Tagged: Housing

Audit finds race discrimination in housing based on voice identification

November 13, 2011 | Mona Tawatao | Tags: , ,

A telephone audit conducted earlier this year in Solano County, California of 40 rental housing properties in which nearly 5,500 people reside, found at least some negative differential treatment toward African-Americans in 65% of the cases and no case in which African-Americans were treated more favorably.   The most prevalent  type of differential treatment uncovered (found in nearly 50 percent of the cases) was African-American testers receiving inferior, less flexible terms and narrower options, in terms of amount of rent, security deposit, minimum income requirements and move-in specials.  The audit also found that a significant number of the African-American testers (as opposed to white testers) received less information about the availability of units.

Fair Housing of Marin with the help of the Solano County office of Legal Services of Northern California, conducted the audit following similar audits with similar results in neighboring jurisdictions, including Sonoma County and the city of Richmond.   Undergirding the audit methodology and approach are studies by Stanford University linguistics professor John Baugh which found the existence of race and ethnicity discrimination based solely on speech patterns.  As the audit states, Baugh’s March 1999 article (co-authored) Perceptual and Phonic Experiments on American English Dialect Identification showed that people are able to identify correctly the race of a speaker 80 percent of the time by the mere utterance of the word “hello”.

The audit recommendations include disseminating the report to Solano County official for remedial action and to other entities and the public as an educational tool and monitoring the sites where discrimination was detected for potential further action.  Click here to read the full audit report.

Credit Segregation

February 18, 2011 | Maya Roy | Tags:

This month, National People’s Action published a report, “Credit Segregation: Concentrations of Predatory Lenders in Communities of Color.”  This report studied the availability of credit in the following cities: Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Peoria, and St. Louis.  Specifically, National People’s Action studied the availability of two forms of credit in those cities: (1) home mortgage refinance loans; and (2) pay day or cash advance loans.  The report confirms low-income communities of color have suffered the most, in terms of access to available credit, following the financial crisis.  Of interest to REP readers, the report presents the following major findings:

  • African-American homeowners suffered an 86% decrease in overall home refinance loans between 2006 and 2009, while Latino homeowners have experienced a 76% overall decline in home loans to refinance mortgage debt since 2006.
  • The major four banks issued 38% more prime-rate refinance loans to white homeowners from 2006 to 2009, while they extended 63% fewer prime-rate refinance mortgages to African-American homeowners and 59% fewer to Latino homeowners compared to 2006.
  • In predominately white areas, refinance loan volume in 2009 was at a level of 12% of total area homes while in the areas with the highest concentration of black and Latinos, only an estimated 1.6% of the area’s homeowners received a refinance loan.
  • The nation’s leading banks exemplified the above trend of racial disparities in prime-rate home credit, refinancing homeowners in predominately white areas at 6.5 times the rate as they did for homeowners in communities of color.
  • In communities of color payday lenders are three times as concentrated as compared to other neighborhoods. Neighborhoods with a high population of African-Americans or Latinos have on average two payday lending locations within one mile, six payday lenders within two miles, and 12 payday lenders with 3 miles. Predominately white areas, in comparison, had an average of two payday lenders within two miles, and about four payday lenders within three miles.

It is interesting to read this report in light of the paths our residential patterns have taken throughout our recent history in the United States.  We have seen how redlining and race-based lending decisions forced families of color into segregated residential patterns.  Then, low-income communities of color were targeted by lenders for sub-prime, predatory loans.  We now see in this report how those communities have restricted, at best, access to refinance options, thereby ensuring high rates of foreclosure in those communities.   Without equal access to credit and access only to high-cost pay day loans, communities of color will continue to be victimized by institutionalized racism in lending institutions.

HUD Proposes Rule Prohibiting Gender and Sexual Orientation Discrimination

January 20, 2011 | Maya Roy | Tags: ,

Today, HUD announced a proposed rule prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.  View the proposed rule here.

Of interest to REP blog readers, HUD is seeking public comment on a number of proposed areas, including:

  • Prohibiting lenders from using sexual orientation or gender identity as a basis to determine a borrower’s eligibility for FHA-insured mortgage financing.  FHA’s current regulations provide that a mortgage lender’s determination of the adequacy of a borrower’s income “shall be made in a uniform manner without regard to” specified prohibited grounds.  The proposed rule would add actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity to the prohibited grounds to ensure FHA-approved lenders do not deny or otherwise alter the terms of mortgages on the basis of irrelevant criteria.
  • Clarifying that all otherwise eligible families, regardless of marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity, have the opportunity to participate in HUD programs.  In the majority of HUD’s rental and homeownership programs the term “family” already has a broad scope, and includes a single person and families with or without children.  HUD’s proposed rule clarifies that families, otherwise eligible for HUD programs, may not be excluded because one or more members of the family may be an LGBT individual, have an LGBT relationship, or be perceived to be such an individual or in such relationship.
  • Prohibiting owners and operators of HUD-assisted housing, or housing whose financing is insured by HUD, from inquiring about the sexual orientation or gender identity of an applicant for, or occupant of, the dwelling, whether renter- or owner-occupied.  HUD is proposing to institute this policy in its rental assistance and homeownership programs, which include the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance programs, community development programs, and public and assisted housing programs.

Mixed income housing boosts low-income students’ performance

November 5, 2010 | Mona Tawatao | Tags: , ,

Housing policy is school policy.    This is the premise of an eponymous study recently published by the Century Foundation.  The study analyzed school data in Montgomery County, Maryland, one of the most affluent and high-achieving, in terms of elementary academic performance, in the nation.  Montgomery County also operates the oldest and one of the largest inclusionary zoning programs in the country.  According to the study, the zoning program has enabled development of over 12,000 moderately priced homes to be built around the County and nearly 1,000 public housing units for extremely low-income families to be placed in nearly all of the County’s elementary school areas.  The study tracked the academic performance of 858 elementary students residing in public housing around the County from 2001 and 2007.  The study found that the students that attended the lower-poverty schools performed eight percentage points higher on standardized math tests than students attending higher-poverty schools, despite the fact that the latter schools received an infusion of resources through the County’s aggressive efforts to improve performance in high poverty schools.  The study concludes that “highly disadvantaged children with access to the lowest-poverty neighborhoods and schools began to catch up to their non-performing peers, while similar disadvantaged children without such access did not.”   The study makes a compelling case for promoting and retaining zoning policies that promote mixed income developments and communities.   For more on the study, see the Washington Post article on this subject.

A Matter of Life and Death: Asylum Seekers’ Lack of Access to Competent Legal Representation

September 30, 2010 | Maya Roy | Tags: , , , ,

By Yunie Hong, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, and Timothy Griffiths, Survivors of Torture, International

Ms. C is from Eritrea. She was forcibly conscripted into mandatory military service right after completing high school. In the military, Ms. C’s superiors routinely abused and raped her. After enduring these horrific conditions for over a year, Ms. C saw a chance to escape and took it. She made the extremely treacherous journey across the Eritrean border into Sudan. After many months of travel, and with the help of some good Samaritans along the way, she eventually made it to the U.S.. At the airport, she informed an Immigration officer that she was afraid to return home and wished to apply for asylum. To her surprise, immigration officials whisked her away to a remote immigration detention facility, placed her in removal proceedings, and told Ms. C that she would have to fight her case in front of a judge. When she explained that she didn’t have any money to pay for an attorney, immigration officers gave Ms. C a list of places to call for free legal representation. With the precious few minutes that she was allowed to use the phone, Ms. C called the nearest Legal Services Corporation (LSC) funded Legal Aid office. The Legal Aid agency had to inform Ms. C that they could not help her due to LSC funding restrictions and her lack of immigration status.

Unfortunately, Ms. C’s story is a common one. Individuals who have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home countries due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, may be eligible for asylum in the US.[1] However, immigration law is very complex, and competent legal representation is key in winning an asylum claim. Studies have shown that asylum-seekers with legal representation are successful 46% of the time, while those without an attorney lose all but 16% of the time, making access to counsel an extremely important factor in whether an asylum seeker receives protection or not.[2] Although immigrants have a right to counsel in deportation proceedings, in practice this “right” is most often illusory, since the government does not provide free counsel to those who cannot afford to pay for legal representation. Many asylum seekers must flee their homes with little more than the clothes on their backs. Any resources they have or scrape together en route they use to pay for the journey. As a result, upon arrival in the U.S., most asylum seekers are completely destitute. Just obtaining food and shelter is frequently a major challenge, never mind hiring a private attorney. Even if jobs were plentiful, asylum seekers cannot simply work to earn the money they need to pay for an attorney, because they cannot get employment authorization until after their cases have been filed and pending for at least 6 months–and that’s the best case scenario. Procedural hurdles frequently delay work authorization even longer. In many instances, asylum seekers are legally prevented from working until after their cases are actually won.

Continue reading…

Affirmatively furthering fair housing video and articles

May 21, 2010 | Mona Tawatao | Tags: ,

For readers who have not yet had the opportunity to hear Michael Allen, partner at civil rights firm Relman & Dane speak on the Westchester County fair housing case and affirmatively further fair housing, check out the YouTube video of his recent lecture on the subject at Emory University. Michael and his Westchester co-counsel Craig Gurian of the Anti-Discrimination Center also recently published two articles on the case and its impact on all local jurisdictions receiving federal housing funds: Making Real the Desegregating Promise of the Fair Housing Act in Clearinghouse Review (March-April 2010) and No Certification, No Money: The Revival of the Civil Rights Obligations in HUD Funding Programs, the Planning Commissioners Journal, Spring 2010 edition. Not familiar with the Westchester lawsuit and settlement agreement? Click on this earlier REP blog post for more information.

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