4
street roots
May 27, 2011
w*
Fish pledges reform to come to prevent housing discrimination
"There w ill be
further
n Wednesday, May 18, Portland
testing. There
Housing Commissioner Nick Fish
w ill be
released the locations cited in a
recent fair housing audit as testing positive
changes in
for racial housing discrimination.
the law, and
The announcement comes following an
there w ill be
audit from the Fair Housing Council of
Oregon commissioned by Fish’s office. 'Hie
other steps to
Nick Fish
report found that 32 out of 50 fair housing
take that we
tests on Portland rental units showed
w ill not tolerate rental
evidence of discrimination against race and
discrimination in rental
national origin.
“We (have) released the names of the
housing."
BY JOANNE ZUHL
STAFF WRITER
O
landlords where there is a positive test,”
Fish said. “We have previously notified the
landlords that they were subject to an audit,
and tjiere was a positive t e s t”
Those landlords and management
companies include major rental operations
and about two dozen other companies doing
business in Portland.
Fish said his office will be forwarding all
the information on the Fair Housing audit to
the civil rights division of the Bureau of
Labor and Industries, the lead state agency
for processing HUD fair housing complaints,
for them to initiate enforcement action.
“I made a commitment to our
community,” Fish said. “First I expressed
outrage at the results. Second, I said that
we would pursue a comprehensive action
plan that would include enforcement of the
law. We are taking aggressive steps to hold
landlords accountable for alleged violations
of our fair housing law. In the weeks ahead,
I will be announcing a bold plan to address
discrimination in housing in our community?
I will be the first housing commissioner who
has framed housing discrimination as a
bureau priority, and we intend to take a
num ber nf rarv-fdrnng. ste n s to find, bias in.
rental housing.”
Fish would not go into details on the plan,
saying that he preferred to release it as a
complete package. “It will include many of
the suggestions from key community
stakeholders who have been working on this
issue for about a year.” Fish said he expects
to announce the plan around the week of
June 6.
“We anticipate this will lead to
énforcement actions against certain
landlords, but this is going to be a multi-year
struggle. There will be further testing.
There will be changes in the law, and there
will be other steps to take that we will not
tolerate rental discrimination in rental
housing.”
Among those companies noted in the
report is Tigard-based Regency Management
Inc., which has two locations on the list of
discriminatory sites. It includes Nob Hill
Apartments in Northwest Irving, and
Terwilliger Terrace on Southwest Barbour.
In both cases, the African-American testers
were told that move-in costs ranged between
$1,400 and $2,100, compared to a Caucasian
tester who was told move-in costs would be
between $720 and $740.
However, Regency Management Inc.
president John Winquist said managers are
instructed not to.give exact move-in costs
because there are many variables that can
-determine the price, including the results of
crecuOincnoacKgrouncrenecKSiTnos^cnecKs
are done by an independent company that is
not informed of a person’s race or national
origin when they make a recommendation
on the security deposit, Winquist said.
“That’s an international place,” Winquist
said, talking about Nob Hill Apartments. .
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What to do if you think you have
been the victim of housing
discrimination.
Federal law protects against discrimination in
housing based upon race, color, national
origin, religion, gender, familial status, and
disability. Oregon law goes even further and
protects against discrimination in housing
based on marital status, source of income,
sexual orientation including gender identity,
honorably discharged veterans / military
status, and domestic violence victims.
In addition to private legal action, there are
several places you can file a complaint:
“We have students from all over the world.”
Nob Hill resident manager Daphne Koa,
herself originally from Taiwan, said she
normally tells people the security deposit
could be one month to, two months rent
depend on the screening report. Additional
costs could also include prorated rent
depending on when in a month a person
moves in.
Dennis Steinman is a leading attorney on
fair housing issues in Oregon, and also
represents the Fair Housing Council.
Steinmansaysthatregardlessofwhether
the discrimination is based in ignorance or
racism, it is considered intentional. “Each of
us as citizens aré presumed to know the law.
We aré presuméd to know that you cannot
have different standards for people of color
vs. people who are white,” Steinman said.
“Ignorance is not a defense.”
SM ITH, fro m p age 3
with urban renewal is to make sure that we
help people and give them a hand up — that
we’re not giving away free money to programs
or projects that would be funded anyway,
without urban renewal. I think it’s very
important as a tool to help neighborhoods deal
with the blight, and that’s what we should be
using it for. I’m all about th a t But Iknow that
there’s a balancing a ct I respect what
business has to offer, but I want to help them
create jobs. But at the same time I think we
need to be very careful in how we craft those
URAs so that we don’t lose a lot of our tax
dollars to help our schools and county.
J.Z.: It’s also intended that 30 percent o f that
URA revenue would be dedicated to affordable
housing, such as those families who have since
left your district, to be able to live and work in
the neighborhood. And we have stretches of
revitalized streets in urban areas with nice
businesses but there are no longer people of color
working in them. These are the summer jobs and
the permanent jobs you’re talking about. But
now we have the mayor saying the 30 percent is
measured citywide, not per district, freeing up
money for the Convention Center, for example,
rather than affordable housing.
L.S.: I understand that it may be more
difficult in some districts to get the 30 percent
set-aside. In extreme cases that should be the
exception not the rule. I think that urban
renewal is an important tool, and we need to
hold the businesses accountable, and by “we”
I mean the government and the community
and the leaders who are elected in this
community to make sure that we hold folks
accountable.... And that’s something that’s on
our priority list, to make sure they’re doing
what they need to do as aggressively as they
need to do it, to make sure we have some
Cashauna Hill is the fair housing staff
attorney for the Oregon Law Center and a
m em ber of the city’s Analysis of
Impediments to Fair Housing Committee.
When the Fair Housing Council’s audit
returned with a 67 percent rate of detected
discrimination, many were surprised by the
high numbers.
“I was not,” Hill said. “Folks who are
engaged and involved in this work, on some
level, in various forms, we’ve heard these
stories. So the experiences that I’ve heard
shared certainly line up with these
numbers, unfortunately.”
Hill says the most common complaint the
Oregon Law C enter receives involves
disability discrimination and a failure to
accommodate, but that doesn’t necessarily
mean it is the bulk of discrimination that is
occurring. It simply is one of the easiest
violations for a tenant or potential renter to
detect, Hill says. Whereas in cases of
discrimination based on race or national
origin, the victim doesn’t have Hie benefit of
comparing their experience to someone
else.
Hill says the report, now that the
information has come to light, will be good
for Portland.
“I personally think that any time insidious
discrimination comes to light, that is a good
thing. Also, any time truth is spoken to the
experience of marginalized people, any time
people experiences with discrimination are
brought to light and their stories are
validated, I think that is a good thing.”
“In doing this work with the Oregon Law
Center and Legal Aid, we work with low
income individuals, and that is a
marginalized group in society and many
times we deal with clients who have just
been made to feel like no one is going to
listen.!© them or no one is going to believe
them. Often with our clientele their
perspective has been delegitimized for
years, and I think anytime that the stories
that they have to tèli are validated and
shown to be true and backed up with data, I
think that’s a good thing.”
affordable housing opportunities and that we
do have those really good-paying jo b s.... If at
the end of the day, that all fails, I have a bully
pulpit.
J.Z.: What is the county doing right and what
can it do better to serve families in need?
L.S.: We’ve put a fair amount of money into
rent assistance programs Where we partner
with Housing Authority of Portland and others-
through the SUN (Schools United
Neighborhoods) System to make sure that
families and children have rent assistance
programs. Commissioner (Deborah) Kafoury
has done work with JOIN to make sure that
instead of putting folks in shelter, we give
them rent assistance to give them a hand up
instead of a handout, so that can stabilize their
world so they can go out and get a job and
their kids can have a stable place to stay so
they can attend schools. I think we all have
the same values on this floor. And I believe in
putting our county dollars in our rent
assistance program as part of our anti-poverty
programs, for the SUN school systems, and
for free and reduced lunch.
I think we could do a lot better in terms of
economic development, even though we’re not
the Portland Development Commission or the
state, we do get some funding, and with this
new department that’s put into the budget for
economic development, we’re going to try to
partner with local agencies in creating jobs in
this community. For me, my priorities are
protecting our seniors, making sure we’re
investing our youth and to help create jobs,
because at the end of the day, the more
people have jobs in Multnomah County that
gives less of a pool of people who need a
safety n e t I’d like to help people go to the
next level.