DISCRIMINATION
PLAN OF ACTION
Widely considered as one of the most significant legislative achievements of the Civil Rights era, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibits discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing. This means that landlords, real estate companies, municipalities, banks and other lending institutions, and homeowners insurance companies cannot make housing unavailable to individuals because of race or color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, or disability.
Serving as a sequel to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the bill was swiftly passed in the days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In 1988, Congress passed the Fair Housing Amendments Act, which expanded the law to prohibit housing discrimination based on disability or family status, such as single mothers or families with children. This legislation brought the enforcement of the Fair Housing Act even more definitively under the watch of HUD.
Unfortunately, race discrimination in housing continues to be a problem. Even today, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice reports this:
One of the central objectives of the Fair Housing Act, when Congress enacted it in 1968, was to prohibit race discrimination in sales and rentals of housing. Nevertheless, more than 30 years later, race discrimination in housing continues to be a problem.
The majority of the Justice Department’s pattern or practice cases involve claims of race discrimination. Sometimes, housing providers try to disguise their discrimination by giving false information about availability of housing, either saying that nothing is available or steering home-seekers to certain areas based on race. Individuals who receive such false information or misdirection may have no knowledge that they have been victims of discrimination.
The Department of Justice has brought many cases alleging this kind of discrimination based on race or color. In addition, the Department’s Fair Housing Testing Program seeks to uncover this kind of hidden discrimination and hold those responsible accountable.
Most of the mortgage lending cases brought by the Department under the Fair Housing Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act have alleged discrimination based on race or color. Some of the Department’s cases have also alleged that municipalities and other local government entities violated the Fair Housing Act when they denied permits or zoning changes for housing developments, or relegated them to predominantly minority neighborhoods, because the prospective residents were expected to be predominantly African Americans.
The first Trump administration tried to undermine the Fair Housing Act on multiple fronts to “save the suburbs.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that means…
Their first attempt was to suspend the Small Area Fair Market Rent rule for public housing agencies, a rule that gives low-income families the ability to pursue housing in safer suburban neighborhoods. Small Area FMRs (SAFMRs) reflect rents in specific ZIP Codes as opposed to averages across entire metropolitan regions and then increase the amount of a voucher for high-rent ZIP Codes. After being sued multiple times, the Trump administration’s effort was blocked by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Another swipe at the Fair Housing Act came in January 2018, when the Trump administration suspended implementation of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule.
In 2015, HUD adopted the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, a rule that required entities that receive federal grants and housing aid to submit plans detailing how they will end housing discrimination and segregation. Although the required this type of accountability from the beginning, proper legislation had never been passed to ensure compliance. At the time, HUD explained:
From its inception, the Fair Housing Act (and subsequent laws reaffirming its principles) not only prohibited discrimination in housing related activities and transactions but also imposed a duty to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH).
The AFFH rule sets out a framework for local governments, States, and public housing agencies (PHAs) to take meaningful actions to overcome historic patterns of segregation, promote fair housing choice, and foster inclusive communities that are free from discrimination. The rule is designed to help the programs’ participants better understand what they are required to do to meet their AFFH duties and enables them to assess fair housing issues in their communities and then to make informed policy decisions.
For purposes of the rule, affirmatively furthering fair housing “means taking meaningful actions <which means significant actions that are designed and can be reasonably expected to achieve a material positive change that affirmatively furthers fair housing by, for example, increasing fair housing choice or decreasing disparities in access to opportunity> in addition to combating discrimination, that overcome patterns of segregation and foster inclusive communities free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity based on protected characteristics.
Specifically, affirmatively furthering fair housing means taking meaningful actions that, taken together, address significant disparities in housing needs and in access to opportunity, replacing segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns, transforming racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity, and fostering and maintaining compliance with civil rights and fair housing laws. The duty to affirmatively further fair housing extends to all a program participant’s activities and programs relating to housing and urban development.
Even though President Biden promised during the 2020 campaign to reverse President Trump’s decision to suspend the Small Area Fair Market Rent rule, he didn’t. In our opinion, this is one of his biggest – and most devastating – failures.
None of these problems are going to get better unless and until we commit to actively solving them. Therefore, regarding the challenges we face in housing, we must put our foot on the pedal Now and Not Let Up!