The House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on April 2 to review the Fair Housing Act and related efforts to eliminate discrimination and promote opportunity in housing. Witnesses testified about the importance of fair housing laws and rules, including those related to Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), disparate impact, and LGBTQ equal access.
Debby Goldberg of the National Fair Housing Alliance said that more funding is needed for HUD’s fair housing programs, especially those that fund nonprofit organization that handle most fair housing complaints. She also said Congress should provide more funding for HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity to hire more people, offer more training, and update IT systems. Cashauna Hill of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center testified that underfunding and staffing issues at HUD were jeopardizing her organization’s ability to enforce the Fair Housing Act.
Members of Congress asked how HUD’s recent decision to propose changes to its disparate-impact rule could impact people’s ability to bring fair housing claims. HUD sought public input on whether the regulation is consistent with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities. Ms. Goldberg asserted that courts found there is no conflict between the Supreme Court’s ruling and the disparate-impact rule. Ms. Goldberg said that while we do not yet know what is in the final rule, HUD’s Notice of Advanced Rule Making to amend the disparate-impact rule raised red flags and said that proposed changes could make the rule unworkable.
Representative Madeleine Dean (D-PA) spoke about how the disparate-impact rule helps protect survivors of domestic violence from nuisance and crime-free ordinances that disproportionately discriminate against women. These types of laws penalize landlords and tenants when police are called too many times to the premises. She cited a case in her own district where a woman who was beaten by her partner but refused to call the police out of fear of eviction sued to have the nuisance ordinance struck down based on disparate-impact liability. Ms. Hill also talked about inequality and disparate impact in the case of post-Katrina housing policy in New Orleans, insisting that the nation could not afford to wait ten years before including the mandate of the Fair Housing Act as a foundational part of disaster recovery.
Some members of Congress talked about ways to better incentivize communities to address barriers to fair housing through inclusionary zoning. Representative Bill Posey (R-FL) spoke about penalizing communities for having exclusionary policies by withholding their Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding and asked if there were other feasible incentives since not every community receives CDBG dollars. Salim Furth of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University stated that withholding CDBG funding was one way to incentivize inclusionary zoning but warned against withholding funding for other programs that directly help renters, like the HOME Investment Partnerships program. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said we need to do more than just change zoning laws. Ms. Goldberg and Ms. Hill stated that merely changing zoning laws will not make housing affordable to extremely low-income people.
Representative Velázquez (D-NY) asked witnesses to describe how residents living in subsidized housing can be particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and discrimination. Citing NLIHC research, Ms. Goldberg said that because the supply of affordable housing is so limited, women are less likely to come forward with sexual harassment complaints because they fear losing their affordable home. Keira Johnson of the National LGBTQ Task Force emphasized that housing shortages compel people to stay in a home, regardless of whether it is safe and hospitable or not.
Legislation discussed included the “Veterans, Women, Families with Children, Race, and Persons with Disabilities Housing Fairness Act of 2019,” the “Equality Act of 2019,” the “Sexual Harassment Awareness and Prevention Act of 2018,” and the “Restoring Fair Housing Protections Eliminated by HUD Act of 2018.”
Learn more about the hearing at: https://bit.ly/2K2ecc3