Allison Gorsuch, “Fair Housing
in Ann Arbor”
In his book A History of Ann
Arbor, Jonathan
Marwil argues that the city of Ann Arbor enacted major advancements in housing
equality through citizen participation. One of these reforms, he suggests, was
the passage of the Fair Housing Ordinance which “gave teeth” to
previous informal proposals to equalize access to housing. He also claims that
active participation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) and the establishment of a Housing Commission helped give
“a new meaning to the title “a city of homes” through citizen
participation. [1] However, the
reality of the history is not so heartwarming. Although the City Council of Ann Arbor took legislative and
rhetorical steps towards housing equality in the 1960s, there is much indirect
evidence to imply that no real progress was made after the enactment of the
Fair Housing Ordinance. In fact, the challenges made by the NAACP to the Ann
Arbor City Council and the establishment of the Old West Side Association
(OWSA), both in the late 1960s, show that although Ann Arbor espoused a
rhetoric of equality, the city was still a site of much housing discrimination.
Through the examination of three samples of records – the Ann Arbor Human
Relations Commission (HRC), the NAACP of Ann Arbor, and the OWSA – Ann
Arbor proves its tangled heritage, and refutes Marwil’s claim of
effective housing reform through citizen participation and the Fair Housing
Ordinance.
Housing
discrimination was a fact of life in Ann Arbor in the early 1960s, much like
elsewhere across the country. In Ann Arbor, the non-white residents of 1960
lived in 18% of the “deteriorated housing” and 42% of the
“dilapidated housing” while making up only 6.5% of the total
population.[2] This
dilapidated housing was located in the “Negro” area of town, where
African-American families made up 50% to 100% of the residents in entire
blocks.[3] These houses were concentrated in the
lower floodplain of the river near the railroad tracks, the most undesirable
land. This area also had a high rate of poverty - an estimated 35% of
“non-white” residents were poor.[4]
As can been seen on the accompanying
map, the “Negro area” is distinctly marked by certain street
boundaries.[5] North of Ann Street and Miller Street,
east of Brooke Street, west of the railroad tracks and south of the river lay
“Lower Town,” where the overwhelming majority of black and other
residents of color lived. The majority of the remaining area of the city was
less than 15% people of color; based on the map from 1950, the percentage was
probably less than 2%. [6]
Ann
Arbor had attempted early on to improve the equality of housing through
non-legislative actions. In the first of these measures, the Human Relations
Commission (HRC) was formed on June 7, 1957 “to obtain and insure
equality of treatment for all citizens of Ann Arbor.” [7]
Not surprisingly, the commission found that discrimination in housing and
employment was rampant, and many non-white residents were trapped by boundaries
of both streets and racism. [8]
In response, the Ann Arbor City Council introduced a Fair Housing Ordinance
(FHO) on November 13, 1961. At this special council meeting, Councilman Lynn W.
Eley made remarks highlighting the history of fair housing efforts in Ann
Arbor. He spoke of the Covenant of Open Occupancy, a petition signed by 2,190
people and groups between 1958 and 1960 that showed their commitment to
“buy, sell, rent or lease housing without regard to race, creed, or
color.”[9] In addition,
from 1960-196, 521 people from 317 families signed their pledge to encourage
equality in access to rental apartments through the “Statement of
Welcome” [10] Religious communities also emphasized
the need for both racial integration and affordable housing, suggesting that
Ann Arbor form a housing commission to promote equality by building public
housing units. [11] Clearly, some members of the community
supported housing equality.
However, not everyone signed those
petitions. Reflecting the community opposition to equality in housing, the FHO
was introduced in 1961 and not passed until 1964. In the meantime, the Ann Arbor City Council unanimously
passed a toothless resolution stating that “discrimination in housing in
Ann Arbor on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin is a violation
of the public policy of the City.” on March 5, 1963. [12]
Once enacted, the
FHO did have more power, establishing that the City Attorney was
“authorized to seek injunctive relief in any appropriate court to prevent
threatened violations” towards anyone found “discriminating:
… to segregate or to treat a person differently because of race, color
creed, religion, ancestry or nation origin…” and could be
punishable in both civil and criminal courts. [13]
The Fair Housing Ordinance’s eventual adoption was accompanied by the
establishment of a Housing Commission, designed to help improve housing
equality. [14] Both of these measures showed
substantial action, but would the ordinance and commission accomplish anything?
One year after the passage of the
Fair Housing Ordinance, the HRC reviewed its effectiveness. A memo from
director of the HRC to a city administrator on November 3, 1966, described the
outcome of fifty cases of alleged discrimination received in 1964-65. Only
twenty-three were covered under the ordinance, and of that only one was
prosecuted. Six were resolved by the commission, and six were dismissed. [15] What was most telling about this memo
was the explanation for the low numbers of discriminatory cases, as only seven
were considered discrimination. The director of the HRC explained that the low
number of cases was because Ann Arbor residents were aware of and following the
ordinance. He went on to say that although it could not be concluded that the
ordinance had actually changed any residential housing patterns, he claimed
that “real estate brokers are now supporting the FHO and are in fact
challenging the Human Relations Commission to find a real estate broker
involved in discrimination.”[16]
According to the HRC, the FHO was a success. But would all housing equality
movements be so apparently successful?
For the poorest residents of Ann
Arbor – especially those of color – the answer was negative. The
establishment of the Old West Side Association (OWSA) coincided neatly with the
passage of the Fair Housing Ordinance, the formation of the Housing Commission,
and the resulting push for more affordable housing in Ann Arbor. It also
appeared shortly after the Preservation Act of 1966, which allowed buildings
and neighborhoods to be legally protected as historic places.[17] The OWSA was (and still is) a
homeowner’s association consisting of residents of Ann Arbor who live in
a small, area west of Main Street made up of single-family residences in neat
blocks. The Association’s explicit mission was to preserve the
single-family character and promote the physical improvement of the
neighborhood.[18] Yet,
documents from the association suggest that its ulterior motive was to exclude
public affordable housing from the area – and with it, racial minorities.
Soon after its instatement in 1965, the Housing Committee presented a report
promoting the building of public housing in small units around the city. [19]
In November of 1967, the committee noted that public housing had been suggested
at Seventh and Washington Streets, right on the edge of the Old West Side. The
Housing Commission did not support this placement because of school
demographics, but also perhaps because of pressure from the OWSA; the
Association did not approve of the proposed site because of the addition of
rental housing to the single-family nature of the neighborhood. This pressure
can be seen in a February 13, 1968 letter from the Association to Mayor Wendell
E. Hulcher:
“in
recent years, however, there have been continued, and to those of us who live
here startling indications of deterioration. This change has been directly
related to the dynamic growth of the community to which our neighborhood was
not prepared to adapt. The growth of the community has produced forces of
change that have permitted deterioration and now seriously threaten the quality
of the residential environment of this neighborhood…, we sincerely
believe that is would be Ann Arbor’s loss as well as our own if this
historic neighborhood environment were to be completely removed from the
city’s near west side.[20]
Perhaps this “growth of the
community” that so scared the Old West Side Association was the increase
in the number of Ann Arbor residents of color in the previous decades. In 1950,
there were 1,085 blacks in Ann Arbor (only 145 more than in 1930) which jumped
to 3,200 in 1960. [21] Including other people of color,
the non-white population of Ann Arbor in 1960 was 4,355, increasing to 8,954 in
1970.[22]
From 1950 to 1970, the number of people of color residing in Ann Arbor had
increased by approximately 900% - and the Old West Side was not prepared to
have these newcomers live in their neighborhood.
The rhetoric of ‘historic
neighborhood environment” was put into action by the Old West Side
Association. Writing to the National Trust as well as individual community
historic societies, the Association requested information about preserving the
history of the area.[23] One of these letters suggests that the
aim of the OWSA’s quest for historic designation was more than just preserving
the buildings. Clarence Roy of the OWSA wrote to the Historic Charleston
Foundation asking for information about incorporating the Old West Side as a
historic neighborhood. [24]
In a positive response to Mr. Roy, Mrs. Edmunds, director of the Foundation,
wrote that she included some documents for the Association to use as models:
“…a copy of our By Law, Charter, Plans of operation and restrictive
covenants. The covenants were prepared by our attorney and have been quite
successful…”[25]
Adopted by a homeowner’s association, restrictive covenants were rules
incorporated into the deed for a home that “create substantive
regulations as well as the association’s rulemaking, enforcement, and
spending authority.” [26]
These rules could range from standards of lawn care to religion, race, or
number of pets. [27] The
evidence suggests that the OWSA may have been interested in forming a similar
restrictive covenant based on historical integrity on the surface, but masking
a racial component underneath; the fear of Old Westsiders towards the
“growth and change” presumably brought by public housing that
coincides with their push towards historic preservation is probably no
accident. By establishing guidelines about house appearances under the
façade of historic preservation, the Association could restrict the
construction of affordable housing and keep members of the lower-income class
– and implicitly, people of color – out of the neighborhood. [28]
The statements of the African
American community in Ann Arbor through the NAACP give credence to the argument
that Ann Arbor’s plan for racial integration was mere rhetoric and that
resistance to public housing was based in racism. The records of the NAACP from
the late 1960s highlight the ongoing battle about public housing in Ann Arbor.[29]
In a letter to the mayor, the city council, and the Housing Commission, the
president of the Ann Arbor NAACP, Mrs. Albert Wheeler, wrote that the NAACP had
voiced disagreement with the proposed plans for public housing and the
appointees of the city council.
The final plan, she writes, places all 200 units on two or three sites
in the city. From this evidence,
The NAACP is convinced that some individuals and
organizations are working under cover to prevent the development of any housing
for low-income families both for greedy economic purposes and also to preserve
that character of Ann Arbor which limits and isolates the Negro
residents…[30]
Clearly, the NAACP felt that
resistance to public housing was intended to “limit and isolate”
black and probably other people of color in Ann Arbor. Considering the language
of the Old West Side Association’s plea against public housing in their
neighborhood, the NAACP was not far mistaken in its judgment.
In contrast to Marwil’s
argument about citizen participation, Albert Wheeler, a prominent black Ann
Arborite and president of the NAACP’s Housing Committee, blamed the City
Council for not including input about housing from those who were affected by
the Council’s decisions, namely poor black and white citizens. [31]
The NAACP had been fighting since 1967 to be involved and had been repeatedly
ignored, according to a letter from Mr. Wheeler to the chairman of the Housing
Commission.[32] Especially
frustrating was the fact that the NAACP’s goal of scattering public housing
over many areas was not reflected in the final plan presented by the
Commission. [33] The records
of the NAACP suggest that Ann Arbor’s leadership was less open to racial
integration, public housing, and citizen input than Marwil would claim.
Were
citizen action and the enforcement of the Fair Housing Ordinance truly reducing
the amount of housing segregation in Ann Arbor? According to the records of the
Human Relations Commission, the number of cases reported to the commission
declined each year, as did the number of cases found to be actual
discrimination. By 1967 and 1968, only nine cases were reported each year, and
in 1968 none were found to be discriminatory. Only two cases were ever
prosecuted, one in 1964 and one in 1966. [34]
Perhaps the city council’s initial interpretation was prophetic –
the lowering numbers indicate increasing support for fair housing. Or, perhaps
Ann Arbor’s enforcement of the Fair Housing Ordinance was not strict, and
cases slipped through the cracks. The census data of 1970 suggests the latter
may have been the case; census tract seven (in the historically
“non-white” area) residents of color increased from 38.7% to 46.6%
of the population from 1960 to 1970. Interestingly, census tract six –
including the Old West Side – did show some integration; in 1960, people
of color made up 3.6% of the population, while in 1970 that percentage had
increased to 9.5%, although this probably reflects the booming population of
people of color rather than actual integration, the number of people of color
living in Ann Arbor doubled during this time, while the white population
increased by less than 30%.[35]
What these three small samples show
is that rather than Marwil’s depiction of citizens fighting for real housing change in Ann Arbor in
the 1960s, the reality was that the City Council merely enacted a series of
rhetorical reforms; establishing commissions, passing resolutions, and making
ordinances that were only nebulously enforceable and rarely enforced at all.
The Fair Housing Ordinance was rarely officially violated in a city that had
rampant racial segregation into the 1970s. The wishes of the 1960s Old West
Side Association to preserve the single-family residential character of the
neighborhood were granted; even today, large public housing units can be seen
just outside the Old West Side boundary. [36] The NAACP felt frustrated and
unrepresented in local government in the late 1960s, falsifying Marwil’s
claim of NAACP involvement. The 1970 census reveals that not much integration
occurred in Ann Arbor in the decade of the 1960s; in fact, some areas heavily
populated by people of color became even more segregated in the 1960s. Housing
inequality in Ann Arbor did not change much in the decade of the 1960s
precisely because the Ann Arbor City Council refused the input of people of
color and accepted the suggestions of the Old West Side Association. The
rhetoric of the Ann Arbor leadership was clearly unsupported by actual
enforcement of the Fair Housing Ordinance or the construction of public housing
in an integrated setting. To
imply that Ann Arbor’s history reflects a united vision of housing
equality and active citizen participation is to ignore the voices of those
unheard by the leadership of Ann Arbor – the people of color who were
discriminated against in violation of the Fair Housing Ordinance and those
silenced from community participation.
Appendix I
Appendix II
