Housing, Segregation & the Law Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts, key theorists, major legal cases, and historical developments in housing segregation and law from the lecture notes.

Residential Segregation

The informal and formal separation of one group from another, usually based on markers such as race, ethnicity, class, religion, disability, age, gender, or sexual orientation.

De Facto Segregation

Separation arising spontaneously from identity, culture, and social life rather than law; noted as the most common form of segregation.

De Jure Segregation

Separation that is explicitly required and enforced by law, such as legal mandates for racially separate accommodations.

Dissimilarity Index

A measure of residential segregation that calculates how evenly two groups are distributed across geographic areas.

Isolation Index

A segregation metric that measures the average contact a group member has with members of their own group within their neighborhood.

Classic Evolutionary Theorists on Law

The major theoretical frameworks on how law evolves alongside society, contrasting Henry Maine ('Status to Contract'), Émile Durkheim (mechanical to organic solidarity; repressive to restitutive law), and Max Weber (rationality and 'elective affinity').

Henry Maine

A legal theorist who argued that premodern law centers on family, clan, and inherited status, whereas modernity shifts toward the individual summarized as 'from Status to Contract.'

Mechanical Solidarity

Émile Durkheim's term for social cohesion in premodern societies held together by a strong collective conscience, relying predominantly on repressive law.

Organic Solidarity

Émile Durkheim's term for social cohesion in modern societies based on specialization, division of labor, and interdependence, relying predominantly on restitutive law.

Elective Affinity

Max Weber's concept describing how modern law (logical, predictable, autonomous) and modern capitalist society evolve together through mutual alignment.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

Federal legislation passed in response to xenophobia and fear of labor competition following the Gold Rush and transcontinental railroad that restricted immigration and barred Chinese residents from naturalization.

One-Shotters (OS)

In Marc Galanter's framework, legal actors who interact with courts infrequently or once, focusing primarily on immediate tangible gains rather than long-term legal precedents.

Repeat Players (RP)

In Marc Galanter's framework, legal actors who interact with legal institutions frequently, leveraging resources, experience, and strategic settlement choices to shape legal rules and precedents.

Regulatory Capture

A process through which regulated industries or interest groups exert political influence to control or shape the regulatory agencies governing them.

Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP)

A program created in 1987 that provides federal funding to private non-profit fair housing organizations for enforcement, testing, education, and capacity building.

Neolithic Revolution

The prehistoric transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to settled agriculture, creating food surpluses and permanent dwellings while introducing new health risks and social stratification.

Social Darwinism

A 19th-century ideology that applied natural selection principles to human society ('survival of the fittest'), used to justify economic inequality and the wealth of Gilded Age elites.

Progressive Movement

A social and political movement holding that industrialization and urbanization corrupt American ideals, seeking to cure urban poverty, slums, and disease through empiricism, science, and state regulation.

The Philadelphia Negro

An 1899 empirical study by W.E.B. Du Bois analyzing Philadelphia's 7th Ward, which attributed community difficulties to racial discrimination and systemic prejudice rather than Black character.

Chicago School / Urban Ecology

A sociological framework developed by Park, Burgess, and Frazier that models the city as an ecosystem governed by competition for land, natural areas, invasion, and succession.

Settlement Houses

Urban institutions established by educated middle-class reformers who lived in impoverished neighborhoods to offer services, education, and middle-class norms, beginning with Toynbee Hall in 1884.

City Beautiful Movement

An urban planning initiative advocating civic pride, green spaces, monuments, and grand boulevards to remedy urban congestion and filth, which also caused early large-scale resident displacement.

Homophily

The psychological and sociological tendency of individuals to seek out and bond with others who share similar social or demographic characteristics.

Blockbusting

An illegal real estate practice of inducing panic selling among white homeowners by suggesting minority families are moving in, buying properties at low prices, and reselling them at inflated prices to minority buyers.

Steering

The unlawful practice by real estate agents of guiding prospective homebuyers or renters toward or away from specific neighborhoods based on race or protected traits.

Restrictive Covenants

Provisions inserted into real estate deeds by developers that legally restricted property ownership or occupancy based on race, ethnicity, or religion.

Buchanan v. Warley (1917)

A Supreme Court ruling holding that municipal racial zoning ordinances violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

Spatial Assimilation

The process by which immigrant groups gradually move out of dense, central ethnic enclaves into higher-quality housing in broader communities as their socioeconomic standing improves.

Great Migration

The mass movement of approximately 6 million African Americans from the rural South to cities in the North and West between the 1910s and 1970s.

Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC)

A New Deal government entity that refinanced troubled mortgages, popularized the 30-year self-amortizing loan, and authored appraisal maps that assigned credit risk based on neighborhood racial composition.

Redlining

The systemic refusal of mortgage credit or insurance services to residents of specific neighborhoods based on their racial or ethnic makeup.

Contract Buying

A predatory real estate transaction where the seller retains the deed until the entire purchase price is paid, leaving the buyer vulnerable to eviction after a single missed payment without building equity.

Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)

A landmark Supreme Court decision ruling that state courts cannot enforce racially restrictive deed covenants, as judicial enforcement constitutes prohibited state action under the 14th Amendment.

Fair Housing Act of 1968 (Title VIII)

Federal legislation prohibiting housing discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, or sex, while directing federal agencies to affirmatively further fair housing.

Contact Hypothesis

Gordon Allport's 1954 psychological theory stating that under specific conditions, direct contact between different social groups reduces interpersonal prejudice and anxiety.

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH)

A statutory provision in Title VIII requiring HUD grantees to proactively take meaningful actions to eliminate segregation, overcome historic housing disparities, and foster inclusive communities.

Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH)

A comprehensive local planning framework introduced in HUD's 2015 rule requiring grantees to examine segregation patterns, concentrated poverty, and barriers to opportunity.