Fair Housing in 1986 --’A Long Way to Go’ : Despite Progress, Conference Speakers List a Litany of Discriminatory Ploys, Problems

The state of fair housing in 1986 was summed up by keynoter James Farmer, at 66 the grand old man of the civil rights movement: “We did not slay the dragon of racism in the ‘60s. . . . We battered down the barrier of apartheid.”

Doors were opened for blacks, and they no longer had to sit in the back of the bus, Farmer said, but “we were dealing with the effects of racism, the trappings of racism, not with racism itself. Racism still lives. And it is quite healthy.”

Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, the man who led the Freedom Riders into the Deep South in 1961 to rail against such injustices and indignities as separate drinking fountains and schools for blacks, spoke at National Neighbors’ annual conference Thursday through Sunday at USC.

Message Unchanged

And the message he brought to 150 people at a Friday-night dinner was the same message delivered from podiums throughout the four days: “All is not well.”

Los Angeles City Councilman Robert Farrell, a one-time Freedom Rider, said in introducing Farmer that, in the battle against housing discrimination, “We have one heck of a long way to go.” He pointed out that, at that moment, those attending the dinner at USC’s Town and Gown were sitting in the “most segregated” area of Los Angeles, South-Central.

Segregation and racism are a national reality, said Charles Bromley, executive director of National Neighbors, a nonprofit coalition of 225 grass-roots organizations working for integration of neighborhoods economically, racially and ethnically. In 1986, he noted, “We’ve seen people chased out of their neighborhoods because of racial hatred and bigotry.”

Still, National Neighbors were told, there is some reason for optimism, even in an era of political conservatism in which, Farmer said, people “can feel good about feeling bad about other people--(and) have reason to believe that the Justice Department will be less than vigilant in prosecuting them.”

In the view of Donald L. DeMarco, vice president of National Neighbors and director, Department of Community Services, Shaker Heights, Ohio, there are several positive signs. One is the evolution of groups such as Neighbors from what he calls “touchy-feely fuzziness,” a do-good mentality without direction, to “hard-headed” confrontation.

That means action such as discrimination suits.

Title VIII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act made it unlawful to discriminate against prospective tenants or home buyers on the basis of race, religion or ethnicity.

But today, Barttina Williams of the San Fernando Valley Fair Housing Council told a conference workshop, “the real issue in fair housing is, who are the monitors? I think discrimination is very profitable. Those who discriminate get a lot of money for it.”

Throughout the sessions, participants spoke of “buzz words” and “code words” that get across the message--whites only, please--without violating the law. One of the current phrases, Williams said, is “secure community.” She asked, “Secure from what, or from whom, I should say?”

Fair housing advocates deplore a practice they call “steering.” They contend that real estate professionals do it routinely in order to protect the economic interests of clients who have property in affluent areas.

National Neighbors is an outgrowth of Crenshaw Neighbors, which was founded here. In the last five years, said National Neighbors President Vernon Douglas, “We’ve broken away from the mode that (fair housing) is a black-white issue” and are now dealing with it as an issue that also affects Asians and Latinos.

“Housing is the last vestige of discrimination,” said Douglas, resident manager of Brooklyn’s Starrett City, the nation’s largest federally subsidized housing complex. “People work together nowadays but when they leave at 5 o’clock, they go separate ways. They don’t live together. Their kids don’t go to school together.”

The “big issues” of the future in fair housing, he said, will be “what happens in New Mexico, Texas and California” in integration of Latinos and also “gentrification,” the process of inner-city redevelopment in which yuppies move in and “poor people who can’t afford a house in the suburbs are getting kicked out.”

“Living in Diversity” was the conference theme. A program ad welcomed delegates to “Los Angeles, world city, home of 2.1 million persons of Mexican descent, 200,000 Salvadorans, 175,000 Armenians, 200,000 Iranians, 175,000 Japanese, 150,000 Chinese, 150,000 Filipinos, 150,000 Koreans, 50,000 Vietnamese. Etc., etc., etc.”

At a Saturday workshop, Leo Estrada, associate professor, UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and chairman of the national advisory committee on the 1990 census, observed that in Southern California “the vocabulary hasn’t really caught up with reality,” that we are close to “a minority majority population.”

With the birth rate for inner-city minority families far outstripping that of white suburban families, Estrada said, there will be a “huge mass” seeking affordable housing.

These people, what he termed “socioeconomic minorities,” will be competing, he said for the same housing, a trend already being seen in South Central, traditionally a black area, where blacks are starting to be nudged out by new immigrant populations.

“Everybody wants it,” he said of the neighborhood. “Asians want it. Mexican immigrants want it. Central and South American immigrants want it.” One result, Estrada added, is landlords “playing games,” a repeated pattern of eviction and rent hikes.

Now, with downtown redevelopment, there are jobs in the central city for unskilled and semi-skilled workers--as restaurant workers, window washers, etc.--and because most do not have cars they want to live close to downtown. For South-Central, he said, that means “competition can only get worse.

“As one group wins, the losing group has to go out looking for housing somewhere else.”

Deputy Mayor Grace Montanez Davis noted that, although 1990 will mark the 100th anniversary of the census, “The Hispanic population had never been counted until 1950.” By 1990, that population is expected to be half of Los Angeles.

The affluent “don’t want the low-income people in their backyards,” Davis said, yet “there’s no land” for building low-income housing in areas where the low income now live.

That the vast majority of Latinos are low income was borne out by her city statistics showing Latinos, together with blacks, as highest in the city in joblessness, percentage living below the poverty level, high school dropouts, percentage working in blue-collar jobs and lowest in family income. Tensions between immigrant groups, haves and have-nots, are escalating, she said--”I just wonder when it’s going to blow.”

Just two weeks before America’s gala Statue of Liberty centennial, as one conference participant noted, these people had gathered not to talk about America as refuge for the huddled masses but as a country clinging to racist attitudes and frightened that newcomers are going to change the “real” America.

Robert Johnson, a lawyer and president of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California, the umbrella agency for eight local Fair Housing Councils, said in an interview, “I think we’re seeing more incidents of racial and religious vandalism in the last couple of years than we had for a number of years before that.”

Johnson cited multiple factors including political leadership and tensions created by the influx of new immigrants during the last decade. Since 1982, he said, the Fair Housing Congress has handled 7,600 discrimination inquiries in the city of Los Angeles and there have been 2,100 investigations.

The central point in working toward integration, Johnson said, is that “when people get to know each other, some of the fears that they have are removed. In some sections of the city, such as the Hollywood Hills, where I live, there is a wide mix of people.”

“Almost no one in this country knows how segregated America is,” said James Kushner, professor of law at Southwestern University and author of “Apartheid in America.” And, he added, Los Angeles is “one of the top one or two segregated cities.”

(Black Enterprise magazine last year published results of a University of Wisconsin study that identified Los Angeles as one of the 15 most segregated, with a black population of 17% but only 4% of them living on homogenous blocks).

Not only is “every city in this country incredibly segregated,” Kushner said, but “they’re all becoming more segregated.”

Nonetheless, Kushner said, there is some “good news” and that is that “the people of this country apparently love segregation (or) the investment potential of segregation” but they are also very “anti-discrimination.” The proof, he said, is “the size of jury verdicts” coming out of federal courts in fair-housing cases--”We’re talking six figures.”

In DeMarco’s view, “Integration does not just happen. It takes a race-conscious, anti-segregative, pro-integrative effort to maintain. Color-blind or race-neutral approaches almost always result in resegregation.”

Johnson, in a separate interview, said, “The Fair Housing Congress essentially has two beliefs, that people should be able to live where they want to and can afford and, second, that integration of communities has a lot of benefits within our society and that ought to affect questions such as where we place low-income housing.”

He suggested perhaps tax credits should be made available to developers to build low-income housing in targeted communities.

What is needed, Richie suggested, is “a few Jackie Robinsons” to set examples by moving into white neighborhoods. Until very recently, DeMarco agreed, there has been a dearth of blacks “willing to make things happen rather than wailing against the injustices.”

There was a standing ovation for Farmer, who told National Neighbors, “You are the trenches,” those who are taking care of “a business that was neglected in the ‘60s, by and large.”

He quoted the late black scholar/editor W. E. B. DuBois as saying the greatest tragedy of all is “that men know so little of men.”

And he noted, “Most of the blacks in our country are not acquainted on any basic level with any whites. . . . The same is true of whites.”

Farmer smiled, recalling how in 1961 he rode out of Plaquemine, La., in an old hearse to escape a screaming lynch mob. This Sept. 1, he said, he will return to Plaquemine and this time “I’m to be escorted by the chief of police” into town.

There will be a rally at the one-time black church, which was gutted in 1961 and has been rebuilt, Farmer said, “and we will welcome (everyone) as brothers and sisters in a new Plaquemine--and what could become a new America.”