Racial segregation in housing is a root cause of inequalities in health, safety, education, employment, wealth, and income that have long concerned grant makers in the United States.1 In recent years, the problem of racial segregation has won sustained attention from major media outlets, prominent social commentators, and community leaders across the nation. Journalists, social commentators, and even some elected officials lament segregation and acknowledge that the condition has been driven by government policy at the federal, state and local levels.2 This growing understanding may indeed exist within the philanthropic sector as well. However, grant making aimed at direct efforts to reduce and redress segregation remains an exception.
It is important for grant makers who fund in particular regions to have a sense of national trends related to segregation. Yet more informative for their purposes is the nature of segregation at the local, metro, and state levels where they fund.