A Right to Housing in the Suburbs: James v. Valtierra and the Campaign against Economic Discrimination

Abstract

In the landmark 1971 case of James v. Valtierra, the Supreme Court ruled that municipalities could block housing for the poor, bolstering a trend toward exclusionary zoning and economic segregation in suburban America. Scholarship on this trend has focused on the racial impacts of putatively nonracial policies, echoing activists at the time who saw economic exclusion as a disguised means of forestalling racial desegregation. This article, however, argues that a focus on racial desegregation misinterprets the campaign of affordable housing in the suburbs and obscures key claims made by affordable housing activists. It examines the history of James v. Valtierra, showing that the plaintiffs were a racially diverse group of women who already lived in the suburbs; they sought not desegregation but better housing conditions for single mothers and their families. The article suggests the importance of analyzing suburban diversity, gender, and economic discrimination in struggles for affordable housing.