Image courtesy of Jezebel.com

Several weeks ago the worlds of web-based technology and fair housing met head-to-head in a conflict that illuminates some disturbing trends.  Some of you may have followed the recent launch of Picketreport.com, a hot new mapping website backed by Quicken Loans.  It allows a homeseeker to view an interactive map of a neighborhood that includes businesses in the area like coffee shops and grocery stores, as well as schools and crime reports, all via cute little multi-colored icons.

What you can’t view on Picketreport.com anymore is the website’s flagship Lifestyle module, which used terms like “Young City Solos” and “Middle Class Melting Pot” to describe the kinds of people that live in the neighborhood you are viewing.  Unfortunately, the Lifestyle module also employed glaring racial stereotypes to label communities of color, like “Soul Survivors” and “Soulful Spenders” to describe working class and upper-middle class African American communities, “Ciudad Strivers” to describe middle-class Latino communities, and “Asian Achievers” to describe affluent Asian families.  In case you were wondering, middle and upper class white families were not described as “White Winners,” or “Cruising Caucasians” but rather the race-neutral “American Royalty” and “Silver Sophisticates.”  Business websites lauded Picketreport.com for “tell[ing] consumers what realtors can’t” because of the Fair Housing Act.  One article (that, shockingly, Picketreport.com proudly links to from its website) suggests that real estate agents can now just direct consumers to the website when questions are posed about the kind of people who live in a neighborhood (translation: racial/ethnic demographic.)  See my earlier post about this issue. Read More…

One of the basic underpinnings of the fair housing movement is that everyone should have equal access to housing that is affordable and safe in neighborhoods that meet their needs.

Last week, two 15-year olds in New Orleans lost their lives to tragic gun violence.  Brandon Adams was shot and killed in the Desire neighborhood after having played basketball with his brother.  On Monday, a homeless person discovered Christine Marcelin’s bullet-riddled body in New Orleans East.  Brandon and Christine were a couple and were in the 8^th grade at KIPP Believe College Prep.  By some accounts, Brandon may have been attacked because of a petty argument over turf in the park he was playing basketball in before his death.  The motive for Christine’s death is unclear according to media accounts so far.

This is a story we should all be paying attention to.  Doing so honors Brandon and Christine and hopefully their families.  It also might give us some insight into what causes our astronomical murder rate, and what we can do to address it.

The fair housing movement offers us one useful perspective.  A fair housing analysis suggests that where a person lives determines numerous other quality of life factors including their access to healthy food, educational opportunities, air quality, and yes- even exposure to violent crime.  Within this framework we must acknowledge that the state of the neighborhoods where these children were murdered in is an important part of their stories.  In one article, a reporter writes about the scene of Brandon’s murder: Read More…

This week the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) released its annual Fair Housing Trends report for 2012:  Fair Housing in a Changing Nation.  The report reviews fair housing cases brought and settled by private enforcement agencies like NFHA and GNOFHAC, as well as HUD and the Department of Justice.  As in past years, the report shows the highest number of fair housing complaints in the rental market, with race, familial status, and disability discrimination complaints topping the charts.

The report also highlights a development that has excited the fair housing world for the past couple of years: the use of HUD’s “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) requirement as a tool to combat Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) attitudes that often serve as a roadblock to affordable housing development around the country.  In many communities, NIMBYism on the part of elected officials, vocal community members, and neighborhood/civic associations, results in hardship for low and moderate-income families who must to struggle with housing that is unaffordable, poorly maintained, and/or isolated from resources and amenities that tend to cluster around prosperous communities.  This impact is not race-neutral by any means; according to the NFHA report, “three times as many poor African Americans and over twice as many poor Latinos currently live in resource-poor neighborhoods as compared to poor whites.” Read More…

At the end of last week, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, including Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, passed the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Subcommittee’s 2013 appropriations bill.  Despite an allocation to the Subcommittee at levels below FY 2012, housing received $34.96 billion, an increase of $1.4 billion above the President’s FY 2013 request (due to offsets in receipts from Ginnie Mae and FHA).

While that may seem like great news for housing advocates nationwide, the Senate bill faces a tough road ahead: because the House version, expected later this week, will reflect close to $30 billion less in discretionary spending, resolution of differences between House and Senate versions could prove extremely difficult. Read More…

We talk a lot about how predatory loans were targeted at racial minorities, but it turns out discrimination doesn’t stop at foreclosure.  The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) and four of its member organizations are challenging the ethics of Wells Fargo & CO. and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. by filing a housing discrimination complaint. The complaint was filed because of an undercover investigation of Wells Fargo’s bank-owned foreclosed properties- NFHA found that in white neighborhoods these properties were better maintained than in non-white neighborhoods.

NFHA did an investigation of foreclosed properties owned by Wells Fargo in eight metropolitan areas; Dayton, Ohio, Atlanta, Georgia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Oakland, California, Miami/Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Dallas, Texas, Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, DC. In each of these areas, NFHA investigators came with the same conclusion that more Wells Fargo properties in white neighborhoods were well kept and maintained, while Wells Fargo properties in non-white neighborhoods had many deficiencies. A very small percentage of the Wells Fargo properties in white neighborhoods had similar deficiencies. Some of the deficiencies include water damage, no “for sale” signs, overgrown lawns, broken windows and doors, and trash on the property. Read More…

Throughout October 2011, GNOFHAC partnered with local news affiliate WDSU to conduct testing or mystery shopping of private landlords and apartment complexes in the Mandeville and Covington areas.  If you missed WDSU’s feature on apartment mystery shopping, you can check it out online: http://www.wdsu.com/video/30527977/detail.html.  Our testing revealed that African Americans experienced a difference in treatment based upon their race 64 percent of the time when apartment shopping.  This difference in treatment is discriminatory conduct and is illegal under the federal Fair Housing Act.

As reported in the WDSU story, 7 out of 11 times African Americans faced discrimination when apartment shopping on the Northshore.  This rate of discrimination is higher than what we discovered in our 2007 audit when African American testers were discriminated against 57.5% of the time. Read More…

The President’s budget, released last week, marked the beginning of a long process to keep the federal government operational.  The federal budget, governed by the 2011 Budget Control Act, brings non-security discretionary spending to the lowest share of the economy since the Eisenhower Administration.  The Act reduces the deficit to less than 3% of GDP in ten years.

What the President presented was a pared down, bare bones package with difficult cuts across programs and agencies, but even these numbers have a tough road ahead in the U.S. Congress.

Congressional budget action will involve budget, authorization and appropriations committees, all of which will have a hand in the future of the proposed budget.  Because three different committees in each chamber of Congress will help to determine spending outcomes, the federal budget process—  including vital housing and infrastructure priorities— has only just begun. Read More…

After over a year of investigation and negotiations, 49 state attorneys general (including Louisiana), the federal government, and the country’s 5 largest mortgage companies- including Ally Bank/GMAC, Bank of America, Citi, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo- agreed to a $26 billion settlement over the robo-signing controversy that came to light in the fall of 2010.

Robo-signing refers to a practice where banks attempted to speed foreclosures by using forged or “robo-signed” signatures on loan documents.  The revelation over the past fourteen months that banks foreclosed on individuals with false or incomplete documentation contributed to national outrage over unfair and abusive foreclosure practices and their devastating impact on families, communities, and the national economy. Read More…

For the first two weeks of February, the GNOFHAC hosted an educational workshop for members of the Freret Neighborhood Center’s Entrepreneur Art Club afterschool program.  GNOFHAC staff were able to help the students at the Center make fair housing key chains to sell along with other crafts at the Freret Market on February 4, 2012. The students also learned about fair housing and discrimination.

After the Freret Market, the students at the Freret Neighborhood Center were able to participate in a game which showed off their competitiveness and willingness to learn about discrimination and fair housing. The Unequal Communities Game is designed to teach children about the importance of being able to choose housing located close to needed resources, and the challenges that may come their way when a family is forced to live in an under-resourced community because of affordability or discrimination.  The Unequal Communities Game really allowed the students to make connections from the game to their everyday lives. Read More…

A little over four months ago a federal judge upheld most parts of the nation’s harshest anti-immigration law to date- Alabama’s infamous House Bill 56 (HB 56). The law has already begun to impact families in Alabama in big ways, and a lot of groups have been doing some strong organizing against it. On February 14th the Alabama Coalition for Immigration Justice will kick off a series of lobby days to convince legislators to overturn the law. Among other things, I have an ongoing concern about the fair housing implications of HB 56 and similar anti-immigration legislation.

A quick recap since it’s been a few months- under HB 56 law enforcement officials are now able to check the immigration status of anyone they reasonably suspect is in the country unlawfully (a similar provision was blocked in the case of Arizona’s SB 1070 because of the implication that it would lead to rampant racial profiling.) Also, public elementary and secondary schools in Alabama can now verify the immigration status of enrolling students and potentially their parents. The law will likely wreak havoc not just on the lives of undocumented Alabamians, but also on the lives of documented immigrants and even U.S. born Latinos who will be vulnerable to profiling. It’s clear that in the wake of HB 56, many Alabama residents may no longer be safe walking down the street, driving their cars, or even sending their kids to school.

They may not even be safe in the most sacred of safe spaces- the home. Read More…