Home – it isn’t just a building filled with familiar familial pictures and furniture or a place that can be defined with the physical. Home is a concept, a value; it’s essential to the human experience. Whether it’s an Etsy t-shirt someone is wearing on the train that says, “The magic thing about home is that it feels good to leave, and it feels even better to come back.” Or heel-clicking Dorothy in the 1939 classic film, The Wizard of Oz, repeating, “There’s no place like home,” we all understand the love, nostalgia, comfort, and security a home provides.
For much of American history, housing – the ability to have a decent home and standard of living – has faced significant systemic barriers. Finding a home worthy of filling it with love and children’s laughter and tears of joy has been difficult for many. Redlining created barriers to home loans. When FHA loans were introduced, they were not accessible to everyone. Urban redevelopment and renewal upended many communities. If you were of a certain sexual orientation, you might have struggled to find a place to rent.
This troubling history is why April is such an important month. April is National Fair Housing Month, commemorating the passage of the Fair Housing Act in April 1968. The Fair Housing Act was the landmark civil rights law signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson that made discrimination in housing transactions unlawful. This Act was meant to be a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but it faced some difficulties along its journey.
With the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act passing in ‘64 and ‘65, America was primed to continue progress. From 1966-1967, although congress regularly discussed the fair housing bill, it could never gather sufficient support for its passage. Dr. King wanted equal civil and voting rights, employment opportunities, and economic justice, and he also led many marches in Chicago in 1966 focused on housing rights. Given his leadership and involvement, his name had always been associated with fair housing legislation.
With the devastating assassination of Dr. King on April 4, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson took a moment of national tragedy and skillfully leveraged it for the speedy Congressional approval of the housing bill that had sat in limbo for a couple of years. President Johnson viewed the Act’s passing as a celebratory memorial to King’s life work and actually wanted to have it passed before his funeral in Atlanta.
With the current year of inflation and rising interest and rental rates that arrived at the tail end of a global pandemic that followed almost a decade of hyper-gentrification that brought drastic spikes in housing costs, displacing thousands of people – now is a perfect time to reflect on the Fair Housing Act, what housing means and represents, and what we can do to promote and support the most equitable and fair allocation of resources and opportunities to ensure that everyone has the right to a safe, comfortable, and decent home; that everyone has a home to fill with celebrations, quiet evenings, first footsteps, love, and memories.
