The USHA manual warned that it was undesirable to have projects for white families “in areas now occupied for Negroes” and added: “The aim of the [local housing] authority should be the preservation rather than the disruption of community social structures which best fit the desires of the groups concerned.

In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, an African American CCC unit was assigned to work alongside a white one to restore the historic battleground. The white unit was housed near the town itself, but the town's residents objected to having the African American crew living in the vicinity, so the CCC set up a camp for the African crew some twenty miles away.

Rosewood Courts, Austin's Eastside project for African Americans, was built on land obtained by condemning Emancipation Park, the site of an annual festival to commemorate the abolition of slavery. The park had been privately owned by a neighborhood association the Travis County Emancipation Organization, and residents protested the condemnation of this community institution in which they took great pride. But their objects had no effect, despite the availability of other vacant land.