Legal scholars writing and thinking about housing, and how struggles related to race and class, can benefit from engaging with Hixenbaugh’s account of the friction caused by movement to areas of opportunity in search of affordable home ownership, and Barber’s political vision of inclusive coalitions advocating for affordable housing. In this polarized moment as a new administration reshapes the federal government, the implications for affordable housing policy as it impacts family wealth creation, household formation, and other basic functions is highly contested. To understand the ongoing shift in federal housing policy is to appreciate the politicization of home ownership.
Twentieth century government programs supported both people in need, as well as particular places in need of capital and population. Depression-era housing policies, for instance, led to legislation that paved the way for the construction of affordable public housing. Suburban developments made home ownership affordable for white families. Federal housing policy used de jure segregation to further affordable housing policy goals benefitting white families and largely excluding African American families.
Late twentieth century neoliberal interventions shifted to place-based strategies designed to both direct capital to poor places, and reduce capital gains taxes for wealthy taxpayers. Programs such as Moving to Opportunity allowed families to relocate from high-poverty areas to lower-poverty ones. Scholars have used evidence from programs where families moved to higher opportunity areas to show how the opportunity afforded in particular neighborhoods can have causal effects on future outcomes for individuals.
Elsewhere, some have argued that promise programs designed to pay the college tuition of high school graduates have positive impacts on neighborhood desirability. Indeed, many states and towns offer free college assistance to high school graduates. Finding a balance between affordable home costs, quality public education, and an attractive standard of living drives migration for families in the United States. Many families have moved from more expensive cities to less expensive ones, including in the Mountain West, Southwest, and Southeast, over the past few years, in efforts for families to improve quality of life.
However, population migration within the nation can lead to conflict. Different cultures and values, and different political beliefs, not only lead to misunderstandings at best, but expressions of racially-motivated hatred at worst. That is where Mike Hixenbaugh’s recent book They Came for the Schools picks up. Hixenbaugh tells the story of a multiracial family moving from California to a north Dallas suburb in Texas. To drastically over-summarize, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts follow instances of racial epithets posted by public high school students’ on social media accounts. Next, the political backlash to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives leads to a takeover of the Board of Education controlled by members backed by special interests funded by out-of-towns donors.
Hixenbaugh’s story is a microcosm of events happening across the nation in the past few years in the context of conservative backlash to public school diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. It is also a story about families struggling to secure affordable housing in areas of high opportunity. And, the lessons of Southlake implicate current efforts to drive the construction of new housing affordable to families at different income levels. Like most stories about efforts to limit new affordable housing in the suburbs, the conversation about housing can be consumed by ongoing political fights related to other hot button issues such as public education. In Southlake, the contentiousness of public education reform is at least correlated with a lack of new housing construction.
This review begins by discussing the book, its framing, and events that occurred. Using this account as data, this review then proceeds to theorize about the implications for the families in the book, and others in similar situations — those of modest means, and those families solidly in the middle class — seeking to move to areas of high opportunity and affordable housing. It uses housing as a through line to understand how local, regional, and national housing markets impact not just where people choose to live, but also what their lives are like.
In the context of housing, this review raises more questions than answers. Specifically, it questions not only family relocation choices, but also government policy designed to encourage families to move to areas of high opportunity if the costs to students and families is so dear. How can families continue to grow wealth in a segregated, highly charged political environment where race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and sexual identity are highly contested even at the elementary school level?
At the same time, housing affordability is a relative concept. Existing single-family housing in a high opportunity area may be affordable to a family relocating from an even more high cost housing area, such as high cost urban and suburban parts of California. Housing in the same high opportunity area may still be unaffordable to families with lower-incomes in need of less expensive multi-family housing options.
Next, the review considers one potential answer to the housing problems raised by Hixenbaugh in the work of Revered Dr. William Barber II’s White Poverty. Rev. Barber’s thesis is that to impact African American poverty one must first engage with and understand white poverty. Rev. Barber uses examples of a rainbow coalition organizing strategy to chart a path forward that is perhaps practical and achievable. The ability of such a coalition to improve housing law and policy outcomes may seem impossible at this moment. However, it is a hopeful vision that can shape government policy regarding not just housing, but also public education, and community development.
The review concludes by considering how the events in They Came for the Schools and White Poverty in the context of housing may continue to play out over the balance of the second Trump administration. Trump’s first Secretary for Housing and Urban Development argued for approaching poverty as a “state of mind,” a controversial approach panned by poverty advocates. Trump’s nominee to run HUD in his second administration is Scott Turner, a former White House insider charged with coordinating the roll out of the Opportunity Zone incentive adopted in 2017. Reaching policymakers in this White House may require calling out the harms caused to poor white families of cuts to crucial housing supports such as Section 8. While it is unlikely that this president would pivot from his core anti-DEI agenda, pointing out where cuts are harming voters core to the midterm elections next year might lead to the preservation of certain core federal housing funding without a reframing of the issue to include poor white families.
I. Challenges Facing Families in Relocating to Areas of High Opportunity: The Case of Southlake, Texas
The phenomenon of families moving to particular areas, and choosing to send their children to public or private school is not new. Professor Erika Wilson has noted recently how charter school enclaves permit white parental school choice in ways that have constitutional and normative implications. The core issue in family formation centers on housing. It is through this lens that the story begins.
The narrative approach Hixenbaugh employs in They Came for The Schools meticulously portrays the nationalization of a local issue — the misinterpretation of Critical Race Theory as applied to elementary and secondary education. This Part summarizes Hixenbaugh’s account of events in Southlake Texas. It focuses on responses by school board members, residents, and students to racist incidents spread over social media by public school students and others. Next, it relates the intense backlash to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and the intense politicization of school board policies and elections.
A. Race and Identity in the Dallas Suburbs
Hixenbaugh begins with the story of a family relocating from Los Angeles California to the greater Dallas area. The Rolle family, with parents Amy and Reggie, is motivated by affordable-to-them home prices, and high-performing schools for their children. The context of the housing market for this family is that of the expensive Los Angeles housing market. The affordability of homes in Southlake is relative not to what a lower income family in Dallas might find affordable, but what a family in Los Angeles might find affordable.
Hixenbaugh frames Southlake in his introductory text as having similar experiences with respect to development as other suburbs nationally. “Opposition to affordable housing became a litmus test for anyone seeking elected office in Southlake,” Hixenbaugh writes. In this way, Southlake is not unlike Mount Laurel, New Jersey, or one of the many other suburban areas that maintained large lot sizes, and excluded the construction of more affordable apartment complexes for families of more modest means. Almost one hundred years since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld zoning restrictions on land use, local governments continue to engage in zoning practices that exclude apartment development and other forms of multifamily housing.
Upon arrival, the biracial Rolle family, confronts racist incidents by public school students spread on social media at a homecoming afterparty. The community organizes to respond to the incidents with a diversity council which begins meeting to discuss training and other interventions. The existing school board members along with parents and others in the community develop a response plan that addresses issues underlying the race- and identity-based incidents. In this way, Southlake, Texas, is a microcosm of the nation confronting issues of race and difference. The noteworthy issue is that the community in which the events occurred is politically conservative.
B. Politically Charged Backlash to Race and Identity-Based Education Efforts
As news of the cultural competence programs spread, a backlash emerges. The backlash leads to conservative candidates being elected to the school board. In this way, Southlake, Texas, is also a microcosm of the country — where political leaders such as the president, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and others on the right lead efforts to stop diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
As the author initially wrote this review, in January, 2025, a number of observers have noted the decline of wokeness. For corporate America, the decline has been significant. Revising this review in June 2025, the author notes that the executive orders of the Trump administration have essentially removed DEI programs in the federal government, including in those industries which receive federal funding. In the context of They Came for the Schools, such efforts were increasing around the time of Hixenbaugh’s reporting. And the backlash to such efforts was about to increase, which is a main theme underlying the book.
Considering the impact of public-school policies on families, and choice concerning where families live and grow, is important to the extent government policy supports families moving to areas of opportunity. The next section considers the impact of these local political decisions on individual families. Specifically, it considers how the next several years may look with respect to housing construction, the affordability crisis, and community economic development.
II. What the Politics of Race and Identity Mean for Families Moving to Opportunity
The narrative account in They Came for the Schools significantly undermines the notion that families pursuing opportunity — even middle-class families — may simply relocate to high performing school districts in a vacuum. For the families involved in the story, the narrative Hixenbaugh provides makes it clear that this is not the case. Families select areas to live in based on a variety of factors, including employment, home values, gun control laws, and political climate, which impacts race, identity, gender, and class. This section explores how changes in where people live, including the politics of places, impacts families seeking high opportunity, affordable communities.
A. 2024 Election, Second Trump Administration
The 2024 presidential election has led many to note that a majority of voters rejected diversity, equity, and inclusion. It has borne out that the incoming administration has quashed DEI efforts within the federal government, and industries doing business with the federal government. Efforts to unwind affirmative action programs in government are not new. The U.S. Supreme Court, for instance, in 2023 found that colleges and universities found that race-based affirmative action policies violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This follows decades long litigation concerning racial preferences in government contracting.
B. Corporate America Turning Away from DEI
Journalistic accounts of companies moving away from DEI programs have continued throughout recent years, ramping up at the end of 2024. Even before the presidential election of 2024, both businesses and institutions of higher education started retreating from DEI initiatives following the Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions. Despite shifts in business, and higher education, many families continue to seek communities that are welcoming to diverse groups. Such families are likely to consider other factors beyond support for DEI programs.
C. Community Economic Development and the Next Several Years
Community economic development is an approach that places focus on resident involvement when considering how best to build housing, jobs, education, healthcare, and other essential infrastructure. Two markers of development are likely characteristic of the current administration — and they are in conflict. The first is a top-down approach. The second is dispersed power to states and localities.
The conflict between top-down policies and dispersed decision-making will continue to plague the second Trump administration in the area of housing construction in general and community economic development in particular. The president is likely to want to continue to control policies and how development occurs. At the same time, supporters in the states and localities will want to shape how projects occur and how funds are spent. As this review goes to print, we are still seeing the results of Congressional action in the context of setting budget priorities. It appears that certain tax programs, including the Opportunity Zone incentive, will continue, though little spending is likely to lead to gains in new home supply.
III. Rainbow Coalition as a Political Solution to Crisis of Race and Identity in High Opportunity Areas
Addressing the housing affordability crisis in the context of the events that occurred in Southlake, Texas, is not simple. Individuals and families preferring to live in an area with a conservative political approach will remain in or move to homes in areas that exercise their preferred type of education policy. At the same time, families seeking a different approach to education policy will migrate to homes and communities that match their values.
For those interested in altering the status quo, Reverend Doctor William Barber II’s White Poverty offers a possible vision to approach housing through the context of how housing affordability impacts poor white families. Barber’s central notion is that before addressing poverty among minority racial groups, including African Americans, one must first confront the majority of those living in poverty, who are white. To over-summarize, Barber tells stories of organizing in rural areas among white communities to advance political policies that are progressive. Barber mentions opportunity directly when he writes that “[s]ome version of this story pity the poor and imagine that compassion toward them would look like mental health treatment, job readiness programs, character development initiatives, or targeted on-ramps to ‘opportunity.'” He talks about the myth that the poor are merely a small minority of people, and explicitly or implicitly Black — while poor white neighbors are painted with a mythical brush to see themselves as “working class.” Perhaps framing housing affordability as a white and Black issue can lead to policies that further affordable home construction across urban, suburban, and rural geographies.
A. Repairers of the Breach Campaign
Barber points out that the largest block of voters — 140 million — are the poor. When the poor show up, Barber notes, they win. Of the 2020 presidential election, Barber writes that “[s]ix million new voters who earn less than $50,000 chose Biden over Trump by as many as 15 percentage points.” Barber adopts a hopeful tone in discussing the new Biden administration taking office in 2021, and the Repairers of the Breach Coalition organized for a federal $15 per hour minimum wage, including direct actions among voters from West Virginia and Arizona. In Chapter 9 of White Poverty, Barber specifically mentions anti-woke campaigns funded by silent donors, and how such cultural wars do not address the underlying issues impacting poor people.
Barber’s assessment of the electorate appears consistent with how voters acted in the 2024 election. Most voters without a college education voted for president elect Trump. Voters voted for Trump because, some say, he spoke to their concerns in a way that the Democratic candidate did not.
B. A Poor People’s Campaign in Southlake, Texas?
Reading White Poverty soon after reading They Came for the Schools, a question emerged — is the sort of political organizing among the poor that Barber describes and champions a possible solution to the conflicts related to housing and opportunity emerging in Southlake and elsewhere?
Barber would likely argue that campaigns such as those in Southlake merely “stoke old myths, claiming that anti-racism efforts are an attack on white people.” Such efforts only shift focus and attention from the fact that poor white people are not earning living wages, in addition to Black and brown people. Barber tells the story of organizers from the Repairers of the Breach campaign adopting strategies to persuade West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, to change the Senate’s rule to remove the filibuster to permit voting rights and living wage legislation.
Barber’s narrative confronts one central challenge — community organizing in high-income areas can be difficult. Middle income families in towns such as Southlake may not connect their access to shared resources with the access to resources for those who are poor. At the state level, for example, public universities charging reduced tuition for in-state students favor “students from affluent families.”
Middle-class, and upper middle-class families, often have the financial ability to opt out of public programs. Higher income families, for instance, can send their children to private or parochial schools instead of public schools. Voters can vote down a library bond because the current library infrastructure is adequate. Higher income families can afford more expensive housing. As Chuck Edson, former attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at HUD, points out that, with the exception of the years following World War II, there has never been broad concern for housing affordability since the majority of people in the United States are well-housed.
The key, perhaps, as Barber advocates, is organizing the white poor to vote for their own economic interests. If the poor show up to vote, and hold elected officials accountable, policies addressing poverty must be adopted. This could include increasing fair-share type approaches to housing affordability in states such as Texas. If Southlake were required by the state to build housing more affordable to lower-income families, the overall dynamics might shift. Disrupting homogeneity among populations can have benefits to majority and minority communities alike. The myths associated with poverty and Black communities only obscure the reality that most poor in the United States are white.
IV. Conclusion
I have attempted in this review to explore the challenges presented by housing law and policy approaches that encourage families to move from areas of high poverty to areas of high opportunity. Using They Came for the Schools as one example of the difficulty when families relocate, I have pointed out some of the cultural challenges that may arise when government policies encouraging relocation of families occur. It is important to note that the families discussed in Hixenbaugh’s narrative are not low income, generally. The families discussed must earn enough income to move to the suburb of Southlake, where home values tend to be more expensive. That notwithstanding, my critique of government policies promoting relocation in this review still ought to be valid: encouraging families to move to areas of high opportunity does not guarantee that the values those same families bring with them align with the communities where opportunity is hoarded.
After placing this discussion in the context of the direction of government housing policy under the incoming administration, I have then raised as a possible intervention the community organizing approach described by Barber in White Poverty. Barber’s hopeful alternative shifts to those living in poverty, and calls out cultural myths — namely that the majority of poor people in the United States are Black and brown. By naming poverty as a white problem, Barber’s account is important to addressing the issues raised in They Came for the Schools.
One year before the 250th anniversary of the United States, our nation continues to express a collective frustration about the division of public resources among constituencies. An organized constituency supporting the incoming administration are frustrated about the potential for public resources supporting undocumented immigrants from other nations. This constituency led to the president retaking the White House this year. The work of both Hixenbuagh and Barber can be read in a light that debunks the myth that government resources are going to those undeserving of them.
Others constituencies, including homeowners, express collective frustration at the use or misuse of other public resources. Frustration among homeowners manifests in exclusionary tendencies. Exclusion can take the form of limiting new housing units, to adding accessory dwelling units, and more.
A hopeful note provided by these two works is perhaps the following: getting over divisions among constituent groups requires a broad-based effort that ignites those with the least to seek policies to support them. Public goods like education, employment, and housing are key aspects of that equation. How government can provide opportunities for the poor takes not only creative thinking, but also organizing, and collection action.
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