'Waiting For Gautreaux': Desegregating Public Housing

A lawyer from the landmark 1966 public housing desegregation case has written a book that helps inform a similar case in present-day Baltimore.

1 minute read

March 24, 2006, 8:00 AM PST

By David Gest

"The book, whose title is a play on words on Samuel Beckett's existential play Waiting for Godot, is an account of Chicago's Gautreaux housing case, the granddaddy of housing desegregation cases. Polikoff was the principal lawyer for public housing residents."

"Like Gautreaux, the Baltimore public housing case, Carmen Thompson et al v. United States Department of Housing and Urban Development et al, raises policy and legal questions. To wit: Is it better to spend more money housing fewer poor people but dispersing them more widely through more affluent communities where access to better schools and jobs give them a better chance for success? Or is it better to house more people in less expensive areas, thereby perpetuating the concentration of poverty and its attendant ills with which we are all too familiar?"

FULL STORY: Book on Chicago housing case a primer for Baltimore

Thursday, March 23, 2006 in The Baltimore Sun

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