ABSTRACT
Poor people live where the powers that be, of whatever color, decide they should. And historically those powers have decided that poor people should live in a racially segregated condition. Th e modern-day public housing program was built upon a foundation of de jure segregation dating back to the 1930s (Kerner Commission 1968, 246). Th e assisted housing programs that followed years later utilized the blatantly discriminatory private housing market to continue that pattern (Goering 1986, 245-48). Th e most recent low-income housing production program continues the practice of funding low-income housing developments in a way that perpetuates segregation and allows private market discrimination to reinforce it (Massachusetts Law Reform Institute et al. 2004; Poverty & Race Research Action Council 2004). De jure segregation may no longer be the law, but the reality of our low-income housing programs continues to produce segregation in fact (Julian and Daniel 1989).
