Note (Back) — CHAPTER 23

The result of these directives was spectacular. By June 1968 the ratio of off-base housing units carried on military referral listings—that is, apartment and trailer court units with open housing policies assured in writing by the owner or certified by the local commander—rose to some 83 percent of all available off-base housing for a gain of 247,000 units over the 1967 inventory.[23-96] In the suburban Washington area alone, the number of housing units opened to all servicemen rose more than 300 percent in 120 days—from 15,000 to more than 50,000 units.[23-97] By the end of 1968 some 1.17 million rental units, 93 percent of all those identified in the 1967 survey, were open to all servicemen.[23-98] Still, these impressive gains did not signal the end of housing discrimination for black servicemen. The various Defense Department sanctions excluded dwellings for four families or less, and the evidence suggests that the original and hastily compiled off-base census on which all the open housing gains were measured had ignored some particularly intransigent landlords in larger apartment houses and operators of trailer courts on the grounds that their continued refusal to negotiate with commanders had made the likelihood of integrating their properties extremely remote.