Federalism, Efficiency, and Civil Rights Enforcement

Abstract

This article systematically compares the efficiency of federal, state, and local civil rights agencies in enforcing national fair housing policy over time, with special attention to the South. State and local agencies processed Fair Housing Act complaints more efficiently than the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), southern agencies outperformed HUD, and the probability that a racial discrimination complaint resulted in a favorable outcome for the alleged victim was the same for complaints originating within and outside the South. These findings suggest that the fair housing enforcement model may provide useful concepts for sharing power in other policy areas in the American federal system.