The Promise of Fair Housing: From the Civil Rights Act to Jackson's 20 by 28 Campaign

3 days ago
5 min read

Marking 58 years since the Fair Housing Act, and the work still ahead in Jackson County

April 4, 1968

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stepped onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He had traveled to the city to support striking sanitation workers, most of them Black men demanding fair pay, safer working conditions, and the basic dignity owed to anyone who labored for a living. To Dr. King, their fight was inseparable from the broader struggle for civil rights. Economic justice, he believed, was a civil rights issue, and a decent home was a civil rights issue.

That evening, a single shot from across the street ended his life and silenced the nation's most prominent voice for racial and economic justice. Seven days later, on April 11, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 into law. Its most consequential component, Title VIII, became known as the Fair Housing Act. For the first time in American history, housing equality was enshrined in federal law.

What the Fair Housing Act Did, and What It Could Not Do

The Fair Housing Act was a watershed. For decades before its passage, Black families had been systematically excluded from the housing market. Real estate agents refused to show them homes in white neighborhoods. Banks denied them mortgages. Restrictive covenants written into property deeds forbade sale to anyone outside a narrow racial definition. The new law, in plain language, prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, and sex.

But legality and reality are not the same thing. The Fair Housing Act passed with weak enforcement provisions. Complaints were routed through a system that relied on voluntary compliance and lacked the authority to punish violators. It would take another 20 years, and the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988, before the enforcement framework was meaningfully strengthened.

More significant still was what the law could not undo. The federal government itself had spent decades actively reinforcing residential segregation. Through the practice of redlining, the Federal Housing Administration graded neighborhoods by perceived investment risk, using race as a primary factor in determining which communities would receive federally backed mortgages. Neighborhoods where Black families lived were routinely marked as hazardous, and their residents were denied the loans that would have allowed homeownership to take root. The maps were official. The practice was legal until 1968. The damage, measured in generational wealth never accumulated, could not be erased with a signature.

The Lasting Legacy of Housing Inequality

Homeownership is the single largest contributor to household wealth in the United States. It is how most middle-class families build equity. It is how parents pass something of value on to their children. When a family is denied the opportunity to buy a home, the consequence is not only the absence of shelter. It is the absence of a foundation on which future generations might stand.

The data tell a sobering story. In recent years, the Black homeownership rate in the United States has hovered around 44 percent, compared with roughly 74 percent for white households. That 30-point gap is wider today than it was when the Fair Housing Act passed in 1968. Black households that do own homes typically hold a small fraction of the wealth held by comparable white households. These disparities are the legacy of a century of housing policy that locked some families in and many others out.

Concentrated poverty persists in cities and towns across the country, including in Michigan communities shaped by the same federal lending maps of the mid-twentieth century. Affordable housing shortages, rising rents, and the disappearance of starter homes make it harder than ever for working families to cross the threshold into homeownership. The crisis we face today is a legacy, and addressing it requires deliberate, sustained, local action.

Housing in Jackson, Michigan Today

Here in Jackson County, the housing picture reflects the broader national reality with local specificity. Thousands of households in our region are considered cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. For a significant number of Jackson families, that figure climbs well above 50 percent, leaving almost nothing for savings, healthcare, or emergencies. Entry-level homes have grown scarce. Renters who would gladly buy often cannot save enough for a down payment while rent keeps rising. Young families who grew up in Jackson are being priced out of the community they call home.

Fair housing law ensures that no family will be turned away from a home because of who they are. It does not, on its own, create homes for those families to buy. That is the work still waiting to be done, and it has to happen at the local level, neighborhood by neighborhood and home by home.

Greater Jackson Habitat and the 20 by 28 Campaign

The 20 by 28 Capital Campaign is Greater Jackson Habitat's focused response to the affordability crisis in our community. The goal is to raise $6.5 million and build 20 new homes in Jackson by the year 2028. Each home will give a Jackson family access to the kind of stable, affordable homeownership that the 1968 law first promised but never finished delivering. This is a measurable, time-bound commitment to closing a real gap with real homes.

To accelerate the pace of construction, Greater Jackson Habitat has partnered with a professional third-party builder. This approach allows us to scale production in a way that traditional build models cannot match, while preserving the core Habitat mission of creating affordable pathways to homeownership for families who would otherwise be locked out of the market.

We are already underway. Thanks to the generosity of a growing community of supporters, Greater Jackson Habitat has raised approximately $1.4 million toward our $6.5 million goal. That early momentum represents the conviction of donors, businesses, and neighbors who believe Jackson families deserve the same chance at homeownership that others have long enjoyed. It also represents the distance still ahead. Reaching $6.5 million will take more of our community joining this effort, and every contribution, at every scale, moves us forward.

The Work Continues

Fifty-eight years ago, in the week between a funeral and a signing ceremony, the United States made a promise. The law said that every family would have a fair chance at a home. The generations that followed have spent decades trying to make that promise real. Some progress has been won. A great deal of work remains.

Greater Jackson Habitat is doing that work here, in Jackson, one home at a time. Every dollar given to the 20 by 28 campaign moves us closer to 20 families with keys in hand and a foundation beneath their feet. If you have the means, please consider making a gift today. If a direct donation is not the right fit, there are other meaningful ways to stand with this work.

You can shop at our ReStore or donate items from your own home, knowing that every transaction helps fund new construction. You can follow Greater Jackson Habitat on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and share our posts with your network so that more Jackson residents understand what is at stake and what is possible.

The law was passed in 1968. The promise is still ours to keep. Join us.