Why Did Affirmative Action in Housing Fail during the Nixon Era? Exploring the "Institutional Homes" of Social Policies

This paper contrasts the establishment of affirmative action in employment with the failure of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to establish aggressive, race-conscious policies addressing residential segregation during the Nixon Administration. Making use of previously untapped archival sources from HUD and the Nixon Presidential Materials, this paper argues that the key to understanding these divergent outcomes is consideration of these policies' “institutional homes,” which have both direct and mediating effects on policy development. Bureaucrats in the employment bureaucracies had singular missions and clear career incentives to devise aggressive approaches to employment discrimination. In contrast, the fair housing staff at HUD found itself in a disjointed bureaucracy comprised of many formerly independent agencies with multiple missions. A disadvantaged institutional home, like that faced by HUD's fair housing staff, will tend to: encourage policy feedback that constrains rather than enables aggressive action; dilute the impact of institutional activists; increase the threat of Presidential sanctions; and enhance the risk of “delegitimation” by other political actors and the media. This paper illustrates how HUD fell prey to these dangers as scandals at the Federal Housing Administration gave President Nixon the political justification to freeze housing funds and consequently derail the agency's desegregation efforts.