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We have long recognized that government can and should act to ensure that all people have a decent place to live. And we know that "place" means not only the housing structure but where it is located. The Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program is the latest in a line of programs through which we have chosen to address this worthy goal.1 Unfortunately, from public housing to Federal Housing Administration (FHA) single-family mortgage insurance, we have too often chosen to undermine the effectiveness of this worthy goal by ignoring the civil rights of a significant segment of the population. Volumes have been written in the past twenty-five years about this issue, and it continues to be a challenge for those who would seek to ensure that both fair and affordable housing becomes a reality2
For the LIHTC program to avoid following in the footsteps of its predecessors by agreeing to trade off the civil rights of low-income people of color in order to "get the housing," it must provide effective fair housing and civil rights protections in the warp and woof of its structure. It cannot continue to operate outside the framework of the Fair Housing Act and the other laws guaranteeing that people of color shall have the same right as white people to lease, sell, hold and otherwise contract for property3 This commentary reports on the efforts of one nonprofit organization on the front lines of that battle in its community and seeks to encourage similar advocacy elsewhere.
Inclusive Communities Project
The Inclusive Communities Project (ICP) is a Dallas-based nonprofit organization that works to promote racially and economically inclusive communities and seeks redress for discrimination and segregation. In furtherance of its mission, ICP predominantly works to create and obtain affordable housing for low-income minority families in nonminority areas of the Dallas metropolitan area through its education, advocacy, counseling, and development activities.4 ICP receives its operating funds from the Walker Housing Fund Charitable Trust, which was funded as part of the remedy in Walker v. United States Department of Housing & Urban Development, a public housing desegregation case filed in 1985.5 Another aspect of the remedy was an allocation of special vouchers that pay higher rents (125 percent of fair market rent)...