Fair Housing Month: Riverside County Celebrates Fair Housing Month the 'Fair' Way

Could there be a more fitting way to celebrate Fair Housing Month than with a fair?

The Fair Housing Council of Riverside County, Inc. is commemorating the Fair Housing Act (FHA) by hosting a Fair Housing Month Festival at its Riverside office, 3933 Mission Inn Ave., on Saturday, April 17. The event, which is open to the public, will offer free food, children's games, a fire engine, and booths with representatives from housing-related organizations.

Perhaps most enticing of all, however, is a free drawing for a prize worth $500 in rent plus one month's paid utility bills.

Return tomorrow for the fifth part of this special "Fair Housing Month" feature at Fairhousingblog.com.

LANDMARK: Landlords Agree to Largest-Ever DOJ Rental Housing Discrimination Settlement

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it filed a proposed consent order to obtain the largest-ever settlement in connection with a rental housing discrimination lawsuit.

Los Angeles Clippers owner and landlord Donald Sterling, his wife Rochelle Sterling, the Sterling Family Trust, and The Korean Land Company, L.L.C. have agreed, without admitting liability or wrongdoing, to pay $2.725 million to settle allegations that they violated the Fair Housing Act by discriminating based on race, national origin, and familial status at apartment buildings they own and manage in Los Angeles.

The complaint, filed in August 2006, alleged that the defendants discriminated against non-Korean prospects and tenants in connection with renting apartments in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles; discriminated against black prospects and tenants in connection with renting apartments in the Beverly Hills section of Los Angeles; and discriminated against families with children throughout the buildings they own or manage in Los Angeles.

In addition to the record monetary award and civil penalty, the consent order, if approved, would require the defendants to obtain fair housing training for employees and monitor their compliance, and maintain non-discriminatory practices and procedures.

The defendants own and manage approximately 119 apartment buildings comprising 5,706 apartments in Los Angeles County. This settlement would also resolve two related lawsuits filed by former tenants at one of their properties.

How Do You Pay Rent While in a Coma?

If you're an apartment tenant, you know that paying your rent late or not at all can get you evicted. But what if you normally pay the rent in full and on time, and then a sudden, disability-related coma prevents you from sending a check to your landlord on time? Should the landlord cut you a break?

A tenant in Palo Alto, California found herself in exactly this situation last year -- and got evicted. But now, thanks to a settlement with her landlord reached via a fair housing argument, the tenant is happily back in her building.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, the tenant's daughter let the landlord know about her mother's condition within a week after she was rushed to the hospital. Although the landlord reportedly indicated being okay with getting the rent late, the landlord wasted no time in starting the eviction process. The day she was released from the hospital, the tenant got a money order for the full amount of the rent, but the landlord wouldn't accept it. Then, after not receiving the notice of her court hearing, the tenant learned that a judge ordered her to vacate her apartment.

With a rental history now marred with an eviction, the tenant eventually found a much smaller apartment in another town, at a much higher rent. In addition to the financial difficulties this caused, the move to another town also prevented visits with her daughter, who can't drive due to a visual impairment, and grandchildren.

Fortunately for the tenant, she enlisted the help of Project Sentinel, a local non-profit housing counseling agency, which achieved a settlement by arguing that the landlord violated the Fair Housing Act's (FHA) ban on disability-based discrimination by not accepting the late rent payment. Doing so would have been a "reasonable accommodation," which the FHA requires landlords to make when tenants need such accommodations for a disability.

Without admitting any liability, the landlord agreed to make things right by:

• paying the tenant $32,000;


• renting another one-bedroom apartment in the building to her at no more than $500 per month for five years, affording her the opportunity to visit her children and grandchildren;


• helping her repair her credit rating, which was damaged by the eviction; and


• enrolling in regular fair housing training for five years at its own expense.

Is this a fair outcome, or is it too little, too late? Have you or anyone you know been in a situation where you had trouble paying the rent because of a disability?

Judging by the Color of One's Voice

Fair Housing Marin, a fair housing advocacy organization in California's Marin County, conducted a survey that involved having black and white testers (posing as prospects) call 25 local landlords who had advertised apartments on Craigslist.

The result, according to an article in the Marin Independent Journal, was that eight of the landlords — nearly a third — showed less favorable treatment to the black callers. This included not returning the black callers' phone messages, offering them higher rent or less flexible terms, not telling them about as many available apartments, and not answering their questions about the advertised rentals.

Interesting to note:

1) This is the first time the organization has conducted a survey to test for discrimination based only on telephone conversations.

2) Before conducting the survey, Fair Housing Marin taped the voices of their testers and had them evaluated by a community panel, which reportedly was able to identify each tester as black or white.

The Game of the Name

A study reported in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology (vol. 36, issue 4, April 12, 2006) showed that just a prospect’s name can influence a landlord to make housing decisions based on racial stereotypes. Researchers sent 1,115 e-mails in 2003 to Los Angeles County landlords in response to advertisements for available apartments. The e-mail queries were randomly signed using one of three names that implied either Arab, African-American, or white ethnicity. The researchers sent these e-mails over a 10-week period — six weeks before the Iraq War began and four weeks during the conflict.

The result: The e-mails that were signed using the Arab name got significantly fewer positive responses than the ones signed using the white name, and the e-mails signed using the African-American name did even worse. This pattern persisted in all rent categories, in corporate and privately owned apartment complexes, and both before and during the war in Iraq.