Institutional Reform and the Enforcement of the Fair Housing Laws

Abstract

programs and activities to combat the bias. Recent research in the form of a $l· million federal study2 confirmed the existence of prohibited housing bias being both operative and pervasive throughout all major metropolitan areas of the country. In 1968, the country articulated a belated response to its prior commitment to housing and lending apartheid with the passage of Title VIII,3 the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Federal Fair Housing Act), and in the same year the United States Supreme Court rediscovered the Civil Rights Act of 1866 in the housing bias case of Jones v. Mayer.4 Title VIII authorizes the United States Depart-