Lora Engdahl, Poverty & Race Research Action Council, October 2009, available here

“Housing mobility emerged decades ago as a legal and policy response to the recognition that the nation’s deeply segregated housing markets deprive low-income African American families of the same level of opportunity available to whites.  Beginning in the 1960s, public housing desegregation lawsuits filed on behalf of public housing residents sought to end the historical confinement of African Americans to high-poverty central city neighborhoods and public housing projects.  The Baltimore Housing Mobility Program originated as a partial settlement of Thompson v. HUD, a public housing desegregation case filed in 1995.  The program was fully launched in 2003.”