Richard Brooks and Carol Rose have recently published their book Saving the Neighborhood:  Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms.  This well-written book brings to mind my recent post on the FHA Whitewash which reviewed a recent paper by HUD-affiliated researchers.  The paper minimized the role that the FHA played in furthering housing discrimination.  I mentioned that Kenneth Jackson’s classic book, Crabgrass Frontier, documented this sorry chapter of the FHA’s history.  Saving The Neighborhood covers some of the same ground, but from a legal and legal history perspective.  By doing so, it adds depth and texture to the historic record.

The book makes clear just how much of a role the FHA played.  The FHA’s

Underwriting Manual reflected private developers’ and brokers’ views of the kinds of features that made housing values stable and secure. Those features clearly included racial segregation.  In a section on “Protection from Adverse influences,” the Manual stated bluntly that “[a] change in social or racial occupancy generally leads to instability and a reduction in values” (par. 233). Thus property evaluators were to investigate the surrounding areas for the presence of “incompatible racial and social groups” and to assess whether the location might be “invaded” (par. 233). The Manual specifically noted that deed restrictions on “racial occupancy” could create a “favorable condition” (par. 228). in the section on subdivisions that were still in the development stage, the Manual recommended deed restrictions that included, among other matters, “. . . (g) Prohibition of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they are intended” (par. 284(3)). (109)

The authors argue that these preferences gave developers, even those who did not favor segregation, an incentive to employ racially restrictive covenants in their projects. (110)

The FHA’s record of racial discrimination during the first few decades of its existence is clear, for all to see.