PART II Introduction

The federal Fair Housing Act (FaHA), which was enacted in April 1968 but came into full effect only at the end of 1969,¹ constituted, in our view, a crucial turning point in the fight against housing discrimination. It represented the fourth major legal development in American fair housing. Buchanan v. Warley was the first, standing for the nation’s unwillingness to embrace government-sponsored apartheid, though it did little to stop the rise of ghettos over the ensuing de cade. Thirty years later came Shelley v. Kraemer, a bold Supreme Court decision that effectively broke the cartels that kept ghettos within circumscribed borders,