Lorraine Hansberry was a famous African-American writer of the Harlem Renaissance who exploited the racial tension between African-Americans and whites in the real estate market. The Younger family lives in a government apartment before the Civil Rights Act. Semuels explains in "Public Housing Can Work" that housing desegregation would allow the government to build housing without racial discrimination: "The Civil Rights Act of 1964 accelerated the exodus, as public housing was integrated." . The government did not care about housing for African Americans until it was racially integrated. “In the early 1950s, public housing agencies in major cities like Chicago, New York, and Baltimore were building high-rise buildings that would soon become emblematic of all the problems associated with public housing.