Melissa Salmon

Melissa Salmon

05-03-04

Ethics Research

Fair housing and local enforcement is an issue that needs to be addressed in Bowling Green. This research consists of three parts: communities that have moved from only having regional enforcement to having local enforcement; learning what agencies are in charge of local enforcement, and benefits and costs of local enforcement. Research supports local enforcement in cities that have both regional and local enforcement. Research also shows that local enforcement agencies are more efficient, effective, and can be more thorough in investigating claims than most regional fair housing enforcement.

The Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing Opportunity Council (EHOC) is a not-for-profit local fair housing enforcement agency largely funded by local businesses.1 Even though it began in 1992 with a HUD grant, it is now the only local enforcement agency in the Metropolitan St. Louis area. The EHOC 2000 Annual Report on Housing Discrimination shows that they received more complaints and investigated a higher percentage of cases in the Metro St. Louis area than HUD and the Missouri Commission on Human Rights did in 2000 (See Figure 1). People are more prone to file a complaint locally than they are at the regional level. The EHOC has built partnerships with local companies that help finance their work. Having local enforcement of fair housing increases funding and also allows people to present their concerns with fair housing rights locally. If these agencies have better funding and greater knowledge of their area, it only makes sense that they would be better equipped to handle each and every fair housing complaint made.

Figure 1

2000 Complaints

2

The EHOC partners with these businesses that support them financially, but the businesses also help the EHOC in creating fair housing awareness in the community. The EHOC plans to have more statistics later (when?) to show how their numbers of complaints of discrimination have decreased due to the education and awareness they are promoting.

In the Committee on Civil Rights Association for the Bar of the City of New York, December, 2001, penalties for those who do not comply with fair housing regulations and who are violating civil rights laws, are vital in getting people to obey the law.3 Enforcement of fair housing is crucial in helping end discriminatory practices. This author purports that penalties for breaking the civil rights laws are the greatest concern. Enforcement and punishment are both important for those who do not abide by the law. Having local enforcement can have more effect in punishing those who choose to discriminate. This, in turn, will promote fair housing awareness and result in less discrimination. Local enforcement agencies would be more likely to know when someone is breaking the law repeatedly and not complying with the fair housing law. Local agencies have a smaller area to work with and are able to access each and every case more efficiently than regional enforcement agencies.

The down side to local enforcement not supported by HUD is that there may not be as much financial support. On the other hand, if the local enforcement agency is working with a smaller demographic area, it may be funded fairly. Although some agencies are called local agencies, funded by HUD, they are only local to that particular city, usually not more than a few per state. For example, Kentucky has two fair housing testing centers that are Private Enforcement Initiatives funded by HUD. One site is located in Lexington and the other one in Louisville (HUD.org). Residents living anywhere else in the state must contact these agencies through the Civil Rights Commission or directly. There is no research or study on the impact these Private Enforcement Initiative agencies are making, but only having two agencies for the whole state cannot be efficient in investigating every claim as they are required by law.

There are very few local fair housing enforcement agencies that are not funded by HUD. Most of these private agencies are similar to EHOC and branched off of a Civil Rights group, later gaining HUD support. HUD gave EHOC a grant to get started but now they rely on local businesses, personal donations, and county and city grants. Not very many agencies depend on their communities for funding and most “local enforcements” are really HUD in a few different places in each state. EHOC is showing how real local enforcement can make a difference in their community by fighting discrimination.

HUD has many issues to deal with other than just fair housing. This fact alone creates amore substantial case for the need of local enforcement. On HUD’s website at the Policy and Development/Research Information center, John Goering, of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Gregory Squires, from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, wrote a journal as a “Guest Editors’ Introduction” to explain HUD and fair housing.4 Surprisingly, the site contains comments made about HUD’s mishaps and how they struggle to keep fair housing a priority:

Due to inept and corrupt management during the Reagan administration, a review of HUD’s operations completed in 1994 revealed it to be a “grossly mismanaged” agency with a mismatch of goals and resources. It had, as the report noted, an “expectations glut,” which meant that in an area such as fair housing much more was expected than the system could provide in terms of leadership and resources (National Academy of Public Administration, 1994).

The comments in this quote show how HUD cannot possibly complete all that is demanded of it. Apparently, there has been an expectation of what HUD could do in enforcing fair housing; research has shown that this expectation is unrealistic.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights have noted that most Federal agencies have been less than effective in addressing the volume and backlog

of cases on hand and in exercising their broad authority to initiate investigations of discrimination

on a systemic basis. In particular, a review of the Title VI9 enforcement

record of these agencies has found that: “Federal agencies’ budget and staffing for Title

VI implementation and enforcement activities have declined as their civil rights workload

has increased. As a result, few Federal agencies devote sufficient resources to Title VI to

ensure that the agency and its recipients are in compliance with Title VI’s nondiscrimination

provision.”

Federal agencies are not pulling their weight in investigating claims, according to the sources this journal sites. This journal states in the above quote that federal agencies are receiving less funding and have fewer people to help work on discrimination claims, while the number of claims continue to rise. These federal agencies simply cannot handle the amount of work by themselves that is being handed to them.

Roisman has been for years a well-known critic of HUD’s efforts to desegregate its own

programs and she contributes an important array of recommendations and advice about

how HUD and local public housing agencies might best proactively address “pervasive

racial discrimination and segregation.” She supports a wide ranging set of proposals including

the targeting of investigations and relief, and offers her suggestions to extend the

ability of the Section 8 program to promote desegregation, although at some cost. Her list

of recommendations includes many discussed by HUD officials and she continues to serve

by prodding agencies to continuously rethink decisions that might affect the goal of housing

desegregation.[1]

Roisman, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law, who was a member of the U.S. Department of Justice in the section of Civil Division, is talking about regional enforcement agencies, like HUD, working together with local enforcement agencies.[2] The goal is not to abolish regional enforcement altogether. Roisman makes the point that working together with local enforcement will have a greater efficiency rate and will improve other aspects of discrimination issues.

Research shows that local fair housing can be greater funded by local companies to meet the needs of the community, have more complaint reports issued to them about discrimination, can better enforce penalties of discrimination, and can have better response to community awareness and participation. Local agencies know what is happening in their area. The EHOC says, “Housing discrimination is a local issue (p.3).” They believe they are accountable to their community and their work has not gone unnoticed. Other communities need someone to be accountable to them so that discrimination against thousands of people can stop. HUD, along with any other regional, federal agency cannot possibly be more effective in enforcement of fair housing than local enforcement agencies can in their own communities.

[1] Squires & Goering, Guest Editors Introduction

[2] IU LAW,