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An important civil rights victory in the recent
budget agreement has gone largely unnoticed. This victory, a rejection
of Republican attempts to dismantle the fair housing enforcement system,
should be celebrated, not ignored.
Some people may believe that fair housing is by now a minor issue. If
so, they are sadly mistaken: discrimination in housing continues to be
widespread. The most recent national study, based on matched pairs of
minority and white households in search of housing, found that both
African American and Hispanic households encounter some form of
unfavorable treatment in over half their visits to housing agents. For
example, about 10 percent of African American and Hispanic home seekers
are totally excluded from available housing and minority households are
shown 25 percent fewer housing units, on average, than are equally
qualified whites. Minority households also are offered far less
assistance in identifying housing that fits their needs and often are
steered to neighborhoods with minority concentrations or low house
values. Moreover, discrimination in housing makes a key contribution to
many urban ills, including deteriorated housing, concentrated
disadvantage in urban schools, poor access of minorities to suburban
jobs, and high minority poverty rates.
Others may believe that fair housing is controversial. Again, they are
wrong. The vast majority of the American people support freedom of
choice in housing. In one recent national survey, for example, 75
percent of whites disagreed with the statement that "white people have
the right to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods if they want to."
So what did some Republicans try to do?
First, they tried to shift HUD's fair housing enforcement functions
(centered in the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity or FHEO)
to the Justice Department. This step would have been a serious mistake.
Justice plays a crucial role in the enforcement system and deserves
great credit for the steps it has taken in recent years. However,
Justice has no experience with the activities that are at the heart of
FHEO's mission, namely responding to individual complaints and assisting
public and private fair housing organizations at the state and local
level; the mandate, history, and culture of the Justice Department also
are not well suited to these other tasks. Moreover, moving these
activities from HUD to Justice would distract Justice from its vital
prosecutorial mission, and the complex, costly transition would
undoubtedly set back fair housing enforcement for a long, long time.
Second, they tried to eliminate the Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP),
which was passed during the Reagan Administration. FHIP gives grants to
community-initiated programs to combat discrimination in housing. These
programs are designed and run by community organizations, such as New
York's Open Housing Center, not Washington bureaucrats. For example,
many FHIP-funded programs use matched pairs of minority and white home
seekers to identify discriminators and, ultimately, to provide
apartments or monetary relief to victims of discrimination. It makes no
sense to cut a cost-effective program that supports basic democratic
principles, local initiative, community responsibility, and a smaller
federal bureaucracy.
Finally, they tried to prohibit the use of HUD funds for any activity
concerning redlining or discrimination in home insurance, including the
continued prosecution of ongoing cases. Such a prohibition would be a
serious threat to the integrity of the Fair Housing Act. Evidence from
1994 studies by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and
the Fair Housing Alliance (and from earlier studies by academics) shows
that home insurance often is offered at higher prices in minority
neighborhoods than in comparable white neighborhoods and indeed
sometimes is not offered in minority neighborhoods at all. Exempting
insurance companies from the Fair Housing Act would legitimize their
discriminatory actions and create a dangerous precedent.
More than 25 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, we have
finally built a system in which community groups, state and local
governments, HUD, and Justice work together in support of freedom of
choice in housing. The recent budget agreement, which rejects all three
of the above proposals, demonstrates that fair housing is still a
bi-partisan cause, supported by all but the most extreme Republican
voices.
To
maintain freedom of choice for all Americans in search of a home and to
combat the high costs of housing discrimination, we should strengthen
our fair housing enforcement system--not dismantle it. We should resist
all future attempts to move FHEO to the Justice Department or to exempt
some parties from the Fair Housing Act. We should support, not
undermine, state and local enforcement agencies, both public and
private. We should improve the flow of information about the behavior of
real estate brokers by collecting information on the location of all
listings and home sales. We should make certain that the enforcement
system extends to housing market participants, including insurance
companies and mortgage bankers, who have received relatively little
scrutiny in the past. These recent civil rights victories should lead us
to redouble our commitment to the principle of fair housing, which
remains vital to our promise as a free, democratic--and diverse--nation.
*John Yinger is Trustee Professor of Public
Administration and Economics at The Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
His book Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs of
Housing Discrimination was published by the Russell Sage Foundation.