The U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of voluntary school desegregation programs in Seattle and Louisville 10 days ago leads us to confront anew the high levels of segregation in our neighborhoods -- both across the nation and here in Pittsburgh.

Peter Harvey is executive director of the Fair Housing Partnership of Greater Pittsburgh, Inc. (peter@ pittsburghfairhousing.org).

Segregated neighborhoods produce segregated schools. If school efforts to support student diversity are now in jeopardy, our region must redouble its efforts to end housing discrimination and promote integrated communities.

Almost 40 years after passage of the landmark Fair Housing Act, Pittsburgh remains highly segregated. A calculation known as the dissimilarity index measures the distribution of racial groups across census tracts. Values range from 0 to 100, and a high DI indicates that the two groups tend to live in different tracts. According to the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research at the University at Albany, the white/black DI for the Pittsburgh metro area in 2000 was 66.5, which ranks Pittsburgh as the 20th most segregated of the nation's 50 largest metro areas.

The Pittsburgh finding means that 66.5 percent of the city's population, white or black, would have to move for the races to be equally distributed among all census tracts. This figure represents a slightly less segregated metro area than 20 years earlier, but we must acknowledge that shockingly little progress has been made toward reaching the stated goal of the Fair Housing Act: to create "truly integrated and balanced living patterns."

Many think that housing segregation simply reflects economic disparities or the free choices of people deciding where to live. In fact, myriad discriminatory public policies and private practices have erected and maintained the walls of segregation: federal mortgage programs that excluded blacks; racial steering by real estate agents; intentional discrimination in the location of and assignment to public housing; limits on the number of apartments or affordable housing units provided in suburbs; redlining by insurance agencies and banks; racially skewed appraisal practices, and countless acts of individual discrimination by housing providers.

Unfortunately some of these practices continue to warp our communities. Recently the National Fair Housing Alliance conducted tests of real estate firms, which showed patterns of discrimination that included denying services to African Americans and Latinos, offering significant financial incentives to whites but not to African Americans or Latinos, and racial and ethnic steering. In almost 20 percent of the cases, African-American and Latino testers were refused appointments or offered very limited service. White testers saw 1,144 homes. African-American and Latino testers saw a total of 732. When testers were given an opportunity to visit homes, the tests revealed a rate of steering of 87 percent. Patterns of steering were consistent. Whites were shown homes in primarily white neighborhoods; African Americans were shown homes in primarily black neighborhoods and Latinos were shown homes in primarily Latino neighborhoods.

One of the housing alliance's findings is particularly pertinent in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling. In cases where white testers said that they had children, most agents stated that schools were important. The agents then selected homes based on schools, which always were overwhelmingly white. No schools recommended for the white testers were integrated or predominantly African American or Latino.

On the other hand, schools were rarely mentioned to African-American and Latino testers. In several cases, the schools that white testers were told to avoid were the very schools serving the homes selected for their counterpart African-American or Latino testers. In Westchester County, N.Y., white testers were told to avoid Tarrytown schools. Agents told whites that the schools were "bad;" Latino testers were told the schools were "good."

While the Supreme Court ruling makes voluntary school desegregation efforts more challenging, much can be done to integrate our housing markets and, therefore, to assure healthier, more diverse classrooms.

We must acknowledge the persistence of discrimination. We must report and eliminate fair-housing violations. Congress should increase funding for fair-housing enforcement activities. More than 3 million instances of housing discrimination occur every year, but the Department of Housing and Urban Development investigates less than 1 percent of them.

Communities should approve zoning ordinances that provide incentives for affordable housing. Housing developers and managers should do more to fulfill federal requirements that they affirmatively market units to the "least likely to apply for the housing because of its location." Social service agencies should promote "mobility counseling," encouraging clients to explore nontraditional moves. Concerted efforts should be made to increase the number of African Americans in the real estate sales and rental industry.

Everyone wins when we have diverse, open neighborhoods. But we won't get there standing still.