Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Housing
New Federal Rule Makes LGBT Housing Discrimination Illegal
01 week ago
On Saturday the Obama Administration announced historic new federal rules that will strengthen housing discrimination protections for transgender and other LGBT people.
The new regulations were announced by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan at the 24th National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, and will be officially published this coming week.
The new rule prohibits owners and operators of federally-funded or federally-insured housing, as well as lenders offering federally-insured mortgages from discriminating based on gender identity or sexual orientation. The update also clarifies the definition of “family” to ensure that LGBT families are not excluded from HUD programs.
“If you are denying HUD housing to people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, actual or perceived, you’re discriminating, you’re breaking the law, and you will be held accountable. That’s what equal access means, and that’s what this rule is going to do,” said HUD Secretary Donovan in a statement.
HUD cited The National Transgender Discrimination Survey showing that 19% of transgender and gender non-conforming people had been refused a home or apartment and 11% had been evicted because of their gender identity or expression. The study also showed that 19% of transgender people have been homeless at some point in their lives, and 29% of those had been turned away from homeless shelters and a majority were harassed when they could get in to a shelter.
New HUD Rule Delivers for LGBT Americans
01 week ago
Last year, we told you about a proposed rule from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regarding equal access to HUD housing programs regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Among the key requirements of the rule is a prohibition on inquires regarding sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as a prohibition on using sexual orientation or gender identity as grounds for decision-making in Federal Housing Administration (FHA) programs. Additionally, the rule brings the definition of “eligible families” into the 21st century by including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT).
This afternoon, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that the final rule will be published in the Federal Register early next week, meaning that it will take effect in just a little over one month from today! Needless to say, this is a tremendous step forward in efforts to stamp out discrimination against LGBT people in housing.
Of critical importance, the rule will require all organizations that operate HUD-assisted or HUD-insured housing facilities to serve LGBT Americans looking for shelter and housing—including religious organizations. As a coalition of more than 30 civil rights organizations (including the ACLU) wrote to HUD last year, once a religious organization chooses to provide housing services or programs with the aid of federal funds and benefits from HUD, it cannot shield itself from traditional safeguards that protect civil rights in the provision of those services. Those religious organizations that provide wholly private housing services will be unaffected by this new rule. We are pleased that HUD said that all organizations must provide equal access to HUD housing programs and did not sanction the use of religion to discriminate.
As Secretary Donovan stated last year at the time of the publication of the proposed rule, “This is a fundamental issue of fairness. We have a responsibility to make certain that public programs are open to all Americans. With this proposed rule, we will make clear that a person’s eligibility for federal housing programs is, and should be, based on their need and not on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
The ACLU could not agree with Secretary Donovan more strongly. This new federal rule will move us one step closer to an America where decent, affordable housing is available to all Americans.
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Victims of Domestic Abuse Deserve Protection, Not an Eviction Notice
02 months ago
Imagine coming home to find that you are being evicted from your apartment. But it’s not because you haven’t paid rent; it’s because you are a victim of domestic violence. That’s exactly what happened to ACLU client Tanica Lewis.
In 2006, Tanica and her two daughters were kicked out of their apartment, after her ex-boyfriend violated a protective order and broke into Tanica’s apartment by smashing her windows and kicking in the door. A few days later, Tanica was told she had to vacate the premises because she failed to properly supervise her “guest.” Tanica and her daughters were forced to move into another apartment, but at a higher rent and farther from Tanica’s job.
Unfortunately for Tanica, housing protections created by the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) did not apply to her situation even though she lived in an apartment complex financed by federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. Currently, VAWA housing protections only apply to two federal housing programs, public housing and Section 8 housing.
But that is about to change. Last week Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) introduced the Housing Rights for Victims of Domestic and Sexual Violence Act (S. 1892). Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) are the lead cosponsors. This important piece of legislation would extend VAWA housing protections to nine additional federal programs, including the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, and would cover more than 4 million housing units nationwide.
The bill also would extend housing protections to victims of sexual assault. VAWA protections now only apply to victims of domestic violence, dating violence and stalking. Too often, victims of sexual assault are forced to make the gut-wrenching decision to either stay put in a dangerous situation, or lacking any other housing option, choose homelessness, where they are further at risk of sexual abuse. Finally, the bill would allow victims to relocate to other available housing if staying in their current home posed a danger.
It’s time to stop punishing the victims of domestic and sexual abuse. Congress must act quickly to end the discrimination that endangers an already vulnerable population. We thank Sen. Franken for taking the first important step in addressing this problem and hope that lawmakers will work together to pass this bill. No one should have to experience what Tanica and her daughters had to go through.
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Concord Slammed the Door in My Face Because I Wanted to Protect My Children
0My name is Hope. I am survivor of domestic violence. To protect myself, I fled from my husband and changed my name and social security number. I have sole custody of two children from this abusive relationship. I never changed my children’s names or social security numbers because the courts require notifying both parents of the change and I did not want my abuser to be able to track us down.
Fleeing has kept us alive but has proven to be more of a struggle than I could have ever anticipated.
Recently, my children and I found what seemed to be a family-friendly apartment complex and applied to rent an apartment there. After seeing an apartment, we loved everything about it — especially the price and size. After passing all the necessary credit checks I was given forms to release the social security numbers of my children.
This instantly shook me. I was confused and scared. I explained to the office assistant that doing so would put myself and my children in danger.
The apartment complex, which is run by Concord Management, refused to rent to me unless I handed over the full social security numbers of my children. I discovered that not only did they require them for their "auditing purposes," but they would want to run the numbers as well, which would alert my abuser to our current whereabouts. I pleaded with the apartment managers and offered to provide proof of our situation and the very real danger we were in. I even offered to release the last four digits of my children’s social security numbers.
After all of this fear, shame and embarrassment, they denied me. Telling me that if I could not furnish the children’s full social security numbers they would not rent to me. We didn’t know where we would live if they wouldn’t rent to us. The fear of being homeless almost convinced me of giving them the social security numbers. I did not.
I felt so helpless, afraid and shameful. I felt less than. To refuse survivors, such as my children and myself, not only brought back feelings of being victimized, it literally victimized us again. We were put in a situation where we had to choose between being safe and having housing. It made living with what we knew, even if it is abusive, seem preferable to a world where there is too little understanding.
The threat of being denied housing, the very bare necessity for survival, can make domestic violence survivors stay in their abusive situation or force them to give up their personal information, putting them at risk.
To be denied a HOME, a safe haven, simply because of a policy of collecting children’s social security numbers for whatever reason is dangerous, unethical, and in my opinion discriminatory to survivors and their families
I felt voiceless. I felt powerless. I was afraid. All because I fled domestic violence, and had to keep my children safe from our abuser.
Together with the American Civil Liberties Union Women’s Rights Project and the ACLU of Florida, I am filing a housing discrimination complaint against Concord Management alleging violations of the federal Fair Housing Act’s prohibition on sex and familial status discrimination. You can help me take action by letting Concord know that they need to change their policy.
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Honoring Eric Quezada’s Love for San Francisco’s Mission District
04 months ago
It’s been a little more than a month since housing activist Eric Quezada lost his battle with cancer. To family, friends and many members of the city’s Mission District, a historic Latino community, the decades Quezada spent as a community organizer fighting unjust evictions and skyrocketing rents were a reminder that any fight for justice must be grounded in the spirit of love.
Quezada dedicated his life to fighting gentrification and low wages. A recent memorial was held in San Francisco to honor Quezada’s life and work. For decades, Quezada worked with the immigrants and working people of the Mission district His accomplishments are stellar in their own right: he was executive director of Dolores Street Community Services , the second vice chair of the Democratic County Central Committee, and program director for the Mission Housing Development Corporation. Quezada also worked with the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition and the Mission Economic Development Agency.
“I come from revolutionary politics,” Quezada remarked in a 2010 interview with Poor Magazine during his run for city supervisor, noting that he came into radical politics at an early age and was deeply aligned with the struggles of working class people. “We’re trying to slow down gentrification and get more affordable housing.”
Quezada was well-loved and much respected by many in the community. As friend and ally Victor Valdiviezo remarked to San Francisco Public Press, Eric was “someone who constantly learned and evolved from his experiences and who struggle din honesty for the entire community. Those type of folks are very rare indeed.”
In the video that’s above from 2010, Quezada makes his case for city supervisor by detailing his long struggle for equity in the Mission District. Quezada passed away on August 24, 2011 after a seven-year struggle with cancer.
Below are some photos of Eric Quezada in the community.
Eric Quezada speaks to “Save Mission Housing” press conference, March 21, 2005 (Photo: Creative Commons/janinsanfran)
(Photo: Creative Commons/sashax)
(Photo: Creative Commons/sashax)
(Photo: Creative Commons/sashax)
Sen. Kerry and Rep. Nadler Introduce Housing Non-Discrimination Legislation
04 months ago
This morning, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) introduced the Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) Act in the Senate and House. This legislation would, among other things, amend both the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in housing and credit. It would help to expand the numbers of Americans who have equal access to credit, home lending, the home rental market, and the home sales market.
It should go without saying that access to stable, secure housing is essential for success in life, and the ability to become a home owner is a fundamental aspect of the American Dream. And yet, those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) often experience discrimination in housing, denying them the security of one of life’s most basic necessities.
The need for the legislation could not be clearer. Earlier this year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) utilized some of the regulatory tools at their disposal to begin addressing this extensive problem by requiring equal access to HUD housing programs regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. HUD stated that there is strong evidence that LGBT individuals and families do not have equal access to housing. As one example, they discussed a 2007 study of housing discrimination based on sexual orientation in Michigan:
Testers who posed as gay or lesbian home seekers received unfavorable treatment on issues such as whether housing was available, the amount of rent, application fees, and levels of encouragement as compared to testers posing as heterosexual home seekers. The gay and lesbian testers also were subjected to offensive comments.
Real-world personal stories and experiences certainly confirm what the studies have found. Take as an example Rayetta Darby and Erika Johnson, a committed same-sex couple in Huntington, West Virginia, who were denied the ability to rent an apartment simply because of their sexual orientation and the fact that they are in a relationship together. As Darby reported to WSAZ News Channel 3:
I said, ‘Is it the gay thing?’ and I got a response that, ‘Yeah, I guess I have a problem with that…’
In addition, a recent survey of more than 6,000 transgender people conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found "significant levels of housing instability for transgender people." For example:
26 percent of respondents reported having to find different places to sleep for short periods of time due to bias. 11 percent of respondents reported having been evicted due to bias, and 19 percent reported becoming homeless due to bias.
As an illustration of the discrimination transgender men and women experience in housing, John Trasvina, HUD Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, wrote about the experiences of Mitch and Michelle, a Washington State couple, in a Huffington Post blog earlier this year:
…I met Mitch and Michelle, a couple with children, a family like any other. But Mitch had been denied the opportunity to add Michelle to his public housing voucher for the sole reason that he was transgender and therefore Mitch and Michelle did not fit into the public housing authority’s definition of family.
Passage of the HOME Act would move us one step closer to an America where decent, affordable housing is available to all Americans. Kudos to Sen. Kerry and Rep. Nadler for spearheading efforts to expand housing non-discrimination protections in Congress.
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Racial Segregation Kills More Than Lung Cancer
07 months ago
Each year, 176,000 Americans die as a result of racial segregation, according to a study reported in The New York Times this week. That’s more than the number of people killed by strokesin accidents each year. While the study does not describe precisely how segregation — defined as living in a neighborhood with more than 25 percent African-American population — kills, other research has noted that segregation is linked to inferior health care, inadequate access to healthy food, substandard housing, environmental conditions and lower quality schools, all of which can contribute to health problems that ultimately lead to early death.
Yet despite this astounding burden, federal funding to overcome segregation and its contributing causes each year pales in comparison to the $5 billion dollars spent annually to address 562,000 cancer-related deaths (156,000 of which are from lung cancer)
On top of this, the Supreme Court has made it even harder to find ways to mitigate the damage caused by segregation by holding that the U.S. Constitution only protects against intentional racial discrimination. The Supreme Court has also drastically limited the ability of school districts to desegregate, preventing them from taking many proactive measures to integrate schools. As a result, many children across the nation still attend public schools that are effectively segregated, and children graduating from segregated public school systems are significantly less likely to earn a college degree (estimated to contribute to nearly a quarter of a million deaths each year) and at much higher risk of living out a life in poverty (133,000 deaths).
Even though the Supreme Court has blocked legal efforts to remedy the effects of segregation, the ACLU found a creative way to force governments to confront and fix the deadly effects of segregation. Twenty years ago, the ACLU brought a landmark case, Sheff v. O’Neill, against the state of Connecticut, charging the Hartford School District’s racially segregated schools violated minority students’ constitutional rights to an equal education. At the time the lawsuit was filed, minorities comprised 93 percent of the student population, despite being only 25 percent of schoolchildren statewide.
Our case went all the way to the Connecticut Supreme Court, which ultimately did what the U.S. Supreme Court would not by ruling that even unintentional segregation in education violated the rights of these schoolchildren under the state constitution.
Thanks to the Connecticut Supreme Court, children who go through Hartford’s public school system will now have a fighting chance to graduate high school, attend college, and take advantage of economic opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty and live long and healthy lives. The ACLU, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Center for Children’s Advocacy continue to monitor the state of Connecticut’s compliance with the Sheff ruling to this day. Progress has been made, there is more work to be done, as the Sheff case deals only with segregation in education, and will not help those who confront segregation in housingthe workplace. And not every state constitution has beenwill be read as expansively as it was in Connecticut in Sheff.
Congress can help tackle some of these deadly effects of segregation. It should act now by amending Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 so that private individuals can go to court to address the unintentional discriminatory acts which continue to have such a devastating impact on their lives. By so doing, it can help address the problems created by the nation’s highest court, and maybe save a few lives in the process.
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New HUD Rules Target Stereotyping of Domestic Violence Victims
01 year ago
Tanica Lewis and her children were evicted from their apartment after her ex-partner, Reuben Thomas, broke in while she was at work. Her landlord decided that Thomas was her "guest" and held her responsible for his property damage, despite the protective order she previously had obtained against him and his arrest for home invasion.
After Kathy Cleaves-Milan reported that her ex-partner had threatened her with a gun, she and her daughter were evicted. A copy of her order of protection was stapled to the eviction notice, and the housing manager stated, "The basis for that eviction was the fact the violence had occurred."
These are just two instances when landlords have blamed survivors of domestic violence for the crimes of abusers. They reveal how stereotypes about victims – for example, that victims invite and therefore are accountable for the abuse – can result in their homelessness. Such outdated thinking about domestic violence is the only explanation for why Thomas could ever have been considered Ms. Lewis’ "guest," or why a housing manager would think that an order of protection could provide justification for evicting a victim.
Responding to advocacy by the ACLU and others, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued new regulations yesterday implementing the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that emphasized the need to protect domestic violence victims, not evict them. It instructed public housing authorities and owners of Section 8-subsidized properties to take actions that could include: "transferring the victim to a different unit, barring the perpetrator from the property, contacting law enforcement to increase police presence or develop other plans to keep the property safe, or seeking other legal remedies to prevent the perpetrator from acting on a threat."
HUD also recognized that stereotypical assumptions about victims often lead to their eviction. It said: "Restrictions predicated on public safety cannot be based on stereotypes, but must be tailored to particularized concerns about individual residents."
Unfortunately, VAWA and the regulations do not apply to all housing in this country, including the apartments in which Ms. Lewis and Ms. Cleaves-Milan lived. But they are an important step in guaranteeing that domestic violence survivors can find safety and keep their homes. HUD should continue to strengthen these protections and finalize regulations prohibiting sexual harassment in housing so that one’s home is truly a safe place.
(Originally posted on Feministing.)
The Endemic Fraud the Foreclosure Scandal Reveals–Again
01 year ago
Ed. Note: ColorLines editorial director Kai Wright is the Alfred Knobler Fellow of The Nation Institute. This essay appears in the Nov. 8 issue of The Nation magazine.
A year and a half ago, I sat in the office of Jim Kowalski, a prosecutor turned defense attorney in Jacksonville, Florida, listening to him describe a crime that was, by then, known to anyone who’d dealt with the foreclosure process. Kowalski worked with a small cadre of local attorneys trying to slow the area’s onslaught of foreclosures. In the aggregate, they were monstrously outmatched by banks with subcontractors of subcontractors dedicated to removing families from homes quickly. But on a case-by-case basis, they stole the advantage because they knew the mortgage industry’s secret: it had buckled under the weight of its own corruption. All you had to do was force the banks’ empty hand, and you could keep a client in her home.
The biggest tell came over listservs that connected legal aid outfits and small private practices overwhelmed by the sudden demand for foreclosure defenses. As lawyers like Kowalski compared notes on the three big banks whose servicing arms controlled nearly half the mortgage market, they noticed case after case of irregularities. Once they forced the servicers into court, the pattern became clear: everybody involved in the securities process had cut so many corners in pursuit of record profits, had operated with such disregard for the many steps that ensure a safe and sound mortgage market, that they couldn’t even show who owned the debt.
In April 2008 Kowalski deposed a Citibank residential lending employee, Tamara Price, whose name had recurred on foreclosures. Price described a system for creating bogus mortgage assignments that was baldly deceptive, all the way down to the fake “vice president” title with which Price signed her name. The case was exceptional only in that Price was on record. Already, scattered judges had reached their wits’ end with the legal corner-cutting and were throwing out foreclosures. Lawyers in the trenches clung hopefully to the trend; most national advocates quietly said it would never prompt the sort of federal leadership that the foreclosure crisis demands. More than two years and millions of foreclosures later, a deposition similar to Price’s–from a GMAC employee who admits to “robo-signing” 10,000 sworn documents a month–has revealed the fraud to the whole country.
READ THE FULL ESSAY AT THE NATION.
Katrina Survivors in Alabama are STILL Waiting for Help
01 year ago
The stories of failed post-Katrina housing recovery in Alabama are not hard to find. Grandparents are stuck in homes with rotting roofs, families who had to fight their way into FEMA trailers but got sick inside every one they were given. Families who’ve lost their homes have also lost their livelihoods indefinitely because of the BP oil spill.
Seven years on and multiple disasters later, many in Alabama whose homes were ruined by Hurricane Katrina have been forgotten by the federal government, or passed over by charities for other more pressing disasters, or dismissed by news outlets that focus only on New Orleans.
Congressional funds for Gulf Coast recovery were already inadequate, but it has never made it out to parts of Alabama. Trinity Gardens, a poor municipality on the north side of Mobile, is a standout example. Around 1,200 families there filed for FEMA funds and were accepted by the federal program–until it ran out of money, said Leevones Dubose, who’s the director of the Bay Area Women’s Coalition.
“They fixed about 400, and left about 800 families without no kind of support whatsoever,” Dubose explained.
Dubose said she’s counted 40 families in Trinity Gardens who are living with plastic tarps flapping over their roofs right now, because they were turned down for federal aid.
The problem for many in the poorest neighborhoods was that people lived in homes that were already old; FEMA inspectors told people they didn’t qualify for recovery money if their homes were already in bad shape to begin with.
“Just because people were denied does not mean their problem does not exist,” Dubose said. “We got mold, mildew, a lot of houses are vacant. Not because of BP, not because of foreclosures, but because of Hurricane Katrina.”
Groups like the Equity and Inclusion Campaign are working to raise awareness and fight to collect accurate data. Their research shows that housing recovery has passed over the people who needed it the most: the elderly and the poor, those with disabilities.
According to the EIC, Mobile and Baldwin Counties are recording their largest homeless population in five years, numbers that surpass even the sharp post-Katrina increases.
It is a story where there is no brand new news: there is just the ongoing fight on the part of local groups to stay in the public eye, to let the government know there are families who continue to live in homes damaged by Katrina.
Dubose said the Bay Area Women Coalition has tried everything. Dubose rattled off the names of congressmen and senators who’ve toured Trinity Gardens and promised help was just around the corner. “Senators Shelby and Sessions were invited,” Dubose recalls. “Gubernatoral candidates come out and see the conditions out here. Joe Boehner, our congressman, and Artur Davis, they’ve been here to my office and I’ve taken them on tour to show them the houses that have fallen in.” Groups have also delegations to D.C. to lobby Congress. Still, help has never arrived.
Trinity Gardens is taking matters into its own hands. Residents have organized a co-op to try to rebuild their own homes. So many people are out of work because of the BP oil spill and there isn’t any extra cash flowing through the neighborhood. But there’s plenty of will for getting homes fixed up, and even a couple handy roofers and plumbers in the area. The co-op had its first meeting this May, and even though only 40 people were invited, more than 80 people turned up. Dubose says they’ve got a couple committed volunteer contractors who come by after hours and are slowly making their way around the neighborhood to assess damage and see how much a self-funded rebuilding project will cost.
Work is slow; materials are expensive and everyone is volunteering their time. The co-op desperately needs building materials and more than just the $50 membership dues from families who are already digging in deep to pay that much. The co-op is hoping to get started fixing their first house in a few weeks. They haven’t given up on hearing back from the federal government, but they can’t wait anymore.