‘It Has Become So Subtle’ : Fair Housing Act at 20: Bias Still Widely Reported

Marcella Brown, a gracious black woman with an engaging smile, had telephoned ahead before traveling to see the vacant apartment in West Hollywood.

But as she walked up the sidewalk, the woman in the yard dropped her garden hose and walked away as if to avoid a conversation. Brown caught up with her and confronted her, asking for the building’s owner. The woman threw up her hands, saying she had no idea where the owner could be found.

Moments later, after Brown had gone, a white man arrived to see the same apartment. Not only did the same woman welcome the white man, she showed him the unit and identified herself as the building’s owner. She also became an unwitting entry in the case files of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California, a nonprofit group established to help enforce federal and state fair housing laws.

A legal action by the group led to a $44,000 damage award against the owner, which was paid to the black Anaheim family that alerted investigators about the building.

“That was a great case . . . a great settlement,” said Brown, the group’s executive director.

But it was one of the last times that Brown has used herself in the hundreds of black-renter, white-renter comparative tests the group conducts each year to look for racial discrimination.

She said there is simply too much anguish to playing the black victim in today’s America.

“When you catch someone, you feel good that you caught them,” Brown said, “but at the same time, it’s very, very painful. I just get so angry. I just don’t want to go through that feeling again.”

Today, exactly 20 years after enactment of the federal Fair Housing Act, enforcement groups such as the Fair Housing Congress report that housing discrimination is alive and residing rather comfortably in Los Angeles, a racial melting pot that enjoys a reputation for enlightenment.

In California, where the federal law is augmented by stricter state statutes, private groups and government authorities are still fighting against landlords and home sellers who discriminate based on race, religion, sex, marital status, number of children or national origin.

Legal Settlement

Last year, state officials received nearly 800 complaints of housing discrimination, most of them involving charges of racial bias, mostly against blacks. More than 450 of the cases will probably lead to some kind of legal settlement against the violators, one state official said.

The Fair Housing Congress, an umbrella group made up of seven smaller nonprofit groups in Los Angeles County, reported handling more than 700 cases of its own last year, mostly involving racial charges. Most of those were brought by blacks frustrated in their search for apartments.

Yet the most alarming statistic, if it were known, might be the number of discrimination cases that still go unreported, according to fair housing enforcement officials. The state figures--relatively constant over the years--are considered just a tiny piece of the problem.

“The numbers do not make sense . . . they are no indication of how serious it is, how prevalent it is, because it has become so subtle,” said Carol Schiller, Los Angeles regional administrator for the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

“We have a very sophisticated mentality in the community of housing providers. They are very aware of their responsibilities under the law. So they either will obey (the law) or find ways to get around it.”

Circumvent Law

Evidence that landlords and real estate dealers routinely circumvent the law has come from a number of housing studies, the largest funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in the late 1970s.

That nationwide study, still cited as a measure of the Fair Housing Act’s dubious effectiveness, was typical of other such tests using undercover teams of blacks and whites to check out the same housing listings.

At each randomly selected apartment, for example, a black agent would pose as a rental applicant, after which a white agent would also pose as an applicant. Afterward they would compare notes on how they were treated.

The federal survey extended to 40 cities and found that just one black applicant visiting just one apartment had a 25% chance of encountering discrimination, said Laurence Pearl, a HUD housing director in Washington.

If he visited just one home for sale, the same black applicant was found to have a 15% chance of being discriminated against, Pearl said.

From that, the agency calculated that there were perhaps 2 million individual cases of housing discrimination each year against blacks and an untold number against other minority groups. This morning, HUD officials are announcing plans for a two-year follow-up study, expected to begin this fall, that will seek to learn whether those numbers have risen in recent years.

‘Not Ready’

“The problem is, you as a minority are not aware” of being discriminated against, Pearl said last week. “You’re told the unit’s not ready, or it’s just been rented. But a white comes in and, lo and behold, the unit’s available right away. You just simply wouldn’t know that.”

The legacy of the federal law and similar laws in about 35 states is that blacks and other minorities now find it easier to find housing. But authorities agree that the law has fallen disappointingly short of its goals.

The Fair Housing Congress finds evidence of discrimination in about 70% of the cases it investigates each year in Los Angeles, staff member Janet Sohm said.

Although many of those cases eventually lead to trials or mediated settlements, proof is often difficult to establish, according to Executive Director Brown.

Apartment managers today, unlike their their counterparts of years ago, rarely are brusque or obvious in their refusal to rent to minority groups, she said. Some may allow blacks to fill out a rental application, which is never seriously considered.

Television Monitor

The entrance to one large apartment complex in Hollywood was monitored by a television camera, Brown recalled.

When she arrived to inquire about an apartment, no one came to let her in. But a few moments later, a white checker from her agency arrived and was shown the apartment--and the TV monitoring system--by a proud building manager.

“The manager said to the white checker, ‘This is how we keep out the blacks,’ ” Brown recalled.

In other cases, “blacks are not turned away, but they are shown the apartment when it is not light, or they are shown the apartment with no view,” said Blanche Rosloff, executive director of the Westside Fair Housing Council, which is part of the countywide housing congress. Meanwhile, “whites are given coffee, given a comfortable seat, told about the virtues” of the location, she said.

Blacks who discover such offenses today are often young professionals who did not grow up in the 1960s, when racial tensions and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led to a hurried passage of the Fair Housing Act on April 11, 1968.

“We’re dealing with the next generation . . . people who are often 22 to 33, who have to move because of their jobs or schools,” Rosloff said. “They are really shocked. They do not expect to have this happen to them.”

Baxter Perry, 43, a former teacher and Vietnam veteran, talked of the shock he felt when he tried to rent a one-bedroom apartment last year in the Mid-Wilshire District. On the phone, he was told three apartments were available. But when he got there, Perry said, the Latino manager tried to dampen his interest.

“The fellow said, ‘I don’t know why you’re interested, it’s such a horrible place,’ ” Perry remembered. “He said, ‘I’m trying to move myself.’ ”

But the tiny apartment was inexpensive, only $380 a month, and situated above a store, which he liked, so Perry called about it afterward. He was told no units were available right away because the building was undergoing earthquake reinforcement. For about a month, Perry said, he called every few days, “until I finally realized something was going on.”

Perry reported the case to the Fair Housing Congress, but there was no happy ending. The group learned that no earthquake repairs were being made, but apparently the manager became suspicious; he quickly rented two of the apartments to whites and the third to a black described by one enforcement agent as light-skinned.

“It’s over; that’s it,” Perry said now, talking about the anger he still feels.

After spending four years in the Air Force during the Vietnam War and contributing to society as a schoolteacher, he expected more.

“I go to look at a crappy little apartment and get turned down because I’m black. It makes you angry. It makes you hurt. I still have a tremendous amount of anger inside,” he said.

Problem Spot

The Mid-Wilshire area, where Perry was sent away, now appears to be the biggest problem spot in Los Angeles for housing discrimination, according to the Fair Housing Congress. Next in number of cases are the Westside and the San Fernando Valley. The agency currently does testing only in the city of Los Angeles and in unincorporated areas of the county, funded by government contracts totaling $600,000 a year.

Established 16 years ago, the group employs three to five paid staff members in each of its seven districts and uses scores of volunteers to run checks at apartment houses where discrimination is suspected. The volunteers, who work about eight hours a month, are in many cases blacks outraged by encountering discrimination on their own, Brown said.

“Sometimes we’ll find repeat cases at the same buildings,” Brown said. “We do have our ‘hot sheets’ . . . listings of apartment complexes that are notorious for discriminating. We take some cases from that.”

The overwhelming majority of complaints in Los Angeles--about 99%--involve apartment buildings, she said.

One day last week, Fair Housing Congress checkers selected an apartment complex at random in West Los Angeles. Black checker Diana Bruno, fashionably dressed in a bright red skirt and matching earrings, found little outward evidence of discrimination when she toured a two-bedroom unit.

Cleaning Fee

The white manager pointed out the new dishwasher and the privacy of full-length curtains and a secluded patio. The apartment would be available on the 15th, the manager told her, for $1,025 a month plus a $500 cleaning fee.

But it was the white checker, Sohm, who emerged holding a rental application. Sohm was told she could have the apartment that very night, she reported outside. She was quoted a cleaning fee of just $200.

Before she left, the white checker reported, the manager confided that it was not a place for blacks or children.

“She said . . . ‘If a black showed up in this building, everybody would run,’ ” Sohm related.

Although most complaints are filed by blacks, large numbers involve discrimination against families with children, Brown said. Much smaller numbers involve discrimination against Latinos, Asians and other ethnic minorities, she said.

When evidence is found, cases are normally turned over to private attorneys for prosecution or referred to state officials. One of the advantages of California law is its relatively strong enforcement system, which employs a seven-member state commission to review cases and, when necessary, to award monetary damages, the state’s Schiller said.

“Some of them have been pretty hefty, $75,000 to $90,000,” she said. “That sends a very clear message to the housing industry.”

Potential Outbreaks

The federal law, however, has no such enforcement program. Tangled up in Congress for months, the Fair Housing Act was still being debated when King was slain on April 4, 1968. Today, most housing officials describe the bill as compromise legislation pushed through largely because of King’s death, in hopes that it would quell potential outbreaks of black violence.

Administered by HUD, the Fair Housing Act calls for federal authorities to “mediate” discrimination cases, although landlords and home sellers are not obligated to cooperate in the process, federal officials said. In larger cases involving “patterns of discrimination,” HUD may also ask for legal action from the Justice Department.

When the bill was enacted, cases of discrimination were often flagrant. HUD’s Pearl recalled a Maryland case in which a black family entered a home that was for sale. They found the real-estate agent hiding in a closet to avoid them.

Yet there have never been many complaints to federal authorities, and federal action against violators has been rare. In a nation with an estimated 2 million acts of housing discrimination each year, federal lawsuits averaged less than 30 a year during the first 10 years of the law. Those totals have dropped markedly during the Reagan Administration, with 14 cases being filed last year.

At the same time, a 1986 study of housing discrimination in the Washington area found violations in more than half of its random test cases.

“I was, frankly, surprised by that,” said Pearl, citing the study area’s 25% black population.

Weak Law

HUD’s general deputy secretary for fair housing, William E. Wynn, conceded that the federal law is too weak. But congressional efforts to bolster it--the last bitter fight occurred in 1980--have failed under strong opposition from real estate interests.

This year Congress is again trying to strengthen the law to carry enforcement penalties and to protect additional minority groups, such as the handicapped. Lobbying is again heavy, however, partly because real estate groups do not want damage awards to be meted out by government commissions and administrative law judges. Such practices have been held to violate constitutional rights to trial by jury, said Stephen Driesler of the National Assn. of Realtors.

The Realtors group, which maintains a lobbying staff of 65 members in Washington, will not oppose changes to the law if that issue and others are worked out, Driesler said.

In the meantime, however, the years of failure to strengthen the federal law have placed increasing importance on groups like the Fair Housing Congress. Wynn said HUD has fought strongly for passage of a $3-million funding bill for such groups. If that money comes through next year, about 100 such groups throughout the country will be able to expand their tests of the housing market, he said.

Difficult to Understand

In Los Angeles, the picture is so complex that most authorities are still trying to understand it. It is thought that many blacks or other minorities will give up on a housing case sooner than they might on a job discrimination case.

“Nine out of 10 times they’ll say, ‘I don’t want to live there,’ ” where they face the discrimination, said Rosloff of the Westside Fair Housing Council. “It’s the rare person who complains.”

One landlord, Charles Isham, said rent control laws in Santa Monica may actually further housing segregation there. Any time an apartment becomes available, a landlord is besieged by requests for the rent-controlled unit--usually from friends who know someone looking for a place.

“You don’t need to put the unit on the market,” Isham said.

Rosloff, who is white, said the days seem to be gone when a black found his house spray-painted or had sugar poured into his car’s gas tank if he moved into a white neighborhood. Yet it was only two years ago that a mixed-race couple moved into white Westchester and began finding white-supremacist literature on their front porch.

“The laws have given us a focus; they’ve given us a standard,” Rosloff said of the fair housing statutes. “But we’ve got a lot of work to do.”