The predecessor to the present-day Department of Veterans Affairs, an agency in the executive branch of the federal government of the United States, which is responsible for providing social benefits to veterans of the United States military. After World War II, however, African American war veterans were essentially blocked from receiving many of these benefits. Most relevant to Rothstein’s work, the Veterans Administration was supposed to subsidize mortgages for veterans to buy houses, often with low or zero down payments. However, because it followed the Federal Housing Administration’s Underwriting Manual, the VA ended up denying mortgages to African American veterans and contributing to de jure residential segregation.
Veterans Administration (VA) Quotes in The Color of Law
The The Color of Law quotes below are all either spoken by Veterans Administration (VA) or refer to Veterans Administration (VA). For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 11
Quotes
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination, but it was not primarily discrimination (although this still contributed) that kept African Americans out of most white suburbs after the law was passed. It was primarily unaffordability. The right that was unconstitutionally denied to African Americans in the late 1940s cannot be restored by passing a Fair Housing law that tells their descendants they can now buy homes in the suburbs, if only they can afford it. The advantage that FHA and VA loans gave the white lower-middle class in the 1940s and ‘50s has become permanent.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Color of Law LitChart as a printable PDF.
Veterans Administration (VA) Term Timeline in The Color of Law
The timeline below shows where the term Veterans Administration (VA) appears in The Color of Law. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 4: “Own Your Own Home”
...called Lakeview instead. Although he was a veteran, Vince could not get favorable Veterans Administration (VA) loans and was forced into a perilous, uninsured mortgage instead. Rothstein emphasizes that Levittown, like...
(full context)
In Part IV of this chapter, Rothstein notes that VA loans were also made in collaboration with the FHA’s Underwriting Manual, which meant they were...
(full context)
Chapter 5: Private Agreements, Government Enforcement
...Levittown, and numerous other suburbs Rothstein has mentioned so far in his book, and the VA soon adopted the same policy.
(full context)
Chapter 8: Local Tactics
...of Frank Stevenson, who was unable to reduce his commute time because the “FHA- and VA-insured subdivisions” sprouting up near the Ford Motor plant where he worked were only open to...
(full context)
