HUD Launching Drive to Curb Discrimination

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is battling housing discrimination with the Los Angeles roll-out today of a campaign to teach immigrants and other vulnerable consumers about their rights.

The national campaign, to be conducted in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese, is being implemented by the watchdog group Consumer Action. A public service announcement will be unveiled today with actor and activist Edward James Olmos speaking in English and Spanish.

Consumer Action will also conduct a town meeting with HUD officials and community housing organizations to promote the $2-million fair housing education campaign and distribute educational materials to street-level activists.

The HUD-funded campaign is part of the department’s efforts to evaluate and combat housing discrimination, said HUD spokesman Larry Bush. Among other newly funded efforts is a $13.5-million nationwide audit to test for and evaluate housing discrimination in urban, suburban and rural communities.

“Essentially we have been an agency that received fair housing complaints and acted on them,” Bush said. “This is a broader effort to determine the extent to which fair housing continues to be an obstacle.”

The education program targets minorities because they, particularly immigrants, are the “people who get preyed upon by the unscrupulous,” said Cher McIntyre, the Los Angeles director of advocacy for Consumer Action.

“We have a huge immigrant population in this city who are not familiar with these [laws] or they’re intimidated by landlords,” she said. “We want them to know what their rights are and how to complain.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said last month that some subprime lenders are exploiting low-income neighborhoods, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo has called predatory lending a “national crisis.” About half a dozen states, including California, are considering new laws to cap loan fees or mandate consumer education.

And on Tuesday, Fannie Mae--the nation’s largest home loan financier--announced guidelines to fight predatory practices in the exploding mortgage market for buyers with low incomes and poor credit.