The Gautreaux Lawsuit

BPI’s housing work began in 1970 when attorney Alexander Polikoff joined BPI and brought with him the Gautreaux litigation. Filed by Polikoff in 1966, against the background of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Chicago open housing marches, Gautreaux et al. v. Chicago Housing Authority was the nation’s first major public housing desegregation lawsuit.

The Gautreaux lawsuit charged that by concentrating thousands of public housing units in isolated African-American neighborhoods and segregating tenant assignment by race, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had violated the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees all citizens equal protection of the laws. Decisions at the district, appellate, and, ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court levels affirmed the Gautreaux plaintiffs’ position, finding both CHA and HUD guilty of discriminatory housing practices.

The Gautreaux public housing desegregation lawsuit helped to change the face of public housing in Chicago, reform national public housing law and policy, and inspire some of the nation’s most innovative housing programs.

Gautreaux Litigation and Remedies

In 1969, a federal judge in Chicago issued a judgment order in the Gautreaux case prohibiting CHA from constructing any new public housing in areas of the city that were predominantly African-American unless CHA also built public housing elsewhere. The 1969 order also placed other restrictions on CHA–most notably that the housing authority could no longer build high-rise public housing for families and could not build dense concentrations of public housing in any neighborhood. The order also mandated implementation of a new, non-discriminatory tenant assignment plan.

Over five decades, Gautreaux remedies have come primarily in three remedy “streams.”  The first, flowing directly from the 1969 judgment order, was the “scattered site” public housing program, under which small scale public housing was dispersed in neighborhoods throughout the city, indistinguishable from surrounding buildings. The program had a long and difficult birth, and after nearly two decades of CHA intransigence the court eventually appointed an independent Receiver to carry out the program and do what CHA would or could not do. Beginning in 1987 the Receiver constructed or rehabilitated nearly 2,000 scattered-site public housing units in more than 57 Chicago communities. The Receivership was terminated by the court in 2010.

The second remedy stream was made possible when in 1976 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that HUD could be required to use the entire Chicago metropolitan area to remedy its past discriminatory conduct in Chicago.  This decision paved the way for a groundbreaking remedy – the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program – the nation’s first housing mobility program, devised by BPI and HUD attorneys.  Gautreaux plaintiff class families who chose to participate received special Section 8 rent certificates, enabling them to move to private apartments in neighborhoods where no more than 30 percent of residents were African-American. Participants received assistance from the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, a fair housing organization, to find homes in racially diverse neighborhoods in the city or the suburbs. Through the Gautreaux Program, which ended in 1998 under the terms of a consent decree with HUD, some 25,000 individuals (in over 7,500 families) were enabled to move voluntarily out of racially segregated, high poverty areas of Chicago to other Chicago neighborhoods and over 100 suburbs.  Hear Gloria Washington describe her experience in the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program, the nation’s first mobility program.

The experiences of moving families were examined by sociologists from Northwestern University headed by Professor James Rosenbaum.  The team’s reports showed astonishing improvements in life circumstances for many moving families, measured by employment, safety, children’s schooling, and the like.  The Gautreaux Program, the Rosenbaum studies, and the ensuing national publicity gave rise to a housing mobility movement that has generated considerable literature, six national mobility conferences, a number of smaller housing mobility programs, two major ones (continuing today in Dallas and Baltimore, both outgrowths of Gautreaux-type lawsuits), and a national ten-year demonstration, Moving to Opportunity (MTO), which involved over 4,000 families in five cities and that is still being intensively studied.  More about Housing Mobility.

The third remedy stream was the incorporation of family public housing units in mixed-income developments in “revitalizing” areas.  CHA began demolishing and redeveloping its high-rise family developments in the mid-1990s, through HUD’s HOPE VI program that provided funding for development of mixed-income housing in the context of community revitalization.  Because CHA’s revitalization plans would have violated the terms of the Gautreaux judgment order, special court authorization was needed to proceed.  After participating with other stakeholders in the preparation of detailed plans for community redevelopment, BPI’s Gautreaux lawyers joined CHA in requesting specific orders from the court for each redevelopment site to authorize the mixed income developments under site-specific conditions.  In approving the first such court order, which embraced the notion of economy integration that might in the future lead to racial integration, Judge Aspen called the mixed-income concept “twenty-first century Gautreaux.”  As of 2019, over 3,000 mixed-income public housing units had been developed, and hundreds more are in the planning stage.  For one resident’s experience of moving to a Mixed Income community, see Chance Mitchell’s video.

In late 2018, after many months of negotiations, BPI’s Gautreaux lawyers and CHA announced a settlement of the Gautreaux case.  The historic agreement builds on and modernizes the three remedy streams in the case, addresses the tenant assignment system, and includes substantial additional benefits for the plaintiff class.  If CHA performs its obligations under the Settlement Agreement, the case will end on July 31, 2024, after nearly 60 years.  Read more about the Settlement Agreement.