April 19, 2017 The Skanner Page 9
FAIR HOUSING
already attracted 24 co-sponsors from
14 states. Half of the lawmakers’ sup-
port for the repeal comes from only
four states: California, Florida, Tennes-
see and Texas. A companion bill was
also introduced in the Senate with one
co-sponsor.
Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, the bill
lead sponsor in the lower chamber,
shared in a prepared statement why he
feels so strongly about appealing the
rule:
“The AFFH rule marks President
Obama’s most aggressive attempt yet
“
for HUD projects, they should actively
work to ensure that all taxpayers can
enjoy the benefits without the prospect
of unlawful discrimination. Indeed,
the rule provides local jurisdictions
with broad discretion to decide which
issues to prioritize and address.”
“By attacking the AFFH rule, Rep. Go-
sar and other bill sponsors are seeking
to re-codify housing discrimination
into U.S. law,” noted Maya Rockey-
moore, President and CEO of Global
Policy Solutions, a social change strat-
egy firm. “By disallowing the collection
of federal data by place, race and other
key demographics, the bill’s sponsors
seek to prevent local governments
A key Obama regulation, known as ‘Affirma-
tively Furthering Fair Housing,’ is again un-
der assault on Capitol Hill
to force his utopian ideology on Amer-
ican communities disguised under the
banner of ‘fairness’. This overreaching
mandate is an attempt to extort com-
munities into giving up local zoning
decisions and reengineer the makeup
of our neighborhoods.”
For civil rights, housing and con-
sumer advocates, the unique Black
American experience was deliberately
engineered—but from a different per-
spective: to deny housing opportunity,
voting rights, economic mobility and
even quality employment or education.
“AFFH is central to fulfilling the pur-
poses of the Fair Housing Act,” said
Wade Henderson, President and CEO
on the Leadership Conference on Civ-
il and Human Rights. “It’s based on a
simple and perfectly fair premise: if a
city or locality seeks taxpayer funding
from making their communities the
best places to live by limiting their abil-
ity to use critical data and information
to inform their community planning
decisions.”
Until the 1968 Fair Housing Act, local
zoning laws across the country sup-
ported segregation along with redlin-
ing Black communities to exclude
borrowers from mortgage and home
improvement loans along with a litany
of bad real estate practices that denied
opportunities to build family wealth.
Omitting Black neighborhoods from
multiple listing services, door-to-door
block-busting that attempted to create
a sense of fear from lost property val-
ues due to integration, and restrict-
ed covenants that explicitly excluded
many minorities from ever buying
property in designated areas — were
Rental Affordability is Worst
in Minority Neighborhoods
PHOTO BY JERRY FOSTER
HUD cont’d from pg 7
Zillow
SEATTLE —  Monthly rent is a big-
ger financial burden for people living
in predominantly Black or Hispan-
ic neighborhoods than it is in white
neighborhoods, according to a new
Zillow analysisi of race and housing
affordability. Nationally, renters in
predominantly black neighborhoods
can expect to spend 43.7 percent of
their income on rent, and renters in
Hispanic communities can expect to
spend 48.1 percent of their income on
rent.
In White neighborhoods, renters
can expect to spend 30.7 percent of
their income on rent, essentially in
line with the standard rule of spend-
ing about 30 percent of income on
housing.
In markets that offer the best oppor-
tunities for social mobility, paying the
rent in minority communities is an
even bigger financial burden, main-
ly due to significantly lower incomes
in these communities. In San Fran-
cisco, for example, rent in predomi-
nantly black neighborhoods requires
nearly three-quarters of the median
income there. In largely Hispanic
neighborhoods, renters can expect to
spend 62.5 percent of their income on
monthly rent.
When housing costs consume such
a significant share of income, rent-
See RENT on page 10