Fair Opportunity in Affordable Housing: How the Judicial Remedy in Gautreaux Informed Antipoverty Policy

Abstract

We should be particularly concerned with relative deprivation in fair housing—the differences between the ghetto and the suburbs—because relativity shows us how inequalities prevent full participation in society.13 According to Daniels, “Failing to promote health in a population, that is, failing to promote normal functioning in it, fails to protect the opportunity or capability of people to function as free and equal citizens.”14 Replace health, as broadly defined, with housing, as broadly defined, and we reach the same determination that unhealthy, unfair housing creates arbitrary inequality, adversely affecting the positive liberty and dignity of equal citizens. Assuming, of course, that this failure is an injustice, it is logical to turn to the intersection of the law and the housing market, where the abstractions of justice and fairness are applied in the real-world. [From first section]