Blind Faith in the Free Market: Urban Poverty, Residential Segregation, and Federal Housing Retrenchment, 1970–1995

Abstract

In recent years, research on poverty and segregation has been organized within a dominant discourse that centers on the relative salience of racial discrimination or macroeconomic change as a determinant of concentrated minority poverty. In contrast, little sociological research has focused on federal housing policies and programs as important factors shaping racial patterns of poverty and residential segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas. Drawing upon census data, public documents, housing reports, and interviews with local residents, I examine how federal and local housing initiatives in the 1980s and 1990s have interacted with the shift to a service‐oriented economy to reinforce racial residential segregation and exacerbate urban poverty in Kansas City. I find that persistent racial residential segregation, including minority poverty concentration and the spatial isolation of inner‐city neighborhoods, is due to post‐1970 changes in the operation of the metropolitan housing market and retrenchment in federal and local housing policy. Rather than viewing racial discrimination and macroeconomic change as disconnected and separate “variables,” I focus on the interconnectedness and mutually reinforcing character of both factors. Such an emphasis moves beyond separate‐variables approaches and analyses to identify how concentrated minority poverty is sustained not only by racial discrimination and large‐scale macroeconomic and demographic changes, but also by the market‐centered orientation of federal housing programs and policies.