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OPENING THE SUBURBS AFTER OPEN COMMUNITIES: THE DAYTON PLAN AND THE FAIR-SHARE ERA OF FAIR HOUSING, 1968–1981

Rhodes, Eric Michael
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7465-0319
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1557933763625301

Abstract Details

2019, Master of Arts, Miami University, History.
The case of Dayton’s “Fair-Share” Metropolitan Housing Plan (1969–1981) presents a challenge to several traditional narratives of (sub)urban postwar U.S. history. Planners in Greater Dayton successfully integrated the region’s affordable housing stock while encouraging the Department of Housing and Urban Development (H.U.D.) to inaugurate a new era of fair housing in the wake of the failure of George Romney’s Open Communities program. The Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission did so with the help of willing business elites and federal administrators, and also by adopting conservative suburban rhetoric to serve the end of metropolitan open housing. This narrative examines why business elites and the suburbs came to support the construction affordable housing outside of the city, and why fair share fair housing was adopted by H.U.D. This thesis challenges the assertion that fair housing inherently conflicts with community development. It also traces the history of metropolitan-wide fair housing to its proper origins: Dayton, Ohio. The Dayton Plan was successful on its own terms, in that it increased the affordability of suburban housing. But racial integration did not follow economic integration, as planners had assumed. This was due in large part to retrenchment in fair housing on the part of the federal government and local business elites. More specifically, the economic hollowing-out of Dayton played a role in the failure of the plan to racially integrate the suburbs—a heretofore unexplored explanation for continued metropolitan segregation in small cities of the Midwest during the decades following the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
Steven Conn (Advisor)
Nishani Frazier (Committee Member)
Damon Scott (Committee Member)
161 p.
American History; History
George Romney; Open Communities; Operation Breakthrough; Dayton Plan; Segregation; Desegregation; MVRPC; Fair Housing Act; Fair Housing; Community Development; Deindustrialization; Growth Liberalism; Colorblind Politics; Suburbanization; Urban Crisis

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Rhodes, E. M. (2019). OPENING THE SUBURBS AFTER OPEN COMMUNITIES: THE DAYTON PLAN AND THE FAIR-SHARE ERA OF FAIR HOUSING, 1968–1981 [Master's thesis, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1557933763625301

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Rhodes, Eric. OPENING THE SUBURBS AFTER OPEN COMMUNITIES: THE DAYTON PLAN AND THE FAIR-SHARE ERA OF FAIR HOUSING, 1968–1981. 2019. Miami University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1557933763625301.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Rhodes, Eric. "OPENING THE SUBURBS AFTER OPEN COMMUNITIES: THE DAYTON PLAN AND THE FAIR-SHARE ERA OF FAIR HOUSING, 1968–1981." Master's thesis, Miami University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1557933763625301

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

miami1557933763625301
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© 2019, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Miami University and OhioLINK.