Home is Where the Heart Is

The expectation of nearly every American is that they'll be able to achieve the American Dream. A nice house in a nice neighborhood with the white picket fence and a good, stable job. Yet, nearly all of this will never come true for individuals of color in the United States despite the strong push in the 60s for changes in policy to combat racism and to create equal opportunity for the minority. While racial discrimination is not as explicit as it once was, individuals of color still struggle to attain the same opportunities as their white counterpart. This is the most obvious in home deeds.

The language of most home deeds explicitly prohibit African Americans and other individuals of color to attain property in the "nicer" parts of town. While this may be unsettling to some, it was a common feature and practice to write into home property deeds that certain races could not own the property, thus limiting the housing available to minorities and forcing them to live in cramped, low-income neighborhoods. This was a less direct form of segregation as it basically told people who can and cannot live in certain neighborhoods, promoting white, affluent communities on one side of the city versus the other side being poor, mainly minority communities. The lack of available housing and inability to essentially "move up" in the communities created a sense of unrest. The lack of solutions provided by the city in regards to housing, also played a role in exacerbating the housing issue.

The city did very little to accommodate the rising housing problem that individuals of color faced and would make promises that they failed to follow through on. The projects that it attempted to implement decreased housing availability to minorities and did not address the fact that many of the people living in these communities were unable to become home owners due to the language of deeds. The frustration that many minorities experienced with the diminishing housing opportunities presented itself in the LA Riots. Minorities could not move out of the communities that they were currently living in, because they were deemed as unreliable home owners before they could even get the chance to become one and there was nothing done on the city's part to support the minority groups in finding better housing. It can be no wonder then that lack of housing contributed and came out as an issue of the LA riots.

-Mai Lani Moua