ABSTRACT
The most influential ‘model’ of the US housing market is based on the ‘filtering’ concept. Filtering assumes that as housing units are vacated by upwardly mobile families, so their houses lose status, decline in value and filter down to lower income families. The substantive sections of the 1968 Act providing for administrative and judicial redress have been used almost exclusively to combat discrimination in the private sector. Analysis of private sector housing can, therefore, concentrate on the ways in which HUD’s complaint procedure and judicial action have affected market behaviour. Before the civil rights laws of the 1960s, blacks were simply refused service, or told no homes were available. More recently, more subtle devices have been employed. Section 812 of the 1968 Civil Rights Act not only permits individuals to seek judicial redress, but also gives the courts the power to award damages and to grant injunctions.
