KENTUCKY Lexington The major obstacle to any slum celarance project in Lexington is the relocation problem. "There is not much land available to the ousted Negro to build upon." There are three groups which have control of various facets of slum clearance: the Lexington Planning Commission, the (defunct) Urban Renewal Commission and the Lexington Housing Authority. "Without cooperation and coordination of these agencies substandard slum houses will continue to exist.” Since 1956 Lexington has had a minimum housing code (based on the model housing code of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.) "The code has not been consistently or even frequently enforced." "An additional obstacle to the Negro (or anyone else in the lower income group) acquiring new housing in Lexington is a recent zoning ordinance which requires a one-half acre lot for a house if the house is not on the city sewer. This requirement was put in because of the dangerous overburdening of drainage areas with too many septic tanks. . . . Bluegrass land is very expensive, and a one-half acre lot is out of the reach of a great many people." MARYLAND The Maryland State Advisory Committee adopted the Schwulst recommendations which can be found on pages 68-71 of the regional hearings. St. Louis MISSOURI This city faces a complicated problem. With 96 percent of the land occupied, the largest city in the State with the largest minority group has no area in which to expand. NEBRASKA "It appears that the Federal Government alone has attempted to do something effective in the matter of housing to solve the problems. . . . The single exception to the above statement seems to be the attempt of the State of Nebraska to do something for Mexican nationals brought into the State as agricultural workers. . . . Governor Robert Crosby, of Nebraska, in 1954, was the first to manifest a genuine interest in the problem. He appointed a statewide committee which after study reported that discrimination was most pronounced in the areas of housing and employment: 'Racial minorities face residential segregation in its most rigid form, and is buttressed and supported by restrictive covenants.'" Lincoln The mayor has appointed a Committee on Human Relations to make factfinding surveys. Omaha The mayor has appointed a Committee on Human Relations to make factfinding surveys. An urban renewal project has been temporarily rejected. NEVADA "... The State Planning Commission [has] taken no steps to either integrate or segregate housing." Las Vegas “The local government . . . has taken no steps to integrate or segregate housing. A Uniform Housing Code has recently been adopted and an administrative program set up for its enforcement. "The Department of Planning and the Urban Renewal Division have been working constantly to provide decent, safe, and sanitary housing." NEW MEXICO The New Mexico State Legislature enacted enabling legislation a number of years ago, authorizing municipalities to proceed with public housing programs. The only city that has utilized this authority has been Clovis, New Mexico, where a completely integrated well-administered public housing facility exists. (The Negro population there is small.) Albuquerque An ordinance prohibiting discrimination in places of public accommodation, resort, and amusement because of race, color, religion, ancestry or national origin was enacted in 1952. There is no other legislation dealing with discrimination. OHIO Mayor's "friendly relations boards", race relations groups and other local bodies "seek by moral pressure to ease the shock and resulting consequences of the firmly established residential patterns. . . . Such efforts as yet have produced few changes from the fixed pattern." Cincinnati Cincinnati has no more developable land and must, therefore, be able to plan in the areas surrounding the central city. The Director of the Cincinnati Department of Urban Renewal stated to the State Committee "that public agencies, including the Planning Commission and the Urban Renewal Department do not consider it their responsibility to promote integrated living among racial groups, even though the city by resolution prohibits discrimination in any house financed wholly or partly by public funds." UTAH "Experience in attempting to obtain passage for a modest bill providing a civil remedy for discrimination in public accommodations in the 1957 and the 1959 Utah Legislature has convinced this Committee that there appears no chance of any effective legislation in civil rights being passed by the Utah legislature within the foreseeable future. Relief, particularly for the Indian, Mexican, and Negro, and especially in the areas of housing and employment, must come from Federal legislation." VERMONT Burlington "A voluntary citizens' effort in and about the city of Burlington, led by the churches, has established a positive, in contrast to a negative, approach to housing discrimination by instituting a register which landlords and others can use who make their properties available to Negroes." 517016-5930 WEST VIRGINIA Wheeling The city is attacking its housing problem by strengthening its building code, and increasing the activity of its enforcement agency, "causing some old unsound properties to be removed, and others repaired. . . .” "We recommend that in the event the life of the Committee is extended that a more detailed study in the field of housing be undertaken in order to more accurately determine the real source of the problem. . . . ... "1. Developing more resources in terms of staff, clerical help and materials, which could be made available to the State committees. "2. Developing uniform procedures to be followed by State committees in studying given subjects. "3. Include as areas of study, employment practices and public accommodations." CHAPTER IV. FEDERAL LAWS, POLICIES, AND HOUSING PROGRAMS 1. THE CONSTITUTION, STATUTES, AND JUDICIAL DECISIONS The right of all citizens of the United States to acquire, enjoy, own and dispose of houses and land is protected from discriminatory State action by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. As the Supreme Court has held without dissent: Equality in the enjoyment of property rights was regarded by the framers of that Amendment as an essential precondition to the realization of other basic civil rights and liberties which the Amendment was intended to guarantee.1 This "essential precondition" was originally among the rights which Congress specifically sought to protect by statute in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866,2 which was designed to implement the Thirteenth Amendment. It was reenacted in 1870, subsequent to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. Still part of the United States Code, it provides that All citizens of the United States shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.* Although there have been several attempts in Congress to enact antidiscrimination amendments to Federal housing statutes, none has succeeded. Thus the above law remains the sole federal statute specifically relating to racial discrimination in housing. It has been recognized and relied upon by the Supreme Court in decisions declaring unconstitutional residential zoning by municipalities on a racial basis and the enforcement of private racial restrictive covenants by both state and Federal courts. Since these are the only two fields in which the Supreme Court has considered this law, its efficacy in other areas of discrimination in housing remains to be settled. 5 However, Federal housing programs are governed by the constitutional requirements of equal protection of the laws and due process. The Supreme Court has done more than consistently hold that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits State (or city) action to enforce 1 Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 10 (1948). Act of Apr. 9, 1866, c. 31, sec. 1; 14 Stat. 27. a Sec. 18, Act of May 31, 1870, 16 Stat. 144. 4 Title 42, U.S.C. sec. 1982. Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60, 79 (1917). • Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 10 (1948). "Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U.S. 24, 30 (1948). racial zoning or racially restrictive private covenants in housing. It has also held that this antidiscrimination rule expresses the public policy of the United States and is applicable to the action of Federal as well as state agencies. The Constitution guarantees due process of law to all Americans in their dealings with all agencies of government, Federal as well as State. In the District of Columbia school case, the Supreme Court unanimously held that racial segregation was "not reasonably related to any proper governmental objective" and thus was an arbitrary discrimination "so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process." It "would be unthinkable," the Court held, "that the same Constitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government" than is imposed on the States by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.10 9 It is noteworthy that the doctrine of "separate but equal," which for some years was approved by the Court in the fields of public transportation and education, has never been adopted by it in cases concerning discrimination in housing. On the other hand, the Court has always made clear that the Fourteenth Amendment "erects no shield against merely private conduct, however discriminatory or wrongful." The cases examined below involve the question of drawing the line between what is prohibited official discrimination and what is "merely private conduct." 11 In the first such case to reach the Supreme Court, Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917), an ordinance enacted by the city of Louisville, Ky., prohibited non-Caucasians from occupying residences in any block upon which a greater number of the houses were occupied by Caucasians. A similar provision prohibited Caucasians from occupying houses in blocks where the greater number of houses were occupied by non-Caucasians. The Kentucky courts held the ordinance valid. The Supreme Court unanimously held that the ordinance was not a legitimate exercise of the police power, since it was in direct violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Ten years later in Harmon v. Tyler, 273 U.S. 668 (1926) the Court unanimously declared invalid a similar ordinance which prohibited any Negro from establishing a home in a white community, or any white person in a Negro community, without the written consent of a majority of the opposite race inhabiting the area. See also City of Richmond v. Deans, 281 U.S. 704 (1930). However, despite the consistent decisions of the Supreme Court, municipalities have continued to enact zoning ordinances de |