Tag Archives: fair housing

Real estate ad pitfalls

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Monday’s civil rights hearing covered a lot of ground on housing discrimination, but it never got around to advertising. Maybe that’s because illegal ads aren’t as pervasive as they used to be. Signs like this hard seldom seen nowadays:

forrent

The newspaper staffers who oversee classified ads are generally savvy – they’ve been brow-beaten by fair housing activists enough over the years to have a pretty good idea what passes muster and what doesn’t. Then again, how much real estate advertising are newspapers getting these days, anyway? Not as much as they used to, sadly.

The most popular advertising venue that lacks editorial oversight, of course, is Craigslist. And that’s what the Fair Housing Project devotes most of its monitoring time to, in its capacity of advertising watchdog.

Craigslist, to its credit, puts a little blurb in each of the entries, “please flag discriminatory housing ads” with a link to a summary of what’s prohibited under the federal Fair Housing Act. Vermont’s Craigslist does not provide any info about Vermont-specific discrimination, however. “Receipt of public assistance” is a protected class in Vermont, which means ads can’t say “No Section 8.”

Very few do, though, even on unfiltered Craigslist. Over the last five months, browsing Vermont rental ads on Craigslist several times a week, we’ve found 30 ads with one or two violations (or probable violations – we’re not an enforcing agency, after all).

About two-thirds of the violations have pertained to familial status – a federally protected category. That means presence of kids. That is, the ads appear to discriminate against families with children.

Much of the discriminatory language might be characterized as subtle. Just about everybody, even the proverbial small-time landlord, knows better than to say “no children.” Instead, they say things like, “best for singles or couples” or “single occupant” or “college students only.”

Roughly one-third of the violations pertain to receipt of public assistance. Here again, the language is less than direct. “Professionals only” … other units “occupied by executives, business owners” … “located in a quiet, professional neighborhood.”

The great majority of real estate ads on Craigslist are fine, at least in fair housing terms. Most advertisers, intentionally or not, abide by this useful guideline for what to put in the ad: Describe the property, not who you want to live there.

Nuggets from Vermont’s civil rights hearing

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Monday’s half-day hearing on “housing issues” held in the Statehouse by the Vermont Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights broke little new ground on the fair housing front. A few points worth highlighting:

  • Housing discrimination by race and national origin is still very much with us, as evidenced by Vermont Legal Aid’s 2014 testing. (White American renters received preferential treatment in 46 percent of the national origin tests and 36 percent of the race-based tests, for example.) The new Vermont NAACP chapter reported having received about 50 housing discrimination complaints since September; how many of those complaints were referred to investigators at the Human Rights Commission or Vermont Legal Aid was unclear, however. Parts of Burlington and Winooski, in part because of an influx of refugees, are becoming residentially segregated.
  • Race-based discrimination, often disguised with “a smile and a handshake,” tends to be more subtle than disability-based discrimination. The latter category regularly draws the most complaints to the commission and Vermont Legal Aid. Affordable housing accessible to people with disabilities is in chronically short supply.
  • Vermont’s low vacancy rate can exacerbate discrimination, as landlords have more latitude to be “choosey.”
  • Small-time landlords, who own one or just a few rentals, are more likely than their large-scale, professional counterparts to be ignorant of fair housing law; and the great majority of the state’s roughly 7,000 landlords are not members of the landlords’ association. One remedy is more education and outreach, to landlords and tenants.
  • One proposal that might ensure better fair-housing-law compliance, not to mention code enforcement: a state rental registry, coupled with mandatory fair-housing training for landlords.

 

Today’s Statehouse presentation

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Here’s the statement Ted Wimpey provided today to the Vermont Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights at a hearing in Montpelier on “Housing Issues”:

 

For nearly two decades, the Fair Housing Project of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity has worked on a variety projects aimed at eliminating or mitigating various aspects of illegal housing discrimination in Vermont. We have been involved, with Vermont Legal Aid as partners, in business practices fair housing audit testing, we have organized programs to educate housing consumers about their fair housing rights; conducted fair-housing trainings for landlords, realtors, municipal and state officials and the general public; received vetted and referred complaints regarding perceived fair housing violations; monitored real estate ads for fair housing violations; and published and distributed fair housing guidebooks in English and more than a dozen other languages.

FHP

While continuing to perform many of these functions, the Fair Housing Project has been focusing increasingly on addressing systemic barriers to fair housing choice which can take forms such as excessively restrictive or exclusionary planning, zoning or development policies. With funding from the US Department of HUD, we have in collaboration with a number of organizational partners, mounted a statewide campaign to promote inclusive and affordable development patterns – a campaign called “Thriving Communities: Building a Vibrant, Inclusive Vermont.” This campaign dovetails with a reinvigorated commitment by HUD to better “affirmatively further fair housing” (AFFH), such “affirmatively furthering…” is a mandate of the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 that for action purposes has been ill-defined and erratically observed. Just this summer HUD issued a much-anticipated AFFH rule that brings more clarity at least to the process of evaluating whether entities are effectively attempting to conduct programs and policies aimed at AFFH. We will not now dwell on details of the HUD AFFH rule, which has received a fair amount of popular attention and which essentially sets forth a new planning process for federal funding grantees. Suffice it to say here that the thrust of this initiative is to break down historic concentrations of poverty, and racial and ethnic segregation while proactively encouraging integrated development patterns that includes affordable housing in mixed income, higher-opportunity communities.

Residential racial segregation in U.S., while somewhat diminished – at least in some cities- since passage of the Federal Fair Housing Act 47 years ago, remains pervasive, and income segregation has become even more pronounced. Vermont is about 95 percent white, however, and while pockets of minority concentration exist (77 were identified in the state’s last Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice (AI) – 2012”). Vermont had no census tracts in 2010 where blacks exceeded 7 percent of the population. (Other minorities registered well below 5 percent in most tracts.)

So, while residential segregation by race does bear watching in Vermont – particularly with a significantly increasing number of refugees, immigrants of color, and African Americans typically from more urban areas of the country – it does not exist on the same scale as in many major metropolitan areas. Based on Dissimilarity Index Rankings, the 2012 analysis concluded that Vermont is “moderately segregated for Asians and Blacks and has low degrees of segregation for other minority groups.” It’s also worth noting that minorities in Vermont have lower median incomes and lower rates of home ownership, and that, based on testing results from Vermont Legal Aid’s studies, minorities face higher incidences of housing discrimination than the state’s formal complaint statistics might suggest.

In our Thriving Communities campaign, we’re advocating for broad-based residential inclusiveness – not just for ethnic minorities, but for all protected classes, which in Vermont include people receiving public assistance and which prohibits planning, zoning and permitting processes and decisions that are based on the income level of prospective residents.

In terms of policy and state law, Vermont has taken some positive steps against socioeconomic segregation. (Because of a disparate impact on a number of protected classes under federal and state fair housing law, socioeconomic exclusion effectively equals fair housing law violation especially as regards AFFH obligations.) “Receipt of public assistance” is a protected class under the state’s fair housing law. And Vermont’s law as of 2012 also makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of income in permitting housing or in making land-use decisions. Also under Vermont’s laws defining parameters for municipal planning and zoning, municipal plans must include “a recommended program for addressing low and moderate income persons’ housing needs.” Moreover, bylaws may not exclude housing that meets the needs of low or moderate income people, and multi-family housing or mobile home parks in particular.

But while the state potentially wields at least a small legal stick, for prohibiting income-exclusiveness, many local jurisdictions have a long way to go in providing carrots for more affordable-housing development and, in collaboration with fair and affordable housing advocates and developers, the state and its fair and affordable housing partners needs to keep educating, encouraging and, if necessary cajoling municipalities into more inclusive housing development policies.

Inclusionary zoning, for example, is becoming an increasingly used tool across the country to add to the affordable housing stock in mixed-income neighborhoods – but it is not yet at all common in Vermont. Inclusionary zoning requires or encourages a certain percentage of affordable units in new housing developments. As far as we know, only Burlington and a small hand full of other towns to lesser degrees, have adopted inclusionary zoning bylaws. We’d like to encourage other Vermont municipalities to give this approach serious consideration.

Other signs of municipal commitment to affordable housing development – density bonuses, or waivers/reductions of impact or permitting fees – are also rare exceptions in Vermont. Several years ago, in reviews of land-use regulations in Chittenden and Lamoille counties, the Fair Housing Project found that many towns still had predominantly large minimum lot sizes and that multifamily housing in many cases was a conditional, rather than a permitted use.

What we’d like to see is more Vermont municipalities’ taking steps to encourage multifamily housing developments near town centers, on sites with ready access to good services, schools and transit. In far too many Vermont towns, as is the case across much of the country, lower-wage workers cannot afford to live near their places of employment. Indeed, a recent review of Vermont’s larger employment centers shows that some are woefully short of subsidized housing.

Granted, the limited availability of public funding and tax credits is a constraint on affordable-housing development.   Municipalities nevertheless would do well to prepare the ground for development opportunities as they arise. Vermont’s population deserves no less. More than half Vermont’s renters pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing, and more than one-quarter pays more than 50 percent. Employers feel this burden in another way, when housing costs impede recruitment of workers.

An inclusive community, home to people of a wide range of incomes, backgrounds and skills, embraces fair housing opportunity. We believe this ideal is in keeping with Vermont’s communal character as embodied in its town meeting tradition. Thank you again to the Vermont Advisory Committee for the opportunity to address you on our hopes, fears and concerns regarding fair housing in Vermont.

Ferguson and beyond

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The Times had a story over the weekend on housing segregation in St. Louis region, including Ferguson. Focus was on African American holders of Section 8 vouchers who found themselves limited in where they could move. St. Louis County, it seems, does not have protection for them.

We note here that programs that have sent minority voucher holders to low-poverty areas, in suburban Chicago and Baltimore, for example, have brought benefits in education and employment. We also note that in Vermont, receipt of public assistance is a protected class, so refusing to rent to a Section 8 voucher holder is illegal.

 

 

 

A notable anniversary

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Fifty years ago today, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

lbjsignsvra

This was the second major piece of civil rights legislation of his presidency. The third, of course, is known as the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Click here for a video of LBJ’s stirring remarks on the day of the signing, delivered apparently in the Capitol rotunda.  Faces in the crowd include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Fair housing news from all over

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We begin the week with bulletins from unlikely places that nevertheless bear on what this here website is all about…

It seems that lots of people who work in Mount Pleasant (population 75,000) can’t afford to live there. (Sound familiar?) The town has something called a “workforce housing” plan, intended to encourage development of housing that people who make 80-120 percent of the area’s median income can afford, but the plan hasn’t produced much. And now, there’s talk of eliminating the plan’s density bonuses so that even less affordable housing would result.

subdivision2

And this is a region where about half the residents already spend more than half their income on housing. The good news, we suppose, is that the town has a workforce housing plan and density bonuses to begin with. That’s more than can be said for some communities. The challenge – in Mount Pleasant and elsewhere — is to ensure that they actually come to something.

The editorial comes to a conclusion that sounds rather familiar: “The town needs a healthy mix of residents to remain vibrant and prosperous in the future, and those residents – of all income levels – will need a place to live.”

(By the way the Post and Courier won the public-service Pulitzer this year for a series on domestic violence against women – a prize citation that the newspaper reminds us of on its masthead – so, as newspapers go, it’s fairly reputable.)

salem

Since 1969 Massachusetts, to its credit, has had an affordable housing program called Chapter 40B. Chapter 40B permits the overriding of local zoning bylaws to allow affordable housing development in towns where less than 10 percent of the housing stock is affordable.

More than 50,000 units have been developed over the years, statewide. The problem noted by the letter-writer is that some recent projects have been targeted to urban areas that already have their share of affordable housing, rather than to the “leafy suburbs.” The takeaway point here is that a good measure of new affordable housing units should be located in middle-income and upper-middle income areas, not just in the same old places.

  • Lastly, an update on what appears to be the longest-running fair housing case in the country.

Back in 1971, Hamtramck, Mich., was found to have violated civil rights of black residents by razing their neighborhoods as part of urban renewal. The remedy was supposed to be provision of 200 family housing units and 150 senior housing units, we learn from an Associated Press account. Well, it seems that Hamtramck still hasn’t made good, and the judge who presided over the case originally is still determined, at age 93, to see it through.

Here’s hoping that protracted case in Westchester County, N.Y., is resolved sooner.

 

Cayuga’s waters trickle down

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When it comes to fair housing, Burlington might be able to learn something from Ithaca. Ithaca issued its “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice” in May; Burlington’s most recent AI came out in October 2010, so it’s a bit dated.

Ithaca has about 10,000 fewer people, but the two cities have a few things in common – among them, the university/college presence and predominantly white populations. What’s more, they both happen to be listed in somebody’s “17 Best U.S. Cities for Hippies.”

ithacaoverview

Here are some of the Ithaca findings that might raise parallel questions in Burlington:

  • “People with disabilities report higher levels of discrimination and lower levels of housing accommodation than other residents.”

This appears to be the case in Vermont generally, judging from Human Rights Commission reports, but the extent to which it might be true in Burlington is worth a look.

  • “The City of Ithaca does not currently have a Language Assistance Plan, nor is the need for one mentioned in its 2013 Limited English Proficiency Plan.”

Ithaca’s largest minority population is Asian, and four of the seven languages for which translation services are most needed are Asian. Burlington appears to have a more diverse population of refugees, but the question of how Burlington handles assorted language needs is worth asking. After all, as the Ithaca report notes, “Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires that federal assistance recipients provide language assistance to individuals with limited English proficiency.”

  • “The obligation of sub-recipients of City Community Development Block Grant/HOME funds to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing (AFFH) is not effectively communicated by the City nor understood by its sub-recipients.”

Well! Dare we suggest that AFFH is not terribly well understood in these parts, either?

  • “Exclusionary tactics against households who rely on public and private subsidies for housing is prevalent in the City and has a disparate impact on protected classes in Ithaca.”

The report notes that 15 percent of the county’s residents have disabilities, but 40 percent of Housing Choice Voucher recipients (Section 8) have disabilities. Similarly, African Americans comprise 6.5 percent of the county population but 20 percent of the Section 8 population. Fair housing testing showed that discrimination against voucher holders was widespread.

Now in Vermont, housing discrimination against people on public assistance is illegal. How commonly the state’s fair housing law is violated remains an open question, though. What share of Burlington’s Section 8 population is disabled or minority, and how do these people fare in the rental market? Perhaps the city’s next fair housing assessment will address these questions.

 

Socioeconomic segregation: On the rise?

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Across the country, residential segregation by race has declined slightly over the last 40 years, since the Fair Housing Act was passed, but it’s still pronounced in major metropolitan areas. Residential segregation by income, however, has been on the rise since 1970.

So say three sociologists in a journal article published this month, “Neighborhood Income composition by Household Race and Income, 1990-2009.” This one of several scholarly articles in recent years documenting the increase in socioeconomic segregation nationally.

Studies like this typically focus on urban areas, so one might wonder how much their findings apply to a demographic outlier like Vermont. Still, it’s worth considering whether some conclusions resonate here. Here’s one:

“(M)iddle-class households are typically located in neighborhoods that are more similar to those of low-income households than to those of high-income households. That is, high-income households re more segregated from middle-class and poor households than low-income households re from the middle class and the rich.”

This is consistent with an earlier study of residential segregation by income that found that “During the last four decades, the isolation of the rich has been consistently greater than the isolation of the poor.”

Why might that matter? “The increasing geographic isolation of affluent families means that a significant proportion of society’s resources are concentrated in a smaller and smaller proportion of neighborhoods.”

How Vermont’s neighborhood and regional compositions by income are changing is a dissertation topic waiting to be explored. The 2012 “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice” offers a mere snapshot from the 2010 Census. Of the state’s 184 census tracts, there were 23 where at least 51 percent of the residents met the criterion for low-to-moderate income status (less than 80 percent median income). Here they are again:

map5lmi

Is the number of LMI districts on the rise in Vermont or not? Perhaps the upcoming state assessment, to be undertaken under HUD’s new affirmatively furthering fair housing rule, will offer some clues.

 

 

Putting AFFH under your pillow

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You’ve been lying awake at night wondering what affirmatively furthering fair housing (AFFH) will mean in Vermont, right?

cows

Just kidding. If AFFH isn’t on the tip of your tongue yet, we understand. It is, however, an important part of the public policy lexicon, so you might as well start getting used to it. Ted Wimpey’s op-ed in today’s Times Argus is a nice entry point.

Among other things AFFH will afford a fresh look at fair housing choice in Vermont, drawing from data that HUD will provide. This will take the form of “assessment” reports – to be done for Burlington (a federal grant area in its own right) and for the state as a whole.

Chances are, the findings in these reports won’t come as a huge surprise. Consider the “State of Vermont’s “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice,” completed in 2012.

That report addressed, among other things, racial residential patterns. According to the 2010 census, Vermont was 95.3 percent white. Blacks accounted for 1 percent of the 2010 population; Asians, 1.3 percent; and Hispanic residents, 1.5 percent. That analysis defined areas of concentration as double those levels. So, in the case of African Americans, there were 22 census tracts where the percentage of African Americans was 2 percent or higher, five of which were in Burlington.

Compared to concentrations in other, more urban states, Vermont’s numbers are quite low. Still, as Vermont’s draws increasing numbers of people of color, these numbers – and the patterns of concentration – bear watching, and it will be interesting to see how they play out in the coming AFFH assessment.

Fair housing backlash?

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An interesting op-ed in the Times today suggests that two recent boons for fair housing – the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the disparate impact doctrine and HUD’s affirmatively furthering fair housing rule – might generate a backlash from an unlikely quarter: white liberals. White liberals tend to be supportive of fair housing initiatives, the argument goes, but not necessarily when then that means stepping up racial integration of their own neighborhoods.

The example cited in the op-ed is New York’s Westchester County, where a Republican executive has been fighting a desegregation order for years, apparently with support from white Democrats in a preponderantly Democratic district. A summary of the Westchester fair housing case, as described by the organization that brought the suit that led to the order, can be found here.

TappanZeebridge

The recent push for racial integration in Westchester is sometimes portrayed as an example vigorous fair housing enforcement – or “affirmatively furthering” of fair housing – that has been mostly lacking around the country over the past four decades.

In Vermont, where racial minorities are less than 5 percent of the population, affirmatively furthering fair housing might have a somewhat different thrust – toward socioeconomic integration. The goal would be to ensure that lower-income people generally have housing choices in low-poverty, high opportunity areas. Granted, low income is not a protected class, per se, under the federal Fair Housing Act. But disability is protected class, and people with disability are more likely to be of lower income; and under the state fair housing law, receipt of public assistance is a protected class, too.

Well then, how are liberal Vermonters likely to respond to socioeconomic integration? Drawing on the Westchester analogy, might some people who profess support for diversity and tolerance object to proposals for affordable housing in or near their own neighborhoods? We’ll see.