Where We Live – Housing Discrimination Persists, Children and disabled pushed away, housing discrimination persists despite federal law

June 09, 2008 

 

By Thomas Caywood TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

 

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Jane L. Edmonstone is project attorney for the Worcester Fair Housing Project, and Jonathan L. Mannina is executive director of the Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts. Worcester Fair Housing Project is a joint project between LACCM and the city of Worcester. (T&G Staff/TOM RETTIG)

 

Franklin Sagbay and Julia Campuzano already had paid a $725 security deposit on a Worcester apartment late last year when they showed up to get the keys from the landlord.

 

They left empty-handed and as victims of illegal housing discrimination — a problem that activists working to enforce housing anti-discrimination laws say persists here and across the nation four decades after Congress passed the landmark Fair Housing Act.

 

Mr. Sagbay, Ms. Campuzano, her husband, her 5-year-old daughter and another adult roommate had planned to live in a Birch Street apartment. Mr. Sagbay had handled the arrangements for the roommates up to that point, and that day in late November was the first time the landlord, Van Le of Dorchester, had met Ms. Campuzano.

 

When Mr. Le saw that Ms. Campuzano was pregnant, he allegedly refused to hand over the keys, or to refund the security deposit, according to a pending housing discrimination complaint filed recently with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.

 

Mr. Le allegedly pointed at Ms. Campuzano’s swollen abdomen and told the prospective tenants that he didn’t want any babies in the apartment. Mr. Le’s telephone wasn’t answered over the past two weeks, and the real estate agent listing the apartment said the building has since been foreclosed upon and that she didn’t have any way to reach Mr. Le. He had not yet responded to the MCAD complaint by press time, officials said.

 

“I didn’t know where I was going to go with my kids,” Ms. Campuzano said recently through an interpreter.

 

She said the rejection hurt and angered her, but she didn’t realize she had been a victim of illegal housing discrimination until later when she told the story to a hospital social worker.

 

“We’re human beings. We deserve a place to live like anybody,” she said.

 

The roommates eventually found another apartment, but the rent is higher than the one they were turned away from, they said.

 

The Fair Housing Act bars housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, children and disability. State law further outlaws housing discrimination in Massachusetts on the basis of ancestry, marital status, public assistance, military service, sexual orientation and age.

 

The growing number of complaints such as the one lodged by Mr. Sagbay and Ms. Campuzano represent a tiny fraction of the actual incidences of housing discrimination, according to the National Fair Housing Alliance. The advocacy group’s 2008 report estimated the 27,023 housing discrimination complaints filed nationally last year at less than 1 percent of the actual number of incidents. .

 

Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts — a nonprofit legal agency based in Worcester that filed the complaint on behalf of Mr. Sagbay and Ms. Campuzano — logged 114 housing discrimination complaints last year from across Worcester County. The agency is on pace to top that number this year, having received 50 complaints through the first four months of this year.

 

Many of those complaints are resolved fairly quickly when one of the agency’s lawyers contacts the landlord, but in egregious cases and those in which the landlord refuses to comply with the law voluntarily, LACCM files a complaint with the state discrimination commission or in state court. Most of those complaints are settled prior to trial or a state public hearing with the landlord agreeing to pay monetary damages, attend fair housing training and turn over records so their business practices can be monitored, officials said.

 

“Housing discrimination really affects people’s chance for success in life and has more significant impact than other kinds of discrimination. It affects access to jobs, education, transportation and safe communities,” said LACCM Executive Director Jonathan L. Mannina.

 

“There is some ignorance in the community about what the fair housing act requires,” he added. “But there are people who know what the law is and continue to discriminate, and that’s very concerning.”

 

Most of the cases handled by the agency involve discrimination against disabled people and people with children, but race and housing subsidies also generate a number of complaints in Central Massachusetts, he said.

 

A Holyoke-based housing agency, the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center, also investigates housing discrimination complaints in northern Central Massachusetts, particularly in the Fitchburg and Leominster areas, and state law enforcement officials prosecute some housing discrimination cases too.

 

Early last month, Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office hit an Orange mobile home park operator with a housing discrimination lawsuit alleging the company wouldn’t allow a disabled resident, who recently had multiple foot surgeries, to install a handicap ramp. The case, which is pending in Franklin Superior Court, targets Leisure Woods Estates, owner of Leisure Woods Mobile Home Park on East River Street.

 

Erica L. Johnson, a program director with the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center in Holyoke, said her agency, which is solely focused on investigating and preventing housing discrimination, is busier than ever. The agency typically investigates 300 to 400 cases of housing discrimination a year in Central and Western Massachusetts, she said.

 

LACCM and MFHC divide their efforts between educating landlords and tenants about fair housing laws and investigating complaints.

 

“We have had some big cases in that area,” Ms. Johnson said of Leominster and Fitchburg. “They were cases of national origin discrimination. But across the board, whether it’s out there or back here, the ones we see most often are disability discrimination and children. Landlords will say right out, ‘You have kids? You can’t live here.’ “

 

Over the last four years, she said, the agency’s lawsuits against landlords have all been settled out of court, and the settlement agreements prevent her from identifying specific landlords publicly.

 

In one current case, she said, the agency got wind of a landlord who discouraged people with children from trying to rent apartments. So the agency sent out two investigators to try to verify the complaints.

 

“The first was a woman with kids,” Ms. Johnson said. “The landlord was like, ‘Oh, well, you know, I don’t know if you would like it here. I don’t know if it’s going to work out for you here. I think you’d like it better somewhere else.’ “

 

The next investigator, who told the landlord she didn’t have kids, got the red carpet treatment, Ms. Johnson said.

 

LACCM also conducts such “paired tests” using trained volunteers, who earn a small stipend. The testers each attempt at different times to rent an apartment or house. The only significant difference between the two in any given test is that one has children or is handicapped or is a member of a particular race and so on.

 

A $230,000 grant from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department awarded to LACCM in October requires the agency to do at least 50 paired tests in Worcester County this year.

 

Worcester also has dedicated a city employee, whose salary is funded in part by the HUD grant, to do outreach to tenants and landlords about housing discrimination, Mr. Mannina said.

 

Older rental homes contaminated with lead paint are another frequent source of housing discrimination here. Some landlords use the presence of lead paint, a known danger to small children, as an excuse not to rent to families with children, but Mr. Mannina said the law requires them to have it removed.

 

“It’s absolutely clear under Massachusetts law that that is illegal discrimination,” Mr. Mannina said. “If the landlords are in the rental business and can’t afford to de-lead, they shouldn’t be in the rental business.”

 

But Mr. Mannina and Ms. Johnson point out that landlords are not required to rent to somebody just because they fall under one of the categories protected under state and federal laws. Bad credit, poor references and an inability to pay the rent all are legitimate business reasons to deny an apartment to a prospective tenant regardless of his or her race or family status or any other factor, they said.

 

“The landlord has the right to pick the best possible tenant, as long as they can prove they are making choices based on legitimate business reasons,” Ms. Johnson said.

 

Contact Thomas Caywood by e-mail at tcaywood@telegram.com.