’s Residence and Race not only summarizes the first four volumes, but brings to this summary a wealth of additional information on population, economic status, urban residence patterns, the housing market and housing industry, court decisions, and government housing programs. In general, it describes the patterns and extent of discrimination in housing throughout the United States, and notes the general reduction in discrimination. But it is impossible to summarize the wealth of information and analysis contained in this 400-page volume. Suffice it to say that McEntire has produced a definitive study of all facets of housing for minority groups. It can provide guidance for the government administrator, private housing developer, or real estate promoter who wants to be more effective in providing more or better housing for minority groups.

Nevertheless, the volume does not pose the problems it investigates or the hypotheses it proposes in such a way as to make them yield a contribution to a cumulative body of general knowledge. McEntire quite properly often cautions the reader that since the conditions described can change, and indeed are likely to change, many of the book’s conclusions will soon be dated. It is not at all difficult to imagine the changed conditions which would antiquate this research. To use an example I have already suggested, if the general housing shortage decreases and the pent-up Negro demand for housing is eased, a number of Negroes moving into a neighborhood—other conditions remaining the same—might very well cause a decrease in housing values; the whites could readily move away, and Negro demand would not be sufficient to sustain the price level.

The nearest that McEntire, or his collaborators, comes to a generalized statement is a casual remark like the following: “An increasing proportion of Negroes in a mixed area is reflected in a shrinkage of white demand, but the behavior of white buyers seems to be related more to the anticipated than to the actual proportion of Negroes.” But this generalization arises rather haphazardly out of a purely empirical procedure. There was no effort to derive it from, or relate it to, a general theory of expectations or to one concerning the perceptions of minorities. Nor does McEntire relate this perfectly good (and fascinating) finding to any of the generalizations he makes at the end of Residence and Race. The latter are either the empirical results of other studies, or are obvious platitudes (e.g. housing segregation can be changed by changing the actions of those who make the decisions on housing). In their adherence to a very narrow conception of “applied social research,” McEntire and his colleagues have missed some of their best opportunities to arrive at findings that might have a practical value well beyond 1960 or 1965.

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