by Anita Hill
Consideration of these factors alone makes a Home Summit a tall order. Yet as worthy a beginning as such a summit would be, the American public will expect more than a brainstorming session from the DPC’s and CWG’s effort. Vetting of issues and ideas should ultimately lead the council to make policy recommendations.
To make sure the needs of women and girls are taken into account when developing policies, programs, and legislation, government agencies should adopt some sort of analytic procedure that lets them evaluate the impact of their actions on people who we know are at risk of being shut out of the housing market. Ultimately, that means a number of government agencies that influence home buying, housing, and transportation should put into operation a process that assesses every aspect of their work for its ability to protect the interests of all women, regardless of color. Since a myriad of national, state, and local agencies have made decisions that influenced housing patterns and neighborhood demographics in the past, it stands to reason that their participation is needed to stop further racial, gender (family makeup), and income isolation.
Recall that before the crisis, single women—many with children—were an emerging market for home ownership. Given the income disparities that exist, they are unlikely to be able to purchase homes in higher-income areas. Therefore, the cost and types of homes built will shape who becomes part of the communities that are developed. How much affordable housing to build and where to locate it have to be part of the discussion of the Home Summit. The analysis of rules and regulations governing new developments must tell us who is being shut out when building permits are granted and streets are being paved.
The ultimate purpose of a population impact analysis (PIA) would be to make certain that government resources are spent more effectively, particularly with respect to the buyers who were hardest hit as the housing and financial markets collapsed. Clearly, many of the buyers and communities that fared worst during this crisis were the ones who were most vulnerable even before the advent of subprime markets. While one can reasonably argue that the best antidote to the problem of loss of home ownership is the growth of jobs, that approach ignores the fact that the buildup to the housing crisis occurred when unemployment was low. Earnings did not keep up with upwardly spiraling housing costs, and those who were employed in chronically low-paying jobs—women and black and brown men—were always at a disadvantage for home ownership, even in a job-rich economy. Consequently, the ultimate goal of any policy analysis would be to address those vulnerabilities, not to get the new entrants, midlifers, or long-termers back to exactly where they were before the collapse.
Currently gender, racial, and ethnic demographic and economic information, the kind needed for such an analysis, is collected by the Census Bureau, but not all government agencies utilize it in decision making. And some, sensitive to the potential for discrimination, will be suspicious of its use. Again, the Domestic Policy Council would be an excellent home base for this project. In its pivotal role as a central point for coordination of, and cooperation with, the overall goals of the administration and for full implementation of administrative policy, it could standardize the PIA procedures, as well as determine how federal agencies collaborate with state and local agencies and private entities. The DPC could establish rules for when a PIA is required, how it is to be used, and how to disseminate the information gathered from the PIA, as well as the consequences for failing to do such analysis.
A number of policies related to the home and home ownership will need to be evaluated for their impact on individuals and communities. Policy advisers have already suggested some candidates for scrutiny. For example, an eighteen-member bipartisan White House commission hinted that eliminating the federal tax write-off for mortgage interest payments might be an option for addressing the deficit. This suggestion started a debate about the benefit of what has become an expectation for some taxpayers. Arguably, the mortgage interest write-off and other federal policies have encouraged the growth of the suburbs whose histories are steeped in white homeowners’ efforts to avoid residential integration. And while federal policy should not punish or abandon those neighborhoods, a balance between suburbs, cities, and rural areas must be struck. As it is, economists note that only one-third of those eligible deduct their mortgage interest payments from the amounts they owe on taxes. Low-income taxpayers are often better off taking the standard deduction rather than itemizing their deductions. Those most likely to itemize, and thus take the interest deduction, are upper-income taxpayers, often those residing in suburbs. According to one Wall Street Journal blog, “Around 70% of the benefits from mortgage-interest and property-tax deductions go to the top 20% of taxpayers in terms of income.” A taxpayer can write off interest on as much as one million dollars of debt, arguably encouraging individuals to overleverage and take on more debt than they otherwise would, which can inflate the cost of housing. Today the mortgage interest deduction is, according to the same blog, “the largest single subsidy for housing and one of the largest deductions in the U.S. tax code . . . projected to reduce tax revenue by $131 billion in 2012.”31 As such, it amounts to tax subsidization for a few. At the very least, we must begin to debate whether the policy is in the best interest of all neighborhoods or whether some tailored approach to mortgage deduction is in order.
Policies already in place will be up for consideration as we move into a new period of projected record foreclosures. Under the Home Affordable Modification Program, the Obama administration set aside $30 billion to help homeowners renegotiate troubled loans. The billion-dollar Emergency Homeowners’ Loan Program was designed to help unemployed homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments. Buyers who owe more on their homes than they are worth might be helped by the FHA Short Refinance Option to refinance mortgages. And the Neighborhood Stabilization Program promises to assist states, cities, and nonprofits to purchase and refurbish abandoned properties. All are programs that might alleviate some of the problems caused by the crisis of home, but all should be evaluated under a PIA to measure their ability to address the long-term concerns of those whose chance at the American Dream has been the most diminished, through no fault of their own.
No matter whether people rent or own their homes, the area in which they live often determines education and employment opportunities and chances to engage in civic activities. Even after years of civil rights gains, where and how one lives in America often correlates to race and gender disparities. In order to move the country forward, President Obama will have to do as his predecessors did and confront lingering inequality. Among other ideas, Obama could make our democracy more inclusive by tying financial support for home buyers to purchases that promote community sustainability and stability. He could urge the Justice Department to systemically combat discrimination in public and private housing markets. He could fund community development that draws on women’s community-building leadership capacities and the social networks that they develop through their workplaces, places of worship, children’s schools, and even beauty shops. But whatever Obama’s policies, they must all follow a vision for equality, one that embraces a community of equals. As we climb out of this crisis, we must ask ourselves whether the housing market is a safe repository for our vision of equality, much less the American Dream. Will President Obama continue to follow the path of moderate efforts to help individual homeowners renegotiate bad loans? Or will he work with other leaders to broaden our vision of equality and help us reimagine a democracy in which we are all at home?
The discussion of how to strengthen our democracy and reimagine the home and its relationship to equality should not be left to one person, not even one as powerful as President Obama. We—educators, community and business leaders, local politicians, philanthropists, media, and individuals—are all responsible for moving the country forward on these critical issues. And our responsibility is independent of what the White House or Congress does. Education, work, civic engageme
nt, ready availability of goods and services—all correlate to where and how one lives. Thus teachers, employers, city officials, and any others with something to offer the public have a stake in this conversation.
In sorting out topics of concern, let’s begin with education. Take, for example, an elementary school teacher with a passion for her students’ learning, Ms. Young. Given that our schools are funded through property taxes, where and how Ms. Young’s students live will determine what she can do in the classroom. The number of students assigned in her classes and the kinds of basic materials Ms. Young has at her disposal are often beyond her control. A frank conversation between Ms. Young, local school board members, a store owner or manufacturer near her school, and a charity devoted to the health and well-being of children about the local housing market and property values in her school’s neighborhood will shed light on the structural challenges Ms. Young and her students face and should lead to some practical solutions for addressing those challenges. This conversation about the role the home plays in school funding may help Ms. Young and the others understand why every one of her pupils doesn’t have a textbook or access to a computer and what needs to be done structurally to change that situation.
A Community of Equals
Author John Edgar Wideman reminds us that home is more than a place; it is a “way of seeing and being seen.”32 What I have learned from my experiences at multiple addresses throughout the country began with my childhood on a farm in Oklahoma. For most of us, home is a structure (a house or apartment) and a household of family members or kin, as defined not only by blood but by close relationships, love, or marriage. Home is physical when defined by shared space—a domicile—and emotional when defined by the connections between the people who live in that space. Sharing a home assumes shared intimacy, emotions, good and bad times. The home where I grew up is the same place where my mother and father raised their thirteen children. Though we never all lived there together, we all call it home, having had common experiences there. Home signifies belonging. Belonging to a house set back from a dirt road and surrounded by fields shaped how our family saw a world where the majority of people of our race lived in cities. And no doubt, the fact that we were farm people shaped what others expected us to say and believe in, and even how we were supposed to look. Years later, when I went to law school in New Haven, Connecticut, with people from around the country, I was one of two Oklahomans. Many of my classmates seemed surprised by the mere presence of someone from a state that few of them had visited, and even more surprised that natives of rural Oklahoma who were black actually existed.
Home can also refer to a community or neighborhood. For me, the Lone Tree community where I grew up was also a place that felt like home. I knew its residents, not in the same way that I knew my family, but they were indeed familiar. Work, church and school, birthdays and funerals were community affairs. Having crafted a sense of security over the objections of the area’s prejudices, black members of the community felt connected to each other and, oddly and with reservations, to our white neighbors. We were not all equals, but we all felt rooted in the place.
It’s worth noting that this sphere, the community, was as far as my mother, Erma Hill, ventured in her concept of where she belonged. She felt at home on our farm and with her black friends, but that was it. She never looked beyond that limited landscape for her own sense of home, but she expected more for her children.
My mother’s experience tells me that in order to find a nation-home, we must do more than inhabit a space within a national boundary. We must find a connection with a country. That connection is expressed through our civic participation and identification with national representatives. It’s reinforced when those leaders make policies that show they understand what we care about. Home, even a nation-home, not only offers us privileges, but also demands responsibility. We don’t often think of what having a nation-home means. Even black artists’ ability to connect us with a nation-home is anxiety ridden. Langston Hughes wrote, “I, too, am America,” even as he situated the “darker brother” in our nation’s “kitchen.”33 Today thousands, maybe even millions, feel relegated to the America’s back rooms, waiting to be let into the parlor in full view of company.
Most often those of us, regardless of race, who are born citizens take being an American for granted and rarely think about what it means to have a nation-home, let alone that the meaning might be influenced by race or gender. Yet when tragedy strikes, we rummage around for ways to symbolize our belonging to America. We rely on recognized emblems, and sometimes we find symbols in peculiar places. We even reprioritize our desire for a haven. After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, we began to fly flags and wear lapel pins to let our neighbors know of our shared sentiments. During seventh-inning stretches at professional baseball games, we stopped asking to be taken to the ball game and asked God to bless America, our “home sweet home.” National security became our primary political, as well as personal, issue—underscoring that of utmost importance is the sense that home, in any of these forms, should make those who are within its boundaries feel secure and valued, even during recreational activities.
More important, to see yourself and be seen as having a home in America, you must feel valued and secure in your place in the nation. When I look back on my mother’s life and consider her and Iola Young, the two women who sent me out to find my home in America, I realize how they struggled to find their place in a nation that never heard their stories and thus never began to fully value their contributions. If not outcasts, they were seen as peripheral to the story of America. They are joined today by many Americans, some of whom look like them, others of whom do not. I cannot help but think that if they are just seen and included in the universe of American discourse, to adapt a phrase coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, the country will be better off.34
As the story goes, President Barack Obama spends the last few minutes of each day in the Oval Office reading ten letters from the public. On occasion, he responds to one or two. I have no doubt that Obama’s correspondence is compelling and much more massive than my own. But with respect to mail, I do have one thing over the president. The now more than twenty-five thousand letters I have received from the public span nearly two decades, extending beyond the specific issues of the day. The writers live in every state—red, blue, and purple—in this country. Women and men, writing on all manners of topics, share their stories with me. Consequently, my letters offer long-view lessons about living together in a community. And through them I have found home—not simply the place, but perhaps more important, the state of being. I believe that these letters could benefit President Obama, or anyone who is privileged to read them, as much as they have benefited me.
Among the many messages of these letters is that at its best, the American Dream is an application of our shared values. Today I am privileged to witness the coming of age of a generation that seeks to move beyond historic race and gender divisions. For them, the American Dream means nothing if it is not inclusive. Because of the financial crisis, and because of their having grown up in an era of less strident racial discrimination and in homes where women are breadwinners, they will be less willing and able to pay a premium to live in a racially isolated (predominantly white) community.
I also know that this new generation will never love rights the way that I do. And why should they? Individuals born after the passage of civil rights laws have never lived without legal protections against race and gender discrimination. For them, the rights discussion is abstraction. If we are to engage them in a struggle for progress, we must find a new way to talk about equality. Indeed—because the aspects of our lives that cannot be adjudicated in a courtroom will ultimately help define equality—as important as rights are, we do the next generation a disservice by limiting our talk about progress and equality to a discussion of rights. For them, rights are a starting point, Equality 1.0. Th
ey are ready for the 4G version of equality. Before long they will no doubt be clamoring for the 10G version.
But one thing that a generation that has grown up in an era of social networking understands is community. Even as abstract as the concept may seem to some, the burgeoning industry of technology that keeps us linked shows that young people understand and crave connectedness in ways that many in my generation never imagined and cannot fully appreciate. The perennial question my generation asks people whom we meet is “Where are you from?” I would encourage a generation of Facebook users to forego that query and ask instead, “Where is your home?” In answering that question, give some thought to how you found your own place—what role your race played in the choices you had and the choices you made before settling into a home. When you look out your window, what are the races of the people you expect to see? Are they the same as those you see on your Facebook page, on YouTube, at your job, or on the streets as you make your way to work? For men, I’d ask you to also think about whether your choices for a place that gives you a sense of belonging and security are different from your sisters’ or those of other women in your life. I’d like young women and men to think about whether your possibilities are the same as your parents’. Will your children’s options be the same? Finally, I’d ask you to imagine how any of your answers might be different in a world of true equality.
Urban geographer Elvin Wyly wisely tempers my optimism about a younger generation’s ability to get beyond gender and racial limitations. Even though today’s twenty-year-olds may have good intentions to change their behavior, Wyly reminds me that “for those who follow the path of marriage, parenthood, and home ownership, there is a built-in suburban bias, and this will trigger all of the structural biases of property markets, municipal fiscal disparities, and, especially, school-district inequalities.”35 In short, the institutional incentives that encourage separation are firmly in place and will trump the best intentions for more inclusive racial and gender. Again, our conversation must include frank talk about how personal choices can only be realized through changes in a host of local and national policies.