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The American Energy Consumer







demand and need are elsewhere, both among blacks and whites. A breakthrough for "fair housing" would help to revive the homebuilding industry and overcome the critical housing shortage of the 1970s. New housing starts have been dropping sharply while vacancy rates remain very low. A large volume of homebuilding for those who need it most would give black families greater choice than before for buying or renting homes in which they have control of their energy sources and uses.

Footnotes
Footnote :

d Only 7 percent of all white households, regardless of income, lived in substandard dwellings in 1970, compared to 23 percent of black households. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, The Social and Economic Status of the Black Population in the United States 1973, P-23, No. 48, Table 76, p. 108).

Recommendations

The situation described above leads to these recommendations. There are doubtless many others.

  • Federal housing legislation should require communities receiving federal aid to provide tangible regional goals for open housing for minorities and low and moderate income families. Achievement should be reviewed annually and strong sanctions applied where patterns of discrimination persist. According to Babcock and Bosselman: "Open housing is an essential constitutional principle..., but it will remain only a generality unless translated into tangible goals."

  • The enforcement provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and, in this case, the housing provisions of Title Eight especially, should be strengthened to prevent covert as well as overt housing discrimination. The law should include funds for investigations to trace and document discriminatory patterns and actions by housing vendors or builders, land developers, and community officials.

  • Home loan programs for low and moderate income households should be greatly expanded to encourage large scale building and rehabilitation of moderate and low priced housing with energy saving emphasis. The programs should include interest subsidies, low down payments, and long amortization periods for both new homes and rehabilitation of older homes.

  • States that still do not have statewide building codes should have federal assistance to develop them. Such codes should include performance standards and bypass numerous local codes that permit individual judgment, case by case. Individual judgments often discriminate against low to moderate income housing and against minorities.

An open, expanded housing and real estate market would help black people choose energy saving dwellings and allow them (and others) to add features to their homes to save additional energy.