Fighting On for Fair Housing : Council Faces an Uphill Struggle Against Discrimination : DAVID T. QUEZADA

David T. Quezada is no firebrand. A community activist during the Reagan era, Quezada worries openly about what he says in public, and so speaks softly. It is an approach, says Quezada, that seems to work.

Quezada, 39, is executive director of the Fair Housing Council of Orange County. This is where you go when you believe a landlord won’t rent to you because you have children or are black or Latino.

The council--founded in 1965--investigates complaints, tries to mediate a solution and as a last resort may sue the landlord.

At one time in the 1970s you could read newspaper stories about the council coordinating rent strikes and suing the city of Irvine. It takes a much lower-key approach these days.

But the housing problems of the poor and minorities are actually getting worse. Only a small fraction of the county’s families can afford to buy a house these days, and even renting a decent place to live is beyond the means of many when the average two-bedroom apartment rents for $700 a month. And it can go up to $1,100.

On the other hand, the council’s budget gets a little more precarious every year. With a federal cutback in Community Development Block Grant funds, the local governments which provide the majority of the council’s financial support have less to give each year. Last year, three people were laid off.

The private, nonprofit council now operates on a budget of $387,000 and employs 10 full time. There are about 80 more like it around the country, many of them in California.

Quezada has been at the council for nearly 5 years, the last 2 1/2 as executive director. He became interested in housing discrimination in an earlier job with Legal Aid.

In this conversation with Times staff writer Michael Flagg, Quezada explains why he thinks housing discrimination in Orange County is getting worse, not better.

Q. Your last annual report says “the social cancer of housing discrimination still persists throughout Orange County.” How much housing discrimination is there now in the county?

A. We received 1,938 allegations last year. On a national scale, that would put us in at least the top five areas.

Q. Your report also says complaints jumped 40% last year. Why?

A. There are probably two primary reasons. In 1988 we were commemorating the 20th anniversary of federal Fair Housing Act. That heightened awareness that laws against housing discrimination exist.

Second, this organization has been in the process of shifting its internal resources so we have more staff responding to people who call and more staff investigating allegations.

Q. Of the 1,938 complaints, how many were valid?

A We disaffirmed about 40% of the allegations, meaning that 60% of them were in fact housing discrimination; there was verification of it.

Q. I would guess many incidents of discrimination--as with some types of crimes--go unreported. Can we assume there is a lot more discrimination out there?

A. Most certainly. And it will be until everybody’s aware that this type of conduct is not to be condoned.

Q. Do you sense that discrimination in general is worse than it was 10 years ago? Are we making progress over the long run?

A. I am sure it is not getting better. We’re not doing enough. The problem persists, and in fact seems to have increased in the last 5 years or so. The cases we’re seeing are indicative of that.

Q. How so?

A. We’re starting to see more incidences of violence against minorities. That’s a real indicator that there’s a problem out there. And the future promises to worsen as our student population changes, as you have immature individuals feeling threatened because of the change in the racial composition of their schools.

In California, and to a lesser extent Orange County, significant percentages of students are now minorities, and we’re beginning to see individuals feeling threatened and drifting toward skinhead groups or similar groups. Then you get incidents like the cross-burning in Westminster and the beating of the gay man in Laguna Beach or the vandalizing of a synagogue in Fullerton. That’s why the council conducts an extensive education program in the schools to try and counteract the development of such hatred.

Q. Is that really possible to do, just by going into the schools and talking to kids for an hour or so?

A. It’s a good question, but my response is: “Well, it’s either that or do nothing.” Unless the schools have something in the curriculum that addresses this issue, that’s about all we can do.

Q. The Apartment Assn. of Orange County says it’s only a small handful of local landlords who discriminate or own slum apartments. Might it not be, perhaps, that your organization overemphasizes the problem?

A. Most of our counselors here--but not all--are not emotional advocates. They like to gather the facts and, based on those facts, give a response. Hence we have over a 90% resolution rate.

Q. Your statistics show that about 85% of your complaints come from rental housing. Has that changed much?

A. No, because most of the high turnover in transactions occurs in rental housing.

Q. What about the other 15%, the people who try to buy houses and say they’re discriminated against?

A. For some years that area hasn’t changed much, because it’s the dollar more than anything else that dominates in the decision process of who they’re going to sell to. We still have an occasional case. Most of the boards of Realtors in Orange County have designated a person to be in charge of fair housing.

Q. Do you find instances of block busting by Realtors or redlining by the banks in the county?

A. We did have one last year--I won’t name the lender--that was not lending in certain areas. It’s still in litigation.

Q. Your annual report says that 84% of your complainants, surprisingly, are white. That would indicate most of your complaints are from people with children?

A. That’s correct. Racial discrimination was the second highest category. We also have a few cases of discrimination against the elderly. But we expect the family complaints to increase since the federal government amended its fair housing laws last year and preempted state law on mobile home parks. Before this, you could have adult-only mobile home parks in California.

Q. Are present laws and local ordinances adequate to deal with discrimination? Will the big increase in fines mandated by those amendments to the 1968 Fair Housing Act that Congress passed last year have an impact?

A. The new act hasn’t proved itself yet. But it does have an enforcement mechanism which was absent before these amendments. For the first time in 20 years, the federal government will have administrative law judges who can hear these cases rapidly.

Before, the enforcement was squarely on the shoulders of the victim. So you had fair housing councils like this one evolve over the last 20 years to help people who’d been discriminated against. But there weren’t any teeth in the former federal housing laws. There was no “police officer,” if you will, to help victims redress their grievances.

Q. So all this will help, you think?

A. Yes, but I still believe community education is essential, because you can have all these laws and hammer somebody on the head with them and fine them. But the objective here is really to help people modify their attitudes, and that’s why education is important. Because if you can explain to somebody why it’s wrong to discriminate, they will be permanently changed, as opposed to levying a fine against them. Then they’ll usually entrench themselves even deeper in their hatred and perpetuate it through their children. You’ve got to break this chain.

Q. The new housing act amendments call for some sizable fines. What’s the situation now: What can a landlord get hit for through the courts if he discriminates?

A. You’re looking at around $35,000 as the biggest award for victims receiving money. That’s the biggest award in Southern California I’ve seen. That was with the assistance of a fair housing council in Los Angeles, in the Westwood area. Somebody was denied the right to rent an apartment.

Q. Let’s talk about people who already have an apartment. What about housing code enforcement: In other words, ensuring that that apartment is habitable and doesn’t become slum housing? Is enforcement sufficiently aggressive in Orange County?

A. At least the larger cities have their own code enforcement. We have an aggressive County Health Department that looks into housing code violations. For the most part, the cities do an adequate job. But we also need on-site managers for apartment complexes who are attending to all the terms of the rental agreements.

Q. Do you think there is an unusually large number of substandard apartments and slumlords in older cities like Santa Ana and Anaheim?

A. The vast majority of landlords are not slumlords. But this is a very, very profitable market. There’s a lot of demand. And it’s easy because of that demand to loaf in your responsibilities, because you can stop maintaining your rental units and the demand does not change. If the marketplace were different and demand not so high, we’d certainly have more of a competitive spirit to provide a safer, better-kept product. But with such a very low vacancy rate--usually around 2 or 3%--it doesn’t even accommodate the normal flow of people turning over apartments.

And I certainly couldn’t disagree that many of our cities have areas that are substantially run-down. In large part it stems from landlords taking advantage of our high demand for housing.

Q. Is that a polite way of calling them greedy?

A That’s right.

Q. Let’s take a city like Newport Beach, which doesn’t have all that much rental housing and certainly doesn’t have much affordable housing. One of your earlier reports said some of the county’s cities weren’t doing their fair share to provide affordable housing and were shoving the task off onto other cities. Is a city like Newport Beach carrying its fair share of providing affordable housing?

A. There’s something positive to say about that city. They’ve taken steps to fulfill more of their share of the responsibility in having some development of affordable housing. I’ve seen their representatives present at some of the local conferences on affordable housing. There was a time when that wasn’t the case.

Q. Looking back at some of the news stories about the Fair Housing Council in the 1970s, you can see articles on the council being involved in rent strikes, suing the city of Irvine and the like. You hardly ever see those kinds of stories anymore. Did your organization tone down in the Reagan era? Is this a significantly different organization than it was in the 1970s?

A. Some of the same members are on the board now that were here then. As long as I’ve been here there’s been a policy against being involved in a rent strike. Quite the contrary, in fact: If there’s a rent strike we’re to stay away from it. Basically the focus is fact-gathering and being of service to both the landlord and the tenant in resolving the issues before them. The bottom line is: Resolve the disputes before litigation.

Q. So in plain English, you try not to take sides?

A We’re on the side of the law and the facts. But I think the organization is still in the front lines, and will vigorously prosecute a case where we’ve exhausted all the other steps. In a case where a person flagrantly tells us that is their policy to discriminate and they’re going to continue it, you’ll see a whole different tone. You’ll see more than the 1970s; you’ll see the ‘60s come out in the members of the board.

I don’t think we’re more low-key; I think it’s a maturing of the organization overall from having received better results using this approach.

Q. Would I be wrong in assuming housing discrimination doesn’t seem to be a very big issue in the public consciousness today?

A. It’s not something you think about unless it happens to you. But it seems to be happening to more and more people.

Q. Let me shift gears a little and ask you about this unlikely alliance you had last year with the county’s biggest developers in opposing the slow-growth initiative, which failed at the polls. Didn’t that tend to alienate much of your natural constituency, which one could assume would be relatively liberal and probably disposed toward slow growth?

A. We opposed it because it would have made housing even less affordable. It was an issue that tended not only to split some of the board members but our constituents, and it was very difficult. But we were concerned about the exclusionary effect if there were no development at all. There were, however, some individuals who were using an environmentalist front but were very comfortable with exclusion for its own sake of all groups.

And so we did have some difficulties; it’s a most uncomfortable situation when your constituents are leaving or are puzzled. But the bottom line is accessibility to housing; without it our already high-priced marketplace here in Orange County--together with some of the prevailing attitudes about minorities and families with children--would get a lot worse.