Know Your Rights if Discrimination in Housing Occurs
Discrimination is limiting the housing opportunities of many racial, ethnic and other minorities in the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County.
“People think discrimination isn’t going on any more, but it’s just practiced in a more sophisticated way,” said J. J. Johnson, housing coordinator for the Fair Housing Council of the San Fernando Valley.
Last year, the council’s Panorama City office received 150 inquiries from individuals and families that believed that they were being wronged by a landlord, real estate broker or home seller, Johnson said. These inquiries prompted more than 100 investigations into allegations of housing discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, handicap, sex, age or marital status. Housing discrimination based on sexual orientation is specifically prohibited only by the city of Los Angeles and several other municipalities.
While more people are turning to housing advocates and the legal system for help in countering discrimination, Johnson said, “a lot of people don’t even know what their rights are.”
Most of the reported discrimination relates to prospective tenants who believe that they are getting short-shrift when they look for an apartment. There have also been complaints against real estate brokers and home sellers, and even against newspapers that carry discriminatory advertisements.
The penalties for violating federal, state and local fair housing laws include the increasing costs of civil court awards and jail time for the most extreme cases of repeated housing discrimination.
One Valley apartment building owner agreed to pay $300,000 as part of a settlement with two plaintiffs who said they suffered discrimination because they are African-Americans. One plaintiff said his rent was raised to encourage him to leave the 40-unit complex. The other was turned down as a tenant in the same building, despite her good credit.
A Hispanic family filed suit and received $30,000 in a consent decree after a North Hollywood apartment manager allegedly told the family that he “didn’t want to rent to people from El Salvador.”
And the federal Fair Housing Act is being used as a way to get at advertisers who knowingly, or unknowingly, are sending out a discriminatory message.
Inappropriate ads include those with lots of smiling white families, but no blacks or Hispanics, said Kevin Reed, Western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund Inc. in downtown Los Angeles. Certain catch words in an advertisement, such as restricted , exclusive , private or traditional should also be avoided, according to federal regulations. Even references to a synagogue or congregation or parish may indicate a religious preference, according to regulations printed in the Federal Register.
One recent newspaper ad that caught the attention of both Reed and Johnson reads: “Walk to Temples.”
“If you advertise a home with an ad that says ‘Walk to Temples,’ you are in effect steering,” Reed claimed. “Such an ad can reasonably communicate to other minorities that this is a neighborhood where they would not be welcome.”
A study released by th U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1991 found that black and Hispanic homeowners are discriminated against in at least half of their encounters with real estate agents and landlords.
“Like many forms of discrimination, it’s subtle, and very often a home seeker won’t know it’s happening,” Reed said. “There are plenty of cases where a black couple isn’t shown houses that a white couple with lower income is shown.”
“Lenders also have a horrendous record of financing homes for ethnic minorities,” Reed said.
All this adds up to minorities being steered away from certain homes and neighborhoods on a very large scale, he said. “The problem is not getting any better, and I fear that it’s getting worse.”
At the San Fernando Valley Board of Realtors, “we haven’t gotten one complaint about housing discrimination in the last year,” said Millie Jones, public affairs director. “In all reality, I suspect there are some people practicing discrimination. There are always a couple of bad apples in the barrel,” she conceded.
Part of that may have something to do with the fact that HUD no longer polices the board. “We do our own policing now,” Jones said.
In an effort to stem possible discrimination by its 7,800 members, the Valley board is encouraging them to sign onto what’s known as the Voluntary Affirmative Marketing Agreement, co-authored by the HUD and the National Assn. of Realtors. The agreement outlines guidelines for promoting equal opportunity in the housing industry, adopting fair housing marketing and advertising policies, and developing partnerships with community groups.
So far, about one-third of the Valley board’s members have voluntarily committed themselves to the 1992 version of the agreement. Jones and the board would like 100% of the membership to sign up, but “it takes these people a while to get on board,” she said.
