COLUMN ONE : Housing Bias With a Twist : Complaints are increasing about immigrant landlords who close the door to renters who are not from their homeland.

In December, for the first time in her life, Patricia Leigh felt the stinging suspicion that she was a victim of racism. It was an odd, unsettling thought for a white American.

But to her mind, the evidence was there: She saw Asian applicants at a mid-Wilshire apartment building chat with the manager in their native language, fill out a form and hand over some cash. Next, Leigh was told coldly of a two- to four-year waiting list. Then she stepped aside and watched another Asian greeted with “much jolly talk,” she says, and another exchange of paperwork for money.

“Why, it’s a racial thing,” she thought, shocked. “I’m not going to get a place because I am not Asian.”

Fair housing officials say they are concerned about increasing complaints like Leigh’s about immigrant landlords who prefer to rent to others from their homeland. Officials say they are also receiving accusations of immigrants who rent to white “outsiders” but not to blacks.

Immigrants are hardly responsible for the majority of the housing discrimination in the United States--”99% of the problems are caused by whites born here,” says Shanna Smith, executive director of the National Fair Housing Alliance, an umbrella group based in Washington. But with immigrant bias becoming a more common complaint wherever newcomers cluster, “it needs airing,” said Michael F. Dennis, compliance director for the Montgomery County Human Relations Commission in Maryland. “This is an up-and-coming problem.”

California and federal laws prohibit discrimination by landlords on the basis of race, national origin or ancestry and religion, among other categories. The maximum penalty the state can levy is a fine of $1,000 per person per violation. In addition, renters can file suit.

Ferreting out discrimination and doing something about it are subtle, frustrating tasks, even in the best of circumstances. With immigrant landlords, fair housing activists say that cultural and language gaps make their work even more difficult. They worry, too, that rejected tenants develop prejudices of their own against the ethnic groups represented by managers who snub them--a reaction that adds to social tension.

Some activists in immigrant communities say there is no denying that, to varying degrees, biases are indulged by foreign-born apartment managers and owners, just as they are at times by American-born landlords. The reasons, they say, range from ignorance of fair housing laws in this country to the desire to conduct business in their native language to stereotypes picked up once here.

The trend has been most keenly felt over the past five years in Southern California, home to a continuing influx of newcomers, mostly Asian and Latino. One 1990 estimate, by the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, concludes that immigration fueled a 90% increase in the Asian population in Southern California over the past 10 years--to the point that there are now more Asians than blacks here. Asians and Latinos make up about 41% of the total population.

The mix is not always a happy one. Local authorities have noted higher numbers of hate crimes, with all groups represented among both victims and perpetrators. Strains have developed as Latinos moved into neighborhoods that once were largely black and as Asians have moved to communities that once were largely Anglo and Latino. Black customers have picketed Korean market owners. Clashes between Asians and Latinos and between blacks and Latinos are brewing in the political arena too.

So perhaps battles over housing should come as no surprise. Public and private fair housing agencies are noting an upswing in such complaints throughout the region.

“Discrimination is rampant” in Los Angeles’ rapidly expanding Koreatown, said Annabella Hwa, district administrator for the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

The Hollywood/Mid-Los Angeles Fair Housing Council has also registered complaints about Russian immigrants in West Hollywood and Armenian emigres in Eagle Rock and Glendale.

The Long Beach Fair Housing Foundation reports that 20% to 30% of its daily calls focus on discrimination by Cambodian and Spanish-speaking landlords.

The Fair Housing Council of Orange County is pursuing a case against a Korean landlord who allegedly evicted Latinos so Korean tenants could move in.

And the Eviction Defense Center, a Los Angeles organization for low-income renters, won a court judgment two years ago against a Latino immigrant who ousted one of his black tenants while telling another: “When she’s gone, you’re next.”

Such victories are rare. “What we have are ‘You know it’s there but you don’t know how to prove it’ cases,” said Lisa Korben, a staff attorney for the Eviction Defense Center. She estimates that 25% of the center’s 40 to 45 inquiries each day concern allegations of racism on the part of immigrant landlords. “When you get so many complaints, you know that not all of the people (complaining) are crazy.”

The most common method of gathering evidence is a technique called auditing, in which so-called “checkers” of different ethnic backgrounds apply at different times for apartments in the same building. Afterward, the treatment of each checker is compared. Checkers were used in recent high-profile, big-dollar settlements of housing discrimination cases in which white owners were accused of prejudice against blacks.

But when the investigation focuses on an immigrant, “We have a very hard time getting checkers who speak the language and look the part,” said Diana C. Bruno, assistant director of the Hollywood/Mid-Los Angeles fair housing group.

She has been forced at times to send checkers of Filipino or Japanese ancestry to pose as Koreans, a ruse that, not surprisingly, often fails. When one Japanese-American checker told an apartment manager his last name was Kim, the response was: “You don’t look Korean.”

The Hollywood group covers a large swath of territory east of La Cienega Boulevard, including parts of the San Gabriel Valley, encompassing some of the most ethnically diverse areas in the country.

Periodically, the Hollywood council conducts spot-check audits of neighborhoods with a history of complaints. In 1988, Bruno said, the council targeted Koreatown for the first time. That year and the next, Koreatown registered the second highest percentage of racial discrimination in the surveys. (The Rosemead-Arcadia area, where white prejudice against blacks was measured, ranked first.)

The first year, testers uncovered “blatant discrimination” at three of 10 Korean-managed buildings, Bruno said. In 1989, non-Korean checkers were not treated as well as Korean checkers at two of five buildings.

Despite the small number of buildings surveyed, fair housing experts say the random sample revealed a potentially widespread problem.

John Yinger, a Syracuse University economist who served as research director for an upcoming federal study of housing discrimination, called the Koreatown results “statistically significant. That’s not likely to happen by chance.”

In one test, the Hollywood Fair Housing Council sent three women--one Korean, one Filipina and one black--at separate times on the same day to a building on Ardmore Street that was advertising a vacancy. The building was managed by Koreans.

The manager told the Korean checker that two units were available; rent was $540 a month and she could move in immediately, the checker’s report said. She did not say that she would take an apartment.

The Filipina said she was told an apartment was “not available now” and was quoted a rent of $590.

The black checker then inquired about the “For Rent” sign outside and was told the apartment would not be ready for two weeks. She asked to see the place and was escorted to a second-floor unit.

The apartment door was locked. The man showing the unit said he didn’t have a key and walked away.

“He left me standing in the hallway for about 15 minutes,” the checker, Ingrid Bullock, recalled in an interview. “I didn’t know how to get out of the building, so I waited. Then the man came back and said, ‘Come with me.’ I said, ‘Are we going to see another apartment?’

“We went through a whole new maze and ended up in an office. There was another Asian man sitting behind a desk. . . . The first guy just kind of faded into the background. The second guy said, ‘No, we don’t have anything.’ He said, ‘No, we don’t want you here.’ He was screaming at me: ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’ ”

The Fair Housing Council sent a letter to owners of buildings where such experiences were noted. “We didn’t file any lawsuits, although we could have,” said Bruno. “We’re in the business of educating, not punishing. If we check again and find more, then we would have a case.”

But last year, Koreatown was not surveyed. Bruno could not recruit any Asian checkers.

She had the same problem when Leigh telephoned her office nearly two months ago. All she could do was log the complaint.

Nor did she have Russian-speaking checkers available when the mail brought a letter from Zsuzsannac Feiertag, herself an immigrant. Feiertag, a 37-year-old receptionist born in Hungary, wrote that new owners in the West Hollywood building where she had lived for six years were systematically installing new tenants from their country.

At one point, a sign in Russian advertised a one-bedroom for lease in the complex, Feiertag said in an interview, but nothing was posted in English.

Feiertag eventually moved because of what she claimed was harassment. “At first, I thought they didn’t like me because I am Hungarian,” she said, “but then I talked with my American neighbors and they were having problems too.”

Activists in immigrant communities say they understand why foreign-born landlords might discriminate in favor of their own, though they don’t condone it.

“I’ve seen it myself and it’s not a very good situation,” said Bongwhan Kim, executive director of the Korean Youth Center, which has been involved in housing issues. “But you have to look at the nature of apartment management. It can get to be a real hassle with people not paying rent or complaints about noise. Most of these property managers don’t speak much English and it’s easier to conduct their business in Korean.”

An activist in the Soviet Jewish community, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “If it’s happening, it’s not because they want to be against , but just because they feel more comfortable around their own people.”

But there are prejudices in play, he added. “They believe that Russians are better payers. It’s unknown in the Soviet Union that you don’t pay your rent. There, the apartments are owned by the government.”

Boris Gorbis, a Soviet-born attorney who has owned seven properties over the past 12 years, said some Russian-born landlords are helping fellow immigrants who cannot get a place to stay anywhere else.

“I had a family come to me, extremely wonderful people, a Russian-trained electrical engineer, a registered nurse and their 13-year-old son,” Gorbis said.

”. . . For about four months, they could not find an apartment because they had no credit history. So I found a Russian landlord who found a place for them.”

Some immigrants say the government needs to do more to educate landlords about fair housing laws. Letters of accusation from fair housing councils “come out of the blue sky for the landlords,” said Kim. “They thought they could rent to whoever they want.”

Hwa, of the state fair housing department, said that several years ago she met with journalists for Korean-language newspapers and representatives of Korean organizations and asked them to publicize the laws.

And David T. Quezada, executive director of the Orange County fair housing group, said he has held seminars on the law in Vietnamese and Spanish and published brochures in several languages.

More effort is needed, other fair housing officials agreed. But they said they are understaffed and underfinanced.

In the meantime, those denied apartments grow bitter. “I know exactly what’s going to come next when I get these calls that start, ‘I’m an American. . . ,’ ” said Bruno.