All Public Housing Does Not Have to be in Black & Brown Neighborhoods: In Dallas, housing vouchers and hope

Todae Charles and her children are among thousands of black Dallas public housing residents who have been given the opportunity to live outside impoverished, segregated city neighborhoods under the settlement of a civil rights lawsuit similar to one going on in Baltimore for a decade. While the Dallas case is regarded as a model in Baltimore and elsewhere for achieving significant desegregation of public housing, progress has not come easily. Some of the initiatives to disperse residents drew strong community opposition. And the more than 2,500 docket entries in the 19-year-old court file indicate the complexity and contentiousness of the legal battle. The federal judge overseeing the Dallas case approved a final settlement in late December -- two weeks before another ruled that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development violated federal fair housing law by failing to take a regional approach to the desegregation of public housing in Baltimore. In announcing his decision in the Baltimore case Jan. 6, District Judge Marvin J. Garbis said District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer, who presided over the Dallas litigation, "gave me a lot of guidance" in how to proceed. There are differences between the two cases. The most pronounced is that in Dallas, the city and its housing authority were found liable for discrimination along with HUD; in Baltimore, the city and its housing authority were absolved of wrongdoing, leaving only the federal housing agency liable. [more]