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EDITION
HOUSING SPECIAL
O PINION
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April 27, 2016
Ensuring Equity in Housing and Opportunity
‘Right to Return’
a good place to
start
m axine
f itzpatriCk
Fifty years
ago, Rev. Mar-
tin Luther King
Jr. and others
led open housing marches in Chi-
cago called the Chicago Free-
dom Movement or Chicago Open
Housing Movement. The march-
es inspired the Fair Housing Act,
which Congress passed just days
after Rev. King’s death in April
1968.
Honoring the passage of the
Fair Housing Act during April,
now recognized as Fair Housing
Month, is an opportunity to relect
on the importance of the Act in
prohibiting discrimination (and a
reminder: If you believe you have
by
been a victim of housing discrim-
ination, stop what you’re doing
and call the Fair Housing Council
of Oregon at 503-223-8197). It is
also a time to look at history and
re-evaluate how well (or not) we
are doing at achieving the intent of
the act: To ensure equity in hous-
ing and opportunity.
Unfortunately, prohibiting ra-
cially-biased policies has the un-
intended consequence to prevent
us from closing racial wealth and
homeownership gaps and achieve
equity. White Americans, includ-
ing Oregonians, beneitted richly
from historic discriminatory and
exclusionary policies and prac-
tices: The Oregon Donation Land
Law of 1850 provided up to 320
acres of free land—but only to
white men and their wives.
In the 1950s, exclusionary zon-
ing kept blacks and other minori-
ties out of white neighborhoods in
Portland and all across America.
Restrictive covenants in many
homes’ deeds had the same effect.
In fact, many deeds still con-
tain these racial covenants, even
though they’re no longer valid.
And out of 67,000 low-cost mort-
gages insured by the post-World
War II G.I. Bill, less than 100
went to blacks, who had to settle
for more costly loans if they could
get them at all: The FHA drew a
red line around black neighbor-
hoods to warn banks not to lend
there. Even with Fair Housing
protections, this practice of redlin-
ing continued into the 1990s. And
after redlining practices faded,
subprime loans targeted the same
neighborhoods of primarily mi-
nority households.
Recent court cases have raised
the issue of disparate impacts:
That a practice “does not appear
to be discriminatory on its face;
rather it is one that is discrimina-
tory in its application or effect.”
As Portland battles its reputation
as the whitest big city in America
and the most rapidly gentrifying
city in the country, we must think
about fair housing as something
more than simply banning out-
right discrimination.
Fair housing “protections” may
prevent us from simply granting
land or offering discounted mort-
gages to households of color, but
we can’t let this prevent us from
considering how to better achieve
equitable opportunities and out-
comes.
“Right to Return” and geo-
graphic preference policies are
a good place to start. While they
don’t speciically beneit house-
holds of a particular race, they
recognize that in areas like north
and northeast Portland, black res-
idents built a thriving community
despite being conined to speciic
neighborhoods where they were
allowed to live. But when pub-
lic investment and urban renewal
made their way to these neigh-
borhoods, black families—often
renters because historic policies
forbade them from owning their
homes—were among the irst
households displaced.
We must also ensure a safety
net for residents who are at risk
of displacement in neighborhoods
that have already changed (like
the Albina area) as well as those
that are now beginning to change
(like Cully). Home repair pro-
grams, foreclosure mitigation and
property tax deferrals are avail-
able to many senior residents and
must be expanded to other house-
holds, especially those with lower
incomes.
Preventing discrimination and
achieving fairness in housing is
crucial. And as this Fair Housing
Month comes to a close, let’s com-
mit to taking fairness even further
to achieve housing equity.
Maxine Fitzpatrick is executive
director of Portland Communi-
ty Reinvestment Initiatives, Inc.
(PCRI)
Income Inequality: The Housing Struggle
Wisc., living irst in a trailer park
and then in an inner city rooming
house, documenting the experi-
ences of eight families he met.
“Most Americans, if they
don’t live in trailer parks or
in the inner city, think that
by m arian W right
the typical low income fam-
e delman
ily lives in public housing or
“And the trage-
beneits from some kind of
dy is, so often [poor
housing assistance, but the
Americans] are in-
visible because America is so af- opposite is true,” Desmond ex-
luent, so rich,” -- Dr. Martin Lu-
ther King, Jr. spoke these words
during his last Sunday sermon
on March 31, 1968 at the Wash-
ington National Cathedral calling
for support for a Poor People’s
Campaign. Almost 50 years later
questions about how much poor
Americans are forced to pay for
housing – and what happens when
they can’t afford it – are back in
the national spotlight.
The new book Evicted: Pover-
ty and Proit in the American City plained in a recent interview.
In reality, only one in four fami-
by Harvard University sociology
professor and Justice and Pover- lies who qualify for housing assis-
ty Project co-director Matthew tance receives it: Three in four are
Desmond is calling renewed and forced to struggle on their own.
“We’ve reached a point in this
urgently needed attention to a
tragic eviction cycle invisible to country where the majority of
many but all too familiar to fam- poor renting families are giving
ilies trapped in the cruel prison of at least half of their income to
housing costs and one in four are
poverty.
Dr. Desmond found that in the giving over 70 percent of their in-
face of stagnating or falling in- come just to pay rent and keep the
comes and soaring housing costs utilities on,” Desmond said.
When Dr. Desmond met Ar-
eviction has become more com-
monplace in America than ever. leen, a single mom with two boys,
He spent months in Milwaukee, she was paying 80 percent of her
Trapped in a
tragic eviction
cycle
income to rent a run down two
bedroom apartment in Milwau-
kee: “I saw Arleen confront ter-
rible situations. Should I pay my
rent or feed my kids? Should I pay
my rent or get the kids clothing
they need for a new school year?
Should I chip in for a funeral for
when my sister dies?”
Arleen and her boys were evict-
ed so many times as he followed
her trajectory, they lost count. One
We’ve reached a point in this
country where the majority of
poor renting families are giving
at least half of their income to
housing costs...
time her son threw a snowball and
hit a passerby, and that person re-
taliated by kicking in the door
to their apartment. The landlord
evicted Arleen’s family because of
the damage to the door. Dr. Des-
mond says Arleen then missed an
appointment with a welfare case-
worker because the letter about the
appointment went to her old ad-
dress. So she got evicted from the
new apartment. The crises families
face trying to pay for housing are
“not just a consequence of pover-
ty, but a cause of poverty” he says.
He also noted black women are
often overrepresented in eviction
proceedings, just as black men are
in prison: “Poor black men were
locked up. Poor black women were
locked out.”
Last year, the Children’s De-
fense Fund included in our Ending
Child Poverty Now report an ex-
pansion of housing vouchers to all
households with children below
150 percent of poverty whose fair
market rent exceeds 50 percent of
their income. Of the nine policy
improvements to alleviate child
poverty we proposed, this had the
single greatest impact. It would
reduce child poverty 20.8 percent
and lift 2.3 million children out
of poverty. How then do we build
the political and public will to do
what works?
Dr. Desmond also met Vanetta
in Milwaukee who said in a recent
interview: “I grew up in every
shelter, basically, in Illinois and
Milwaukee. I didn’t have a stable
place over my head. I didn’t have
proper food, or I didn’t even know
a few times how I was going to eat
that night. We missed meals multi-
ple nights, and it was hard. And all
I ever wanted for my kids was not
to put them through that.”
Her troubles started during the
recession when her hours at the
Old Country Buffet were slashed
from ive days to one day a week.
Suddenly she had to choose be-
tween paying arrears to keep the
electricity on or paying the rent.
Falling further and further behind,
she received an eviction notice.
Terriied of being homeless and
losing her children, and desperate
to pay the bills, Vanetta participat-
ed in a robbery. She’d been on the
waiting list for public housing for
two years, but after the robbery
she became a convicted felon,
which meant her chances of ever
being approved were almost zero.
In that inal Sunday sermon Dr.
King reminded us: “Ultimately a
great nation is a compassionate na-
tion. America has not met its obli-
gations and its responsibilities to
the poor. One day we will have to
stand before the God of history and
we will talk in terms of things we’ve
done. Yes, we will be able to say we
built gargantuan bridges to span the
seas, we built gigantic buildings
to kiss the skies . . . It seems that I
can hear the God of history saying,
‘That was not enough! But I was
hungry, and ye fed me not. I was
naked, and ye clothed me not. I was
devoid of a decent sanitary house to
live in, and ye provided no shelter
for me.’”
Dr. King said, “This is Amer-
ica’s opportunity to help bridge
the gulf between the haves and the
have-nots. The question is wheth-
er America will do it.” For mil-
lions of Americans, including all
those who still can’t afford decent
shelter for their families that ques-
tion remains unanswered.
Marian Wright Edelman is
President of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.