Today, it is likely that most if not all of the 1,200+ states, counties, and municipalities across the country that receive CDBG funds are revisiting their plans and procedures. The Anti-Discrimination Center of Metro New York v. Westchester County settlement, announced last week, requires Westchester to make up for years of neglect regarding the affirmative furthering of fair housing – namely, addressing the impediments to fair housing choice that perpetuate segregation. As HUD’s Deputy Secretary Ron Sims noted during the press conference announcing the settlement, after nearly a decade of lax federal oversight communities around the nation are now “on notice”.

From the event announcement:

In celebration of National Fair Housing Month, the Illinois Department of Human Rights will host a panel: “CommUNITY: Immigrant Communities Respond to the Housing Crisis.” The event will focus on how communities are coming together to address the escalating housing crisis, which has disproportionately affected communities of color with regards to housing. It will also include recommendations on strategies for community integration.

1:38pm: Rocco Claps, Director of the Illinois Department of Human Rights, welcomes a mostly full (and continuing to fill-up) room to the program. He highlights that IDHR has an order form community groups can use to get bulk IDHR materials to distribute in their neighborhoods.

1:43pm: Maury McGough, Director of the Chicago Program Center, Midwest HUB Office of Fair Housing & Equal Opportunity at HUD, opens with a reference to Gladwell's “tipping point”, arguing that the US is approaching or has reached a tipping point when it comes to illegal housing discrimination. He rightly clarifies that there are two goals of the Fair Housing Act – to make discrimination illegal and to integrate communities – and while great progress has been made on the first there's been almost no impact on the second. He references the “enforcement infrastructure” that has been built over the last 20 years – a bulwark of HUD's fair housing enforcement office, state and local enforcement agencies, and private fair housing enforcement organizations. Citing the newly published Family Properties, McGough notes that it provides perspective on the progress made in enforcing the law.

1:51pm: Citing Kathleen Parker's recent (and absolutely awful and actually incorrect) opinion piece on the supposed coercive nature of advancing integration, McGough notes that there are many challenges for the next forty years of fair housing and fulfilling the second promise of the Fair Housing Act.

Below is a snippet from Shaun Donovan's confirmation hearing on January 13, 2009, with our emphasis added:

Sen.

This is the first in a new series of posts on integration-related news from around the web. If you have an item you'd like us to include just drop us a note.

• Chicago, America’s most segregated big city
  "The paths taken by Colin Lampark and Rosalyn Bates help illustrate why Chicago is the most racially segregated big city in America.
  Both are young professionals with handsome earning potential. Both moved to the city a few years ago—Lampark, 28, to Lincoln Park; Bates, 31, to Bronzeville. And both chose neighborhoods reflecting their race, a practice common in Chicago.
  Their personal stories, and many others, explain why blacks in Chicago are the most isolated racial group in the nation’s 20 largest cities, according to a Tribune analysis of 2008 population estimates. To truly integrate Chicago, 84 percent of the black or white population would need to change neighborhoods, the data show."
  from the Chicago Tribune

President-Elect Obama continues to expand his transition team and confirmed what some suspected earlier this week: integration / segregation researcher Xavier de Souza Briggs of MIT is a lead on the Agency Review Team for the Department of Housing & Urban Development, Federal Housing Finance Board, and Interagency Council on Homelessness Review.

From Change.gov:

Xavier de Souza Briggs is an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. A former Deputy Assistant Secretary at HUD, his expertise includes affordable housing, economic development and inequality, environmental sustainability, and civic engagement and collaboration.

This move should encourage advocates of racial, ethnic, and economic integration and is especially exciting for MoveSmart.org - our core concept is largely informed by Prof. Briggs' work: