Living Apart

ProPublica's groundbreaking investigation into housing segregation, and the federal government's large-scale failure to uphold the laws meant to prevent it

More than forty years after President Johnson signed the landmark Fair Housing Act into law, residential segregation in America remains unresolved. Designed to help dismantle the nation's racially divided housing patterns, the act has gone largely ignored by every presidential administration—Democrat and Republican alike—since 1968.

In Living Apart, ProPublica investigates this failing, particularly how subsequent leaders, following President Nixon's lead, have declined to use the billions in grant dollars awarded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as leverage to fight segregation. Their reluctance to enforce a law passed by both houses of Congress and repeatedly upheld by the courts reflects a larger political reality. Again and again, attempts to create integrated neighborhoods have foundered