Few Volunteer as Sleuths in Fight for Fair Housing
Amid a rising number of discrimination complaints, the San Fernando Valley Fair Housing Council recently launched an all-out recruitment drive, sending out an urgent plea for volunteer “checkers,” the council’s equivalent of undercover housing-discrimination investigators.
But 1,000 mailers, scores of personal phone calls and radio and newspaper announcements lured only three people to a training seminar--and two of them had been involved in other housing council activities for several years.
The lack of response represents a trend that officials say is hampering their work in fighting housing discrimination.
“Without the availability of a good pool of checkers--blacks, Hispanics, whites, Asians--housing discrimination investigations in our office and any other fair-housing council could not exist,” said Kelly Brydon of the Valley council.
Checkers, as they are called by most officials, are actors of a sort, playing one of the most vital roles in the investigation of housing discrimination allegations.
A checker assumes an identity similar to that of a home seeker who has complained that he or she has been discriminated against--be it a single mother, a black man or a lesbian. The checker visits the dwelling in question, collects information about such things as the application process, move-in fees and unit availability, and observes the attitude of the landlord, manager or real estate agent.
The checker files a report with housing officials, who then advise the complainant how the case can be resolved.
“The information a checker gathers probably constitutes the best and most compelling evidence you can have in a housing discrimination case,” said Carol Schiller, assistant deputy director of the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing for the Southern California Region.
Dismal Response
The dismal response to their appeal for checkers reflects a twofold problem, said officials at the housing council.
First, they said, acting as a checker is not pleasant volunteer work. It means taking spur-of-the-moment assignments and writing detailed and accurate reports. Often it is painful, especially for minority checkers who bear the brunt of discriminatory treatment.
“It’s especially hard for us to recruit minority checkers,” said Betty Witherspoon, executive director of the Valley housing council. “And, frankly, I can’t blame them. Minority persons have no need to put themselves in a situation to be rejected or turned away. Many of our minority checkers get tired. How many times can someone be beat over the head?”
Further contributing to the void of volunteers, officials said, is a public perception that fair housing is a dead issue, having been largely resolved in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
“I think more people aren’t volunteering to be checkers because they think that the Civil Rights Act and all the activism during the ‘60s solved everything,” said Paula, a 38-year-old Canoga Park woman who had been involved with the council as a board member but wanted to take a more active role and became a checker.
“My peers, people in my age group, don’t want to buck the system any more,” said Paula, who is black. “Getting involved in something like checking would be too much like a throwback. We want to go on.”
The woman and nine other checkers interviewed spoke on the condition that their full names not be used.
Others said that the interest of those inclined to activism is turned to other pressing issues such as battered wives, missing children or the famine in Africa.
“I just don’t think that fair housing is faddish anymore,” said Susan Bilow, a council staff member.
Council’s 25th Anniversary
The Valley council, which is marking its 25th anniversary this year, is one of four nonprofit groups in the county that investigates and mediates housing discrimination complaints.
Council members have been receiving more than 20 complaints a month, most by telephone, since the beginning of the year.
The number of complaints that led to investigation by checkers or intervention by fair-housing officials has nearly doubled, from 102 in 1981 to 195 in 1984.
But only 15 to 20 volunteers are available on short notice to go out on a check, when ideally a pool of 100 is needed, council officials said.
“In a month we get enough cases that we use up all our minority checkers,” said council director Witherspoon.
Staff Members Also Used
Although Witherspoon said that no complaints have been ignored because of the lack of checkers, the shortage has prompted officials to use staff members as checkers.
“This means that other important areas suffer,” Witherspoon said, adding that the staff becomes hard-pressed to evaluate investigations promptly, cannot spend time in conciliation efforts between renters and landlords and to develop public-awareness seminars.
Even more worrisome to council officials is the fact that the same volunteers are going out on checks several times a month, jeopardizing the anonymity of checkers. A checker suspected of working for the fair-housing council would be treated differently than other home seekers, officials said.
“If the landlord knows who I am and what organization I’m working for, it blows the whole thing,” one woman checker said.
Charges of rental discrimination represent the bulk of the 547 cases the council has handled since 1981, Witherspoon said.
This differs from the mid-1960s, when most cases involved discrimination against home buyers. It was during that period, several longtime housing council members recalled, that homes of new property owners who were black were subject to vandalism, forcing council members to stand guard at night.
The federal civil rights acts of 1964 and 1968 ban discrimination in housing for reasons of race, religion, color, national origin and sex. California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act of 1959 and the Fair Employment and Housing Act of 1980 cover those areas in addition to marital status.
Courts have interpreted the Unruh statute to include other categories such as sexual preference, children, students and the handicapped. The City of Los Angeles has an ordinance forbidding discrimination because of sexual preference or age.
Discrimination More Clever
Today, the challenges facing the council are more difficult because housing discrimination has become more clever and subtle, officials said. It is rare for someone to bluntly tell a Latino or black that he will not rent to them because of their skin color. Council members no longer are forced to stand guard at members’ homes.
Instead, discrimination most often comes in the form of a demand for higher deposits and rents or the denial that a particular unit is vacant. In some cases, closed-circuit security cameras are installed at entrances and doors simply are not opened to some home seekers.
At the recent training session, attended by two black women and a white man, volunteers were told to pay close attention to such subtleties.
The three were told to obtain information on security, cleaning and rental deposit fees, when the dwelling would be available and how long the application process would take.
Coached in Realism
“Go through the unit as if you were really looking for a place to live. Open doors, check cabinets, run the faucets,” said Brydon, a housing council staff member.
“Take notes just like any home seeker would,” she said. “Fumble in your purse for a pen or pencil and then have the manager write down his name on the back of an envelope or something.”
Brydon stressed to the three that they should keep a neutral and matter-of-fact attitude during the check and not ask questions about the racial character of the building or neighborhood. She said they should show no reaction, other than polite interest, to any racial comment.
Objectivity Sought
When they receive assignments, checkers are not told what type of complaint they are investigating--whether it is a potential case of racial, religious, marital status or sex discrimination. This is to help ensure that the checkers approach the assignment objectively, Brydon said.
Brydon told her group to try to get the person showing the unit to write down his name and phone number and to bring back any physical evidence, such as a business card, rental agreement or lease.
After the visit, checkers then fill in a standard report form and write a statement summarizing conversations and describing the person who showed the dwelling.
Once the report is filed, a housing counselor compares it to other checker reports to determine if all checkers were given equal treatment and opportunity to apply for housing. For example, if the complainant was a black woman, three checkers would have been sent to the building--a white woman, a black woman and then a white woman--all with similar economic and life-style profiles.
Several Alternatives
If a housing counselor determines that there is evidence of discrimination, the complainant has several alternatives.
The council can attempt to secure the housing through conciliation with the manager or landlord, the case can be referred to the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing or a private attorney can take the case.
The state agency is the enforcement arm for California’s fair-housing laws and has authority to investigate complaints by subpoenaing records such as lease agreements, accounting books and applications. The department can also assess and levy punitive and compensatory damages if discrimination has occurred. Fair-housing councils cannot do this.
“We basically work concurrently with fair-housing groups,” said Schiller, the state’s fair-housing official. “They respond to whoever comes to them. We respond to whoever comes to us. People can go to wherever they feel the most comfortable.”
Identification Required
In handling the housing discrimination cases for the state, Schiller said, state investigators are required by law to identify themselves as fair-housing agency employees and to inform the landlord, manager or owner that a complaint has been filed against him.
“Once a complaint has been filed, we can’t do any checking,” Schiller said. “If we feel checking evidence is important to the case, we usually ask the person to go to a community fair-housing group or even get the information themselves by having friends do a check.”
She said the checker information becomes a part of the state’s investigation.
James Kushner, a professor at Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles and author of several textbooks and a treatise on fair housing, said that courts have almost unanimously accepted the use of checkers in housing discrimination cases.
Courts Once Skeptical
“There were several cases in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s where the courts were skeptical of checker testimony,” Kushner said. “But those few cases in the early years have been totally overshadowed by what I could only describe as a unanimous view of all courts across the country that checkers are the only method to determine whether discrimination is occurring.”
In 1982, Kushner said, the U.S. Supreme Court further validated the use of checkers by giving them the right to sue for damages on their own if they were discriminated against during their work.
The use of checkers is somewhat of a sticky subject for landlords, said Sol Genuth, spokesman for the 15,000-member Greater Los Angeles Apartment Owners Assn.
“If a person has a legitimate complaint where the only reason he was denied housing was because of ethnicity, then certainly checking is a means of calling the owner to task,” Genuth said. “But, if you start sending out teams of people in random fashion and try to trap an owner, that we have an objection to.
“We don’t like it when one or two isolated cases are sensationalized,” he said. “There is never an emphasis on the fact that these are isolated cases and almost a suggestion that this is happening all around us.”
“The attitude of one owner or manager is not at all reflective of the attitude of the entire community,” Schiller said.
Witherspoon described checkers as the “Valley’s neighborhood watch group for fair housing. We don’t go out looking for lawbreakers,” she said, “but, when we think there is problem, we check it out and then report it.”
No Problems in 25% of Cases
Witherspoon said that about 25% of the cases the council investigates show no signs of discriminatory treatment and cited March statistics as an example of how an average month’s cases are resolved.
Of the 21 complaints the office investigated in March, five showed no evidence of discrimination, five remain open, four were referred to the state housing agency, two were successfully conciliated and two were referred to private attorneys. The complainant in three cases dropped the investigation after the checks.
The reasons people volunteer are varied. For some, checking is a way to contribute to the community. For others it is a type of revenge for an incident in which they were victims of racial discrimination. Some consider fair housing a cause they must work for.
Painful Discovery
But all the Valley fair-housing checkers, especially the minority checkers, agree that it is painful to discover that any level of housing discrimination exists so close to home.
Shawn, a 27-year-old black woman from Northridge, said that a recent check reinforced her decision to volunteer for this type of work.
She was instructed by a fair-housing council official to telephone and make an appointment to visit a West Valley apartment building.
“When I called, the guy told me that he had an ideal apartment for me and was really pushing it,” Shawn said. “I got there and could see the surprise in his face when he saw me.”
Told Her Rent Was Raised
She said the manager was friendly and showed her through the apartment, but told her the rent had been raised and that he didn’t know when it would be available.
“I just wanted to yell out and scream, ‘Oh, you’re busted, you silly old man.’ But I couldn’t. So I asked for an application and then went to my car to write everything down.
“It’s kind of strange being a checker. When someone says or does something that I think is discriminatory, I feel glad, relieved that this person isn’t going to get away with it anymore.
“Honestly, I feel that, in a way, I can get back at people for what has happened to me,” she said, referring to a time when she and her white husband were denied a residence, she thinks, because of race.
Trouble With Dissembling
Another checker, a 40-year-old white woman from Woodland Hills, said she takes assignments with some reluctance because she has trouble assuming a false identity.
“I wasn’t brought up to lie,” the woman said. “But I believe in the cause and somebody has to do this.”
For another checker, the job is less traumatic.
“I have mostly felt that the landlord would be real happy to rent the apartment to me,” said Jan, a 40-year-old white woman from North Hollywood. “I’ve never talked to other checkers about their feelings, but I’m sure it would be different if I were a minority.”
Uncertainty and Excitement
The three newly trained checkers, who have not yet knocked on a door, await their task with both uncertainty and excitement.
“I’ve been a renter all my life and thought it would be fun to get involved in something to do with renters’ rights,” said Bob, a white, 33-year-old North Hollywood insurance-claims investigator. “I don’t personally believe there is a great deal of racial discrimination, but then maybe I’m in for an education.”
