Housing segregation, both racial and economic, was hotly debated in our legislature in this and recent sessions. No one doubts that it exists, though we debate its causes and remedies. What we don’t talk about enough, however, is its cost.
Its cost, first, and foremost, is moral. Housing segregation shrinks social trust. Our country is beset by polarization and mistrust of people who we are told are different. This is made worse by housing segregation. When we are each other’s neighbors we learn that we share much more, in our values and our hopes for our families, than politicians and media would suggest.
It is no accident that we are driven into opposing camps by politicians. They have learned that stoking fear is a sure-fire way to get political contributions and votes. Fear is a strong short-term motivator. But it makes for bad decisions. And it shrinks us, causing us to live in fear and suspicion of others who we don’t know well because they are not allowed to be our neighbors. Hope and trust make us better people. They are enduring, and they lead to better decisions.
Second, housing segregation costs us the loss of our children’s future. Countless studies have shown that when children of varied backgrounds learn together, they collectively rise. It is when those with few family resources are segregated and concentrated together that they lose the vision of success and progress that their classmates share.
Jacob Riis, the photographer who brought the terrible conditions of New York’s slum housing to the world’s attention over a hundred years ago, reached a profound conclusion: bad housing is an evil of its own. It weakens its residents every day. It beats down the hopes and efforts of the people who can’t escape. It represents a society’s surrender of human values.
Third, housing segregation robs us of our strength. It puts us in conflict with ourselves. No town, state or nation has ever been made stronger by sustained internal conflict. So long as we perpetuate the exclusion and disadvantage of some of us, we are collectively weaker.
Fourth, it costs us our freedom. Slavers in the antebellum south claimed that freedom meant being allowed to enslave other people. What they ignored was that when freedom is only allowed to some of us, true freedom does not exist. Many of us in Connecticut do not yet allow housing in our towns that people want and can afford to live in. We claim the right to exclude others from the opportunity to live in the same towns where we claim the freedom to live. Freedom to deny freedom to others, however, is not freedom. It is the denial of freedom.
Speaking especially to those who find fault with our new administration’s actions: let’s look in the mirror. Do our state and local policies likewise tend to separate us into winners and losers based on accident of birth? Do those of us who live among the wealthy shrink from welcoming new neighbors from different economic backgrounds?
Healthy communities view their flaws as problems to be solved, not opportunities for blame. We could spend endless amounts of energy arguing over who is at fault for poverty in Connecticut, and we could find plenty of compelling histories of discrimination in lending and real estate sales. But that need not be the focus of our attention.
Housing segregation is a problem to be solved. Our best selves, and our greatest leaders, will accomplish tremendous things if we concentrate our focus on how, not whether, to end the confinement of poor people in pockets of despair.
The United States accomplished great progress in housing in the decades after WWII. Millions (though not everyone) were able to leave crowded cities to find new homes in newly built neighborhoods. Let us continue that success. Let us ask our town and state leaders to put their attention to what works in helping people who want the same thing today.
Our state is blessed with people from all backgrounds, who together make a great team. But when we shrink from each other and limit some of our children’s futures, we all lose.
Tim Fisher of Hartford is Dean and Professor of Law Emeritus at the UConn Law School.