Do you ever look at the current state of housing in your community and wonder how we got here? What were the policies put into place, or the events that occurred, throughout history that have contributed to the issues we are experiencing today? Learning about the local history of redlining, segregation, homelessness, and other housing issues gives us important context and a better understanding of the current housing landscape, and the issues we continue to face in our region. Luckily, you don’t have to look far to find resources that will deepen your knowledge on these topics.
In honor of National Fair Housing Month, The Fair Housing Center has developed a Fair Housing Reading List, to guide readers in learning more about topics relating to fair housing, segregation, and housing justice. The list includes 46 titles for adults and young readers, which are separated by topic into categories, including local reads, staff picks, and books on fair housing policy and history. Those interested in learning more about the history of housing practices in Northeast Ohio can head to the “Local Reads” section of the reading list to get started.
Check out our recommendations for five must-read books on fair housing in Northeast Ohio:
1. Derelict Paradise: Homelessness and Urban Development in Cleveland, Ohio, Daniel R. Kerr
Seeking answers to the question, “Who benefits from homelessness?” this book takes the reader on a sweeping tour of Cleveland’s history from the late nineteenth-century through the early twenty-first. Daniel Kerr shows that homelessness has deep roots in the shifting ground of urban labor markets, social policy, downtown development, the criminal justice system, and corporate power. Rather than being attributable to the illnesses and inadequacies of the unhoused themselves, it is a product of both structural and political dynamics shaping the city. Kerr locates the origins of today’s shelter system in the era that followed the massive railroad rebellions of 1877. From that period through the Great Depression, business and political leaders sought to transform downtown Cleveland to their own advantage. As they focused on bringing business travelers and tourists to the city and beckoned upper-income residents to return to its center, they demolished two downtown working-class neighborhoods and institutionalized a shelter system to contain and control the unhoused and unemployed. The precedents from this period informed the strategies of the post–World War II urban renewal era as the “new urbanism” of the late twentieth century. The efforts of the city’s elites have not gone uncontested. Kerr documents a rich history of opposition by people at the margins of whose organized resistance and everyday survival strategies have undermined the grand plans crafted by the powerful and transformed the institutions designed to constrain the lives of the homeless. (Source: University of Massachusetts Press)
2. A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930,
Kenneth Kusmer
In 1865, the Cleveland Leader boasted that black citizens enjoyed a freedom of education and movement unparalleled in other cities. Fifty years later, a majority of the black population lived in the run-down Central Avenue district of town.
Kenneth Kusmer analyzes the emergence of a ghetto in Cleveland by delving into economic, political, social, and cultural realities of black life. Drawing on local archives. Kusmer compares the position of blacks in the social order with that of immigrants and native whites. Drawing on local archives and a wealth of data on jobs, he also contrasts Cleveland with cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston in order to reveal the complex causes and effects behind the emergence of black ghettos. As Kusmer concludes, it was the isolation of the ghetto and the sense of unique goals and needs it fostered that helped unify the black citizens and provided the practical basis for the future struggles against racism. (Source: University of Illinois Press)
3. Surrogate Suburbs: Black Upward Mobility and Neighborhood Change in Cleveland, 1900-1980, Todd Michney
The story of white flight and the neglect of Black urban neighborhoods has been well told by urban historians in recent decades. Yet much of this scholarship has downplayed Black agency and tended to portray African Americans as victims of structural forces beyond their control. In this history of Cleveland’s Black middle class, Todd Michney uncovers the creative ways that members of this nascent community established footholds in areas outside the overcrowded, inner-city neighborhoods to which most African Americans were consigned. In asserting their right to these outer-city spaces, African Americans appealed to city officials, allied with politically progressive whites (notably Jewish activists), and relied upon both Black and white developers and real estate agents to expand these “surrogate suburbs” and maintain their livability until the bona fide suburbs became more accessible.
By tracking the trajectories of those who, in spite of racism, were able to succeed, Michney offers a valuable counterweight to histories that have focused on racial conflict and Black poverty and tells the neglected story of the Black middle class in America’s cities prior to the 1960s. (Source: The University of North Carolina Press)
4. Democratizing Cleveland, Randy Cunningham
Randy Cunningham, founding member of the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus, details one of the greatest examples of mass civic and democratic education in Cleveland’s history.
Democratizing Cleveland: The Rise and Fall of Community Organizing in Cleveland, Ohio, 1975–1985, is the result of almost fifteen years of research on the community organizing movement in Cleveland that put neighborhood concerns and neighborhood voices front and center. Cunningham, who has lived and worked in Cleveland for years, describes a thriving decade of social movements and community groups built around civil disobedience. Many of these groups, led by women, were able to unite predominantly white and black neighborhoods in a common cause. Cunningham walks us through the origin of community organizing and the movement’s major campaigns and transitions, including:
- insurance and bank redlining
- community development and urban renewal programs
- the movement’s decline during the Reagan administration.
Originally published in 2007 by Arambala Press, this important work is being reprinted by Belt Publishing for a new generation of activists, planners, urbanists, and organizers. It’s a great reminder that activism is the pulse of democracy. (Source: Belt Publishing)
5. Resisting Segregation, Susie Kaiser
Resisting Segregation documents how Cleveland Heights citizens challenged a seemingly insurmountable social problem: the lack of housing opportunities for African Americans. In 1964, a group of white women, inspired by the national civil rights movement, joined with black citizens – leaders and visionaries – to fight for racial equality and open up Cleveland Heights for all.
Over the next 12 years, community activists lobbied city government to welcome integration and fought federal and state policies, resistant realtors, widespread racism, and hostile neighbors who enforced segregation. They worked as opponents bombed their homes and realtors preyed on homeowners’ fears through blockbusting. In the end, they created long-standing organizations and changed city government to forever shape the future of Cleveland Heights. They transformed a virtually all-white suburb into an enduring, integrated community with a vibrant civic culture.
Resisting Segregation is a must-read for anyone interested in the evolution of this unique community and for those looking for a path forward toward greater racial justice.
Produced by local publisher Cleveland Landmarks Press, Resisting Segregation demonstrates how citizen activism works, how people can fight systemic racism, and how our communities can improve with a commitment to racial equity. (Source: Cleveland Landmarks Press)
Want to continue to expand your fair housing knowledge? Join the Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research in completing weekly challenges throughout the month of April, as part of Fair Housing Month of Action! Visit www.thehousingcenter.org/action to find articles, podcasts, videos, and other fair housing resources. Or, become an email subscriber to have the action items sent straight to your inbox each week!