Discrimination in housing focus of HUD campaign launched Friday

By Joy McMasters Daily Bruin Staff As part of Fair Housing
Month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
announced an advertising campaign Friday at UCLA to educate people
about the reality of housing discrimination and how to report
it.

Some have come to think of it as "discrimination with a smile,"
but this view belies the fact that people are denied housing every
day based on factors such as race, religion, and family size, HUD
officials say.

"Thirty-two years ago this week, Congress passed a fair housing
act in homage to Dr. Martin Luther King and I can think of no
better time than now to introduce this new and aggressive
campaign," said HUD Assistant Secretary Eva Plaza.

The campaign, discussed at a town meeting in Dodd Hall hosted by
the UCLA School of Law, includes a number of public service
announcements featuring actor Edward James Olmos.

"When (housing discrimination) happens to one of us, it happens
to everyone," Olmos said.

"Once you know your community and your laws, you have a better
chance of being able to participate," he said.

According to Olmos, the announcements have the potential to make
a large impact.

The announcements will be available this month in both English
and Spanish, and Plaza said similar commercials will hopefully be
made in Asian languages.

"This new HUD initiative is meant to reach Americans in the
languages they grew up speaking," said Art Agnos, HUD
representative for the Pacific region.

"The newest Americans among us need extra effort and that’s our
goal with these public service announcements," he said.

Discrimination many times involves landlords telling people of a
certain race that there are no vacancies, banks not extending
credit to single women, or applying clauses in property documents
dating back to the 1930s which state no non-whites may live in a
specified house, Agnos said.

The announcements address this range in possible offenses,
explaining that, "Housing discrimination may be in-your-face or
subtle, but it’s still against the law."

According to Plaza, the reasons people do not report such
housing discrimination include their cultural backgrounds and a
lack of information about what their rights are and what legal
action can be taken when those rights are denied.

"The goal of all this is to turn a cycle of non-enforcement to a
cycle of active enforcement," said UCLA Professor Richard Sander,
president of the Los Angeles Fair Housing Institute.

He said that since the 1960s systematic housing discrimination
involving African Americans has decreased significantly, but that
in Latino communities which don’t have as much of a history of
dealing with the issue, it is quite common but infrequently
reported.

"Within Los Angeles, Latinos are one-twentieth as likely to
report housing discrimination as blacks," Sander said.

A number of Friday’s speakers expressed the importance of
educating not only the victims of housing discrimination, but the
landlords who think they can get away with it and have not seen
that there can be legal consequences.

"Housing discrimination is not just wrong, it’s illegal ­
flat out illegal," Agnos said.

Dean Jonathan Varat said the law school was honored to be a part
of not only Friday’s event but the ongoing process of combatting
housing discrimination.

"Our law school believes strongly in reaching out to the
community of Los Angeles," Varat said. "Law faculty and law student
involvement in the community has been pervasive."