Report highlights discrimination in housing practices
1st May 2017 · 0 Comments
By Della Hasselle
Contributing Writer
When former North Shore resident Denise Thornton decided to look for a new place to live near New Orleans, she figured it wouldn’t be too hard. She had a budget in mind, and was ready to downsize as her daughter Bethany prepared to leave for college.
Thornton, it ends up, would be in for a shock. Her first introduction to the housing market in the Metairie area was by landlords and owners of an investment company who would later be proven to be discriminatory against African Americans.
Landlords Brion, Jappy and John Ebey, Jr. refused to even give her and her husband an application after a face-to-face meeting, even though she had previously been told the apartment was available. Later, it would come out during a lawsuit that racial slurs had been written next to the names of all Black applicants who asked to tour the unit.
“I didn’t want to think it was true, because I thought, ‘in 2013, how can this be?’” Thornton, now 59, recalled. “I just thought, ‘How can this be true’?”
Two years later, Thornton would win $172,500 in damages after the defendants settled. But local and national experts say hers is one of thousands of stories that show how much segregation is still alive in the United States.
Studies about widespread discrimination against housing applicants were underscored in April by the National Fair Housing Alliance, when experts with the organization released the “The Cas e for Fair Housing: 2017 Fair Housing Trends Report.”
The report, which compiled data from 2016, was authored by Shanti Abedin, the organization’s director of inclusive communities, and Cathy Cloud, the chief operating officer.
The other authors of the report include Debby Goldberg, who is the vice president of housing policy; Lisa Rice, the organization’s executive vice president; and Morgan Williams, the NFHA’s general counsel.
The assessment includes discrimination data compiled from nonprofit fair housing organizations as well as federal and state governmental entities.
Overall, it was found that there were 28,181 complaints of housing discrimination last year. Of the complaints, race-based housing discrimination accounted for nearly 20 percent.
But authors claim what’s reported is only the tip of the iceberg. The problem is more widespread than what can be documented because research shows most people do not relay suspected discriminatory treatment.
It is estimated that more than four million instances of racial, ethnic and religious housing discrimination occur annually.
Racial segregation wasn’t the only issue found. Another 55 percent of the complaints were based on discrimination of a person, or persons, with a disability, the authors found.
The writers are careful to say segregation results from deliberate, rather than accidental, discriminatory policies and practices.
“Segregated communities do not exist by accident,” they urged. “Disparities in opportunity do not exist by accident.”
That’s what Cashauna Hill says, too. Hill is the executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Action Housing Center, and she and her team have been working for years to combat discrimination in the private and public housing sectors of southeast Louisiana.
The Greater New Orleans Fair Action Housing Center’s reports, which use undercover “mystery shoppers” to test housing providers, consistently show about 50 percent rates of racial discrimination in the rental market in the New Orleans area, Hill said.
“In New Orleans, when we talk about race, there’s a myth that perpetuates that people have access to whatever neighborhood they can afford, and that segregation is a choice or a result of the market. That’s just not true,” Hill says. “And there’s a danger in continuing to perpetuate that myth.”
Hill says advocates with the Greater New Orleans Fair Action Housing Center also regularly see discrimination based on other traits as well, including disability-related complaints, and those related to gender, sex, family status and national origin.
The Center was the entity that helped Thornton win her lawsuit after being discriminated against. Advocates there frequently help renters and homebuyers fight discrimination when they’re looking for new places to live in the private market.
Recently, the Center has also done work to uncover how various public agencies have used criminal background policies as a cover for racial discrimination.
The Center has successfully encouraged the Housing Authority of New Orleans to revise its criminal background policy, for example, which it did last year.
Now, advocates are encouraging the private market to loosen policies on criminal background policies, too, which Hill and others say are often applied inconsistently and in a way that privileges white prospective renters over African-American prospective renters.
Often, Hill said, she encounters roadblocks because people don’t want to believe that they are actually being denied access due to race, or some other discriminatory reason.
“They try really hard to find other reasons for the discrimination. I spend a lot of time very clearly explaining to people this is about racism: systemic racism, and consistent racism,” Hill says. “One of [the] questions that comes up is ‘How can we still be here?’ And one of the reasons we’re still here is because we are not having honest conversations in local communities and throughout the country about race and how race affects outcomes.”
It’s important for the trend to change, Hill says, because access to higher opportunity neighborhoods affords residents a better quality of life, overall.
In a release, Shanna Smith, the president and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance, agreed.
“People of color, persons with disabilities and other marginalized groups continue to be unlawfully shut out of many neighborhoods that provide quality schools and health care, fresh food, employment opportunities, quality and affordable credit, small business investment, and other opportunities that affect life outcomes,” Smith said.
In the meantime, organizations say they rely on the bravery of people like Thornton, who stand up to discrimination even when it means others try to make them feel afraid. Thornton says she suffered sleepless nights for months because of angry comments people made after her lawsuit went public.
However, she says she refuses to be intimidated, and has encouraged others to be empowered as well.
“This has got to be stopped,” Thornton says, simply, of discriminatory practices.
This article originally published in the May 1, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
