[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE FAIR HOUSING ACT: REVIEWING
EFFORTS TO ELIMINATE DISCRIMINATION
AND PROMOTE OPPORTUNITY IN HOUSING
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 2, 2019
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services
Serial No. 116-12
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
MAXINE WATERS, California, Chairwoman
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York PATRICK McHENRY, North Carolina,
NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ, New York Ranking Member
BRAD SHERMAN, California PETER T. KING, New York
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri BILL POSEY, Florida
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri
AL GREEN, Texas BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan
EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri SEAN P. DUFFY, Wisconsin
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado STEVE STIVERS, Ohio
JIM A. HIMES, Connecticut ANN WAGNER, Missouri
BILL FOSTER, Illinois ANDY BARR, Kentucky
JOYCE BEATTY, Ohio SCOTT TIPTON, Colorado
DENNY HECK, Washington ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas
JUAN VARGAS, California FRENCH HILL, Arkansas
JOSH GOTTHEIMER, New Jersey TOM EMMER, Minnesota
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
AL LAWSON, Florida BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
MICHAEL SAN NICOLAS, Guam ALEXANDER X. MOONEY, West Virginia
RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio
KATIE PORTER, California TED BUDD, North Carolina
CINDY AXNE, Iowa DAVID KUSTOFF, Tennessee
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois TREY HOLLINGSWORTH, Indiana
AYANNA PRESSLEY, Massachusetts ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
BEN McADAMS, Utah JOHN ROSE, Tennessee
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, New York BRYAN STEIL, Wisconsin
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia LANCE GOODEN, Texas
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts DENVER RIGGLEMAN, Virginia
TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
ALMA ADAMS, North Carolina
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
JESUS ``CHUY'' GARCIA, Illinois
SYLVIA GARCIA, Texas
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
Charla Ouertatani, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on:
April 2, 2019................................................ 1
Appendix:
April 2, 2019................................................ 57
WITNESSES
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
Furth, Salim, Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George
Mason University............................................... 11
Goldberg, Debby, Vice President, Housing Policy and Special
Projects, National Fair Housing Alliance....................... 4
Hill, Cashuana, Executive Director, Greater New Orleans Fair
Housing Action Center.......................................... 6
Johnson, Kierra, Deputy Executive Director, National LGBTQ Task
Force.......................................................... 8
Olsen, Skylar, Director, Economic Research, Zillow Group......... 9
APPENDIX
Prepared statements:
Furth, Salim................................................. 58
Goldberg, Debby.............................................. 75
Hill, Cashuana............................................... 108
Johnson, Kierra.............................................. 118
Olsen, Skylar................................................ 124
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy:
Written responses to questions for the record from Debby
Goldberg................................................... 130
Garcia, Hon. Jesus ``Chuy'':
2013 Report of the Equal Rights Center and the National
Council of La Raza entitled, ``Puertas Cerradas Housing
Barriers for Hispanics''................................... 139
Porter, Hon. Katie:
Written responses to questions for the record from Cashauna
Hill....................................................... 170
Tlaib, Hon. Rashida:
Detroit Free Press article entitled, ``Few black people get
home mortgages in Detroit, data show,'' dated March 22,
2019....................................................... 172
Dean, Hon. Madeleine:
NPR article entitled, ``For Low-Income Victims, Nuisance Laws
Force Ultimatum: Silence Or Eviction,'' dated June 29, 2016 177
THE FAIR HOUSING ACT: REVIEWING
EFFORTS TO ELIMINATE DISCRIMINATION
AND PROMOTE OPPORTUNITY IN HOUSING
----------
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Financial Services,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in
room 2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Maxine Waters
[chairwoman of the committee] presiding.
Members present: Representatives Waters, Maloney,
Velazquez, Meeks, Clay, Scott, Green, Cleaver, Himes, Foster,
Beatty, Heck, Vargas, Lawson, San Nicolas, Tlaib, Axne,
Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez, Wexton, Lynch, Adams, Dean, Garcia of
Illinois, Garcia of Texas, Phillips; McHenry, Wagner, Lucas,
Posey, Luetkemeyer, Huizenga, Stivers, Barr, Tipton, Williams,
Hill, Zeldin, Loudermilk, Davidson, Budd, Kustoff,
Hollingsworth, Gonzalez of Ohio, Rose, Steil, Gooden, and
Riggleman.
Chairwoman Waters. The Financial Services Committee will
come to order. Without objection, the Chair is authorized to
declare a recess of the committee at any time.
Today's hearing is entitled, ``The Fair Housing Act:
Reviewing Efforts to Eliminate Discrimination and Promote
Opportunity in Housing.''
I now recognize myself for 4 minutes for an opening
statement.
Good morning, everyone. Today, the committee convenes for a
hearing on the Fair Housing Act to review efforts to eliminate
discrimination and promote equal opportunity in housing.
April is National Fair Housing Month, and last April marked
the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, the landmark 1968
legislation that outlawed housing discrimination. But here we
are 51 years after the Fair Housing Act became law and housing
discrimination remains a widespread problem in this country.
According to the National Fair Housing Alliance,
individuals filed 28,843 housing discrimination complaints in
2017. Under the Trump Administration, fair housing protections
are under attack.
In 2018, HUD Secretary Ben Carson halted implementation of
the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Rule, an
important rule finalized by the Obama Administration that
provides communities with greater clarity on how to help break
down barriers to fair housing opportunity, including by
providing local authorities with better data to analyze their
housing needs. According to news reports, Secretary Carson
proposed taking the words, ``free from discrimination,'' out of
HUD's mission statement. He also reportedly halted fair housing
investigations and sidelined top advisers at HUD's Office of
Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.
These are unprecedented attacks on fair housing and must
not go unanswered. Let's not forget that Donald Trump and his
father were once charged with violating the Fair Housing Act
for discriminating against African-American and Puerto Rican
renters. Given that Trump was engaged in housing discrimination
himself, it is unsurprising that his Administration has been so
hostile to fair housing protections.
My bill, the Restoring Fair Housing Protections Eliminated
by HUD Act, is designed to put protections that Ben Carson and
the Trump Administration have diminished back in place. The
legislation requires HUD to implement the AFFH rule as soon as
possible, codifies HUD's mission statement in statute, and
requires HUD to reverse other harmful actions the Trump
Administration has taken to weaken fair housing.
It is also important to recognize that as technology has
evolved, so, too, have the ways that Americans are searching
for and finding housing. A recent study found that 73 percent
of all renters use online platforms to find housing. Regulators
must be proactive in scrutinizing online platforms where
housing is advertised to ensure that the algorithms and
targeting tools are not been utilized to discriminate against
minority groups.
It is a positive development that, following public
pressure from advocates, HUD reversed its decision to halt its
investigation into Facebook and allowed HUD's Office of Fair
Housing and Equal Opportunity to charge Facebook with violating
the Fair Housing Act. However, much more must be done to ensure
that digital platforms are not being used for housing
discrimination.
So I look forward to discussing these matters with our
panel of experts and hearing their insights on fighting
discrimination and ensuring that there are fair housing
opportunities for every American.
With that, I now recognize the ranking member of the
committee, Mr. McHenry, for 5 minutes for an opening statement.
Mr. McHenry. Thank you, Chairwoman Waters.
Achieving fairness in housing entails several dimensions
that should be a shared goal.
The first is a legal requirement: our shared commitment to
the elimination of discrimination in the sale, rental, and
financing of housing, which Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act
of 1968, the Fair Housing Act, made unlawful.
Second, is the desire to promote opportunity in housing.
Curiously, the phrase ``promote opportunity'' is not in the
Fair Housing Act. In fact, the phrase ``equal opportunity'' is
only mentioned once in the over-11,000 words of the Fair
Housing Act, something I will touch on before I end.
One last dimension is the concept of fairness: the very
first section of the Fair Housing Act consists of a simple but
perhaps inscrutable sentence, ``It is the policy of the United
States to provide, within constitutional limitations, for fair
housing throughout the United States.'' The Fair Housing Act
deputized HUD to lead the effort to enforce the rules and
prohibitions on local communities and provide landlords,
sellers, and lenders alike rules and regulations with which
they need to abide.
Fifty years later, here is what we know. The efforts to
eliminate the sort of discrimination contemplated by the Fair
Housing Act, indeed the Civil Rights Act, is and continues to
be an issue today, and we should not mistake the clear progress
made on that front for success in the overall battle. There is
still work to be done, and this hearing is a good opportunity
to ask how the Fair Housing Act can be the best tool to advance
fair housing in the 21st Century.
The Fair Housing Act is focused on prohibiting certain acts
but not necessarily promoting opportunity. If the goal is to
build inclusive communities, you need both approaches to be
successful.
There is no single greater barrier to fair housing
opportunities than poverty, yet it might surprise people to
learn that the word ``poverty'' is not even mentioned once in
the Fair Housing Act, nor is ``income.'' An increased focus on
fighting poverty would help to promote opportunity.
I am pleased that Secretary Carson has been talking about
the need to develop incentives, not just punishments, at the
local level to better design and align housing incentives, like
opportunity zones which we passed into law just over a year
ago. These opportunity zones will help low-income communities
the most and that is the intention.
Technology also can and must play a bigger role in how we
approach building 21st Century communities. HUD simply cannot
do its job by demanding an endless stream of thousand-page
reports to monitor local development in New York or
Philadelphia or Ashland, Wisconsin, or Asheville, North
Carolina. Requiring local communities to spend months compiling
lengthy reports and HUD officials to spend weeks reviewing them
misses the mark. This approach is too heavy on process and
devalues real, recognizable violations standards that demand
prompt attention and resolution. Instead, we ought to have a
system that prioritizes prompt action for all overt violations
of the Fair Housing Act.
In his remarks at the signing of the bill to create HUD,
President Lyndon Johnson notes, ``Those who do not find new
means to respond to new challenges will perish or decay.'' I
concur. President Johnson nailed it with that statement back in
1965, and I think that should be a mindset that we have on this
committee, especially when it comes to housing policy.
And with that, I thank Chairwoman Waters for having this
hearing and I look forward to hearing from the panel.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Clay,
the Chair of our Subcommittee on Housing, Community
Development, and Insurance, for one minute.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
And I look forward to working closely with you as we fight
to reform the housing finance system to ensure that underserved
borrowers in our more challenged neighborhoods, like many of
those in my hometown of St. Louis, have access to mortgages,
insurance, and fair appraisals to give them a real chance at
homeownership.
Democrats are committed to upholding the Fair Housing Act
and fighting for a housing market that is free from
discrimination. The Fair Housing Act, passed in 1968, prohibits
discrimination in the housing market, and requires State and
local governments and other recipients of Federal housing
funding to affirmatively further fair housing.
In January of 2018, Secretary Carson arbitrarily halted
implementation of the agency's Affirmatively Furthering Fair
Housing rule. And in my role as subcommittee chair, I will be
taking action to help restore the hard-fought fair housing
protections that the Trump Administration has weakened.
I yield back.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you.
Today, we welcome a distinguished panel of witnesses to
discuss issues around fair housing: Debby Goldberg, vice
president, housing policy and special projects, National Fair
Housing Alliance; Cashauna Hill, executive director, Greater
New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center; Kierra Johnson, deputy
executive director, National LGBTQ Task Force; Skylar Olsen,
director of economic research, Zillow Group; and Salim Furth,
Ph.D., senior research fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason
University.
Without objection, all of your written statements will be
made a part of the record. Witnesses are reminded that your
oral testimony will be limited to 5 minutes; when there is one
minute left, a yellow light will indicate that you should wrap
up your testimony.
Ms. Goldberg, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to
present your oral testimony.
STATEMENT OF DEBBY GOLDBERG, VICE PRESIDENT, HOUSING POLICY AND
SPECIAL PROJECTS, NATIONAL FAIR HOUSING ALLIANCE
Ms. Goldberg. Thank you, Chairwoman Waters, and good
morning. And good morning to Ranking Member McHenry and the
members of the committee, and thank you for the opportunity to
testify here today.
I am Debby Goldberg, vice president for housing policy and
special projects at the National Fair Housing Alliance or NFHA.
NFHA is the only national organization solely dedicated to
eliminating housing discrimination in the U.S., and we work
with our 200-plus members to achieve that goal through a wide
variety of activities.
I want to thank you, Chairwoman Waters and Congressmen
Green and Clay and Congresswoman Beatty and many other members
of the committee for the leadership and support for fair
housing that you have shown over many years. Today's hearing
looking at our efforts to eliminate discrimination and promote
opportunity in housing is a great way to start Fair Housing
Month. I hope it will help you identify some of our most urgent
fair housing issues and some of the steps that you and Congress
can take to address them.
I want to flag two problems that are described in some
detail in my written testimony that I don't have time to
discuss this morning. One is the need to increase funding for
our fair housing enforcement infrastructure. The other is our
concern that HUD may effectively eliminate the Affirmatively
Furthering Fair Housing or AFFH rule. This may be our most
important tool for overcoming the last harms caused by racial
segregation that our Federal Government helped to create.
I urge you to look into both of these problems and I would
be happy to answer your questions about them.
Disparate impact is a tool that protects each of us from
forms of discrimination that may be hidden or unintended, and
are carried out through policies and practices that appear
neutral, but have a disproportionately harmful effect on
protected classes. Those include an array of policies that
among other things make housing unavailable to families with
children, force victims of domestic violence, most often women
and their children, to choose between being safe and having a
home, and prevent people in communities of color from getting
mortgages or obtaining homeowner's insurance.
HUD's disparate impact rule takes a measured approach to
balancing the justifiable needs of housing providers with the
harms of discrimination. The tool itself has been around nearly
as long as the Fair Housing Act and is well-established policy
with a long history of bipartisan support. It has been affirmed
uniformly by Federal Circuit Courts as well as the Supreme
Court.
Despite all this, HUD plans to rewrite, and we fear
dismantle, this important rule. We urge the committee to
investigate HUD's plans for the disparate impact rule and to
use its authorities to protect and preserve it.
Finally, I would like to touch on an issue that has emerged
as a new frontier in fair housing: the impact of the increasing
use of technology, big data and artificial intelligence by
housing providers. Problems in this space can be difficult to
detect, as the data sets and algorithms used are often
proprietary. Some have concluded wrongly that systems built on
big data and sophisticated algorithms are objective and make it
harder to discriminate. The truth is that if these systems rely
on data that reflects historic biases deeply imbedded in our
society, the systems themselves may discriminate: bias in, bias
out.
We have seen this in the mortgage market, where among other
things, discriminatory credit scoring systems can pose a real
barrier to homeownership and wealth building for people of
color and others. We are also seeing problems surface in the
way housing and related services are marketed.
This is illustrated by a case that NFHA recently settled
with Facebook. We alleged that Facebook's system for generating
and delivering ads allowed providers to prevent members of
protected classes--women with kids, people who speak Spanish,
people with disabilities, people in specific neighborhoods, and
others--from seeing a particular ad. If you never see the ad,
you won't ever know what opportunities you have been denied.
Facebook has agreed to change its ad portal to eliminate
the possibility that advertisers for housing, employment, and
credit can use protected characteristics to limit the
distribution of their ads and to take other steps to eliminate
discrimination on its platform. We look forward to working with
Facebook in that process and hope that our settlement will be a
model for others in this space. This too is an area that would
benefit from further investigation by the committee, as well as
steps to ensure that other laws such as the Communications
Decency Act do not impinge on the protections provided under
the Fair Housing Act.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify here today, and I
look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Goldberg can be found on
page 75 of the appendix.]
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you, Ms. Goldberg.
Ms. Hill, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to present
your oral testimony.
STATEMENT OF CASHUANA HILL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GREATER NEW
ORLEANS FAIR HOUSING ACTION CENTER
Ms. Hill. Good morning. My name is Cashauna Hill, and I
serve as executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair
Housing Action Center. I would first like to thank you,
Chairwoman Maxine Waters, for this opportunity to address the
committee and to review GNO Fair Housing's efforts to live up
to the mandate of the Fair Housing Act. I, along with my staff
and our entire community, am immensely grateful for your
consistent support on the issue of fair housing, and we have
particularly appreciated your commitment to South Louisiana's
recovery following Hurricane Katrina.
I would also like to thank Ranking Member McHenry and all
of the members of the committee for welcoming us here today to
discuss full and effective enforcement of the Fair Housing Act.
The Fair Housing Action Center is a non-profit civil rights
organization established in 1995 to eradicate housing
discrimination and segregation. I want to begin with a story of
one of our clients to emphasize the real-life impacts of the
protections afforded by the Fair Housing Act.
In 2014, a nursing student named Marilyn was living in New
Orleans and celebrating Christmas with her three-year old son.
Marilyn had invited her son's father to visit the child over
the Christmas holidays, however, the visit ended with him
violently assaulting her. Marilyn was transported to the
hospital for treatment while her ex was arrested. After her
release from the hospital the next day, she returned home to
find a notice on her door, letting her know that she was being
evicted and would lose her home because of the complex's zero
tolerance policy on domestic violence.
Louisiana's landlord-tenant laws allow evictions with only
5 day's notice, so Marilyn had just a few days to find a new
home. When Marilyn found the Fair Housing Action Center, our
attorneys on staff, partially funded by HUD's Fair Housing
Initiatives Program, took her case for free. Our legal team
discovered that Marilyn's landlord, a property management
company with over 2,000 rental units in 3 southern States,
required their tenants to sign leases agreeing that any
participation in a domestic violence incident was grounds for
eviction.
To help Marilyn, the Fair Housing Action Center made use of
a 2013 HUD rule and legal theory later upheld by the U.S.
Supreme Court known as ``disparate impact.'' That theory holds
that some policies that seem neutral, like the complex's zero
tolerance policy, can unfairly exclude certain groups of
people. In this case, the policy had a disparate impact on
women, who are most likely to be victims in domestic violence
incidents.
After her case was settled, Marilyn continued to advocate
for changes to Louisiana's State law to protect women in
similar situations. Due to her efforts, together with GNO Fair
Housing's policy staff and a statewide coalition of advocates
and domestic violence survivors, the Louisiana legislature
passed new protections for survivors in 2015. In addition to
showing the impact that enforcement of fair housing laws can
have on American families, Marilyn's story is important because
chronic underfunding and delays in administration are
jeopardizing our ability to enforce the Fair Housing Act. GNO
Fair Housing's work to support Marilyn would not have been
possible without the FHIP program.
I would now like to turn briefly to Affirmatively
Furthering Fair Housing. As the committee is aware, the Fair
Housing Act was not implemented solely to prevent individual
acts of discrimination, but also to address historic patterns
of segregation. The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
process is essential because an overwhelming number of studies
have shown that where you live determines much about how you
will live and even how long you will live. As an example from
New Orleans, life expectancies in two of the City's
neighborhoods differ by more than 25 years. In the neighborhood
in the shadow of the Superdome, a community that is more than
90 percent black, the average resident lives only to the age of
62. Meanwhile, in a community less than 3 miles away that is
more than 90 percent white, the average resident lives to be
88.
In October of 2016, New Orleans completed the very first
Assessment of Fair Housing, a new fair housing plan required
under the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule. GNO Fair
Housing, with support from philanthropic partners, led the
community engagement process for this plan, the transparent
collaborative planning process resulted in unprecedented
community input that produced comprehensive policy
recommendations that provide a clear path forward and have
since been lifted up as a model for the nation. Nowhere is the
focus on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing more important
than after life-altering disasters that change the face of
entire cities and regions.
As I close, I will note that 10 years after the storm, the
City of New Orleans began to publicly discuss policies to
address the gentrification that had already begun, and
continues to displace many long-term neighborhood residents.
For cities that are in the midst of recovery or will be
from future disasters, we cannot afford to wait 10 years before
beginning to consider the mandate of the Fair Housing Act. It
instead must be a foundational part of disaster recovery. On
behalf of the greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, I
truly appreciate the opportunity to offer this testimony and I
will gladly answer any questions that you may have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Hill can be found on page
108 of the appendix.]
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you very much.
Ms. Johnson, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to
present your oral testimony.
STATEMENT OF KIERRA JOHNSON, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
NATIONAL LGBTQ TASK FORCE
Ms. Johnson. My name is Kierra Johnson, and I am the deputy
executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force. I want to
thank the members of this committee for taking the time to
address such a very important issue. As a bisexual person, I
especially want to thank the committee for inviting a member of
the LGBTQ community here today. It is rare for discussions on
housing discrimination to center on the experiences of LGBTQ
people, but it shouldn't be.
Housing discrimination complaints are filed by LGBTQ people
at a similar rate to race discrimination complaints filed by
people of color. And approximately one in four transgender
people in the U.S. has experienced some form of housing
discrimination because of their gender identity. Courts and
State and local legislators have worked to make housing
protections for LGBTQ people more explicit, but still,
protections are inconsistently applied and enforcement is even
more unpredictable.
There are real consequences when we fail in our duty to
protect LGBTQ people. For example, nearly one-third of
transgender people have experienced homelessness at some point
in their lives, and while LGBTQ young people make up maybe 6 or
7 percent of the general population, 40 percent of young
people--40 percent--experiencing homelessness identify as
LGBTQ.
To be clear, people end up homeless not from a lack of
trying, but because they are unable to find or keep housing. So
again, as a queer person, I am appreciative to have been asked
to be a part of this conversation. As a black queer mother of
two, I am also disappointed that it is rare to center the
experiences of queer people in conversations about housing.
When the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968, it promised
protections from discrimination in housing on the basis of
race, color, religion, and national origin. There wasn't an
asterisk at the end of those protections. It didn't say all
black people are protected unless you are a woman. It didn't
say all Latinx people are protected unless you are living with
a disability, and it didn't say all Muslim and Jewish people
are protected unless you are gay. But in practice, people who
wanted to discriminate sought out gaps in the law and they
exploited them.
A landlord could say, ``I am not racist, I just don't rent
to unwed mothers.'' A mortgage broker could say, ``I am not
anti-Semitic, I just think that with his disability, he is too
much of a credit risk.''
Congress has worked hard to close those gaps over the
years. Since 1968, sex, disability, and familial status have
been explicitly named in the FHA so that those don't function
as gaps in the law, but there is still work to be done. I am a
black queer woman with two beautiful, brilliant boys. When a
landlord won't call me back or a bank won't approve a loan, I
don't know if it is because I am black or because I went to see
an apartment with my partner. I don't know if it is because I
have two children or because I am a man; I just don't know. And
if I try to challenge that decision, there is a good chance I
will fail. The landlord knows that because sexual orientation
isn't explicitly named in the law, there is a gap he can
exploit, and the chances of him experiencing any consequences
from his bias drops significantly.
These are the cracks that the people you represent slip
through, everyday people with dreams and families,
responsibilities, and a human desire to live with dignity.
There are answers to this. The Equality Act would protect LGBTQ
people in housing. The Landlord Accountability Act would cover
low-income people who have housing vouchers, and the Fair
Chance at Housing Act would help formerly incarcerated people
secure stable housing. I call on the members of this committee
to think about what it means to leave these groups of people
without explicit protections.
Do we not care about black and brown people unless they are
straight? Do we not care about women unless they have never
been so hopeless as to commit a criminal act to survive? Do we
not care about people with disabilities unless they have enough
money not to need a housing voucher? I hope not.
I thank you for the time you have given me today and the
time you take to fight for these protections tomorrow.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson can be found on page
118 of the appendix.]
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you.
Dr. Olsen, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to present
your oral testimony.
STATEMENT OF SKYLAR OLSEN, DIRECTOR OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH,
ZILLOW GROUP
Ms. Olsen. Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member McHenry, and
distinguished members of the committee, it is an honor to
appear before you today at this important hearing. My name is
Dr. Skylar Olsen, and I am the director of economic research at
Zillow.
Zillow Group was founded with the mission to improve
transparency in the housing market and is dedicated to
empowering consumers with data, inspiration, and knowledge
around the place they call home. Zillow Group operates economic
research teams at Zillow, Trulia, StreetEasy, and HotPads which
leverage available data to produce timely and relevant economic
research. We conduct regular analyses on the health of the
market, which include housing market dynamics and forecasting,
and also tackle specific issues of national interest such as
declining housing affordability and homelessness. All of this
research is publicly available.
In addition, Zillow makes much of our aggregated data free
and downloadable to the public and offers academics and
government agencies a public record data set to support our own
research. We see our role as using our data to help inform
important conversations.
In recent years, Zillow Group has published a growing body
of research addressing existing disparities in the housing
market. At a high level, our work demonstrates that housing
inequities persist across the United States today as reflected
in government-reported data, the amenities available in
different communities, and in consumers' experiences in their
search for housing. I would like to share some of that data
with you today.
I will start with homeownership, a key tool for building
wealth. In the year 1900, the gap between black and white
homeownership rates was 27.6 percentage points. In 2016, over
115 years later, the gap was actually wider at 30.3 percentage
points. At the same time, black borrowers are denied for
conventional home loans at approximately 2.5 times more than
that of white borrowers. Zillow data has also examined home
value appreciation in neighborhoods that were historically
redlined based at least in part on the racial composition of
those neighborhoods. We found that those areas formerly deemed
best and appropriate for lending are now worth 2.3 times those
previously marked as hazardous and inappropriate for lending.
Disparities are also visible in the amenities present in
local communities. Trulia's research team, with input from the
National Fair Housing Alliance and Ohio State University looked
at four major metro areas: Atlanta; Detroit; Houston; and
Oakland. This research found that predominantly non-white
census tracts had 35 percent fewer traditional banking
establishments, 38 percent fewer healthcare service
establishments, and 34 percent fewer active or healthy
lifestyle amenities such as parks, playgrounds, and recreation
centers as compared to tracts that were predominantly white.
Finally, we have also engaged in research on consumer
experiences and perceptions. According to the Zillow Group
Consumer Housing Trends Report, a nationally representative
annual survey of consumer sentiment, home buyers of color were
less likely than white buyers to say they were satisfied with
all aspects of their home buying experience.
Forty-three percent of white buyers reported full
satisfaction, compared to only 27 percent of black, 24 percent
of Hispanic, and 23 percent of Asian respondents. The survey
also revealed that it takes more time for Asian, black or
Hispanic home shoppers to have the rental application or offer
accepted. On average Hispanic renters submit 5.5 rental
applications and Black and Asian renters submit 3.6 before
finding a rental home. This is compared with only 2.5 for white
applicants.
The perception of housing discrimination is also strong
among U.S. adults. In a nationally representative survey
conducted last fall, 27 percent of respondents said that they
believe they have been treated differently in their search for
housing because of their status in a protected group, including
because of race, skin color, disability status, and others.
Zillow Group believes that all Americans deserve to find a
home free from discrimination in the process, yet these data
points help illustrate the breadth of inequities and
frustrations that many Americans still experience in their home
search and in their communities.
We appreciate the opportunity to share this research with
the committee and hope it will help inform the committee's
discussions on these important issues.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Olsen can be found on page
124 of the appendix.]
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you.
Dr. Furth, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to present
your oral testimony.
STATEMENT OF SALIM FURTH, PH.D., SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW,
MERCATUS CENTER, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
Mr. Furth. Good morning, Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member
McHenry, and members of the committee. Thank you for giving me
the opportunity to address you today. My name is Salim Furth,
and I am a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at
George Mason University, where I am co-director of the Urbanity
Project. I study land use regulations that are barriers to
opportunity. My comments today will focus on the details of the
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rulemaking.
Contemporary American land use embodies the bad idea that
private land use ought to be publicly planned. In practice,
these plans routinely exclude low-income families by indirect
means, causing income-based segregation.
In this environment, how should Federal policymakers
respond? They should resist the temptation to implement
anything like nationalized or State-wide zoning. What they can
and should do is amend the ways in which Federal policy
interacts with local government to encourage and facilitate
inclusion and to stop subsidizing extremely exclusionary local
policies.
In this spirit, my colleague and co-director Emily Hamilton
and I submitted a public interest comment to HUD to suggest
specific revisions to the AFFH rule. The 2015 AFFH rule is
based in an important but vague admonition in the Fair Housing
Act that, ``The Secretary shall act in a manner affirmatively
to further the purposes of this subchapter.'' In layman's
English, I take this to mean that HUD has to abide by the
spirit of the law, not just the letter of the law.
Exclusionary zoning seems like a clear example of
government violating the spirit of the Fair Housing Act without
technically discriminating against any protected class. HUD,
under both the current and previous Administrations, seems to
agree.
But when HUD makes grants to localities that are actively
fighting the construction of modest amounts of rental housing--
Cupertino, California, comes to mind--it is not Affirmatively
Furthering Fair Housing. The 2015 AFFH rule, however, has not
led to any change in HUD's grant- making behavior. Cupertino is
in good standing and has received a Community Development Block
Grant (CDBG) to rebuild some sidewalks.
In the year and a half during which the 2015 AFFH rule was
used by HUD, a pattern emerged: Entitlement communities would
submit a long document. HUD staff would review and send it back
for corrections. The document would grow even longer. When it
was finally done, the entitlement community would be qualified
to receive funding for the next 5 years. The documents
typically contained analysis of segregation and demographics as
well as some plans to improve policy. There were, however, no
teeth, and I am unaware--perhaps people can correct me--of a
single local policy that was changed as a direct consequence of
this rule.
Ms. Hamilton and I offer three principles for the revision
of the AFFH rule: one, the rule should evaluate enacted
policies and market outcomes, not plans; two, the rule should
be easy to administer; and three, the rule should have real
teeth.
Following these principles promotes fair housing more
effectively and with less wasted effort.
The AFFH rule made lots of work for planners without taking
seriously the elected decision-makers. HUD should reverse this
emphasis. To be in good standing with HUD, jurisdictions should
be able to point to market outcomes and enacted policies that
are consistent with inclusion and strong property rights.
Second, HUD ought to strive for ease of administration. By
all accounts, an extraordinary amount of work went into
preparing and evaluating the Fair Housing Assessments required
by the AFFH rule. But do not mistake administrative burden for
policy rigor. Standing in a long line at the DMV doesn't make
you a better driver.
Our final principle is that the AFFH rule ought to have
real consequences, at least for egregiously exclusive grantees.
How can the Secretary of HUD be acting affirmatively to further
fair housing when he or she approves grants to jurisdictions
that have high and rising rent, issue few housing permits, and
are unwilling to change policy to allow more housing
construction?
There are many ways to put teeth into AFFH. The most
obvious is for highly exclusionary jurisdictions to lose access
to CDBG funds for a time. CDBG funds are the ideal carrot or
stick because they are rarely used for housing. Under existing
statute, however, this is difficult and would probably result
in lawsuits. A softer set of teeth would be to require that
CDBG funds in highly exclusionary jurisdictions be spent
directly on low-income housing.
In our public interest comment, Ms. Hamilton and I outlined
one particular approach for the AFFH rule. But there are many
ways to implement our principles. With the help of this
committee, HUD can and should revise the AFFH rule to focus on
enacted policies and market outcomes rather than plans, to ease
the costs of administration and to have real financial
consequences.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Furth can be found on page
58 of the appendix.]
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you, Dr. Furth. I now recognize
myself for 5 minutes for questions.
Ms. Goldberg, I am concerned that HUD and Congress are
woefully behind when it comes to understanding housing
discrimination. Today, an astounding 73 percent of renters find
housing online and an even higher percentage of millennials do
so. While technological advances have expanded access to
knowledge and information, these innovations are enabling old
discriminatory practices to flourish.
Your organization recently settled its lawsuit with
Facebook over the social media company's discriminatory
targeting of advertisements. Just last week, HUD announced its
own fair housing charges against the company. This was the
first Secretary-initiated complaint for the Trump
Administration even though previous Administrations regularly
brought such cases. Reading the charges, the public may also be
surprised to learn that HUD Secretary Carson originally halted
this investigation when he took office.
According to the charge, Facebook provided advertisers,
including mortgage lenders, real estate agencies, and housing
developers, with a map to exclude people who live in a
specified area from seeing an ad by drawing a red line around
the area. This is eerily familiar to when the Federal Housing
Administration drew red lines around black and brown
communities, systematically starving them of access to capital
and lending. Today, it seems Facebook is enabling advertisers
to write their own discriminatory maps and get paid to do so.
What is troubling is that due to algorithmic black boxes,
communities are not always well-positioned to know when this is
happening, and accordingly to file complaints regarding online
discrimination. Facebook is but one of the many new platforms
online, and unfortunately HUD, under this Administration, which
is in the position to enforce the law has to be shamed by fair
housing advocates into investigating serious violations of the
Fair Housing Act.
How can we strengthen enforcement of the Fair Housing Act
to ensure that there are safeguards online and that companies
like Facebook comply with the law?
Ms. Goldberg. Thank you for that question, Chairwoman
Waters. I think there are a number of things that Congress can
do. One is to increase funding for private, non-profit fair
housing groups like the one that Ms. Hill next to me here runs
that do investigations. We partnered with several of our
members, not in New Orleans, but several others in doing our
Facebook investigation.
But resources are always scarce. These investigations take
time and money and allocating more money to serve that purpose
would be helpful.
I would also add that HUD itself, in its Office of Fair
Housing, needs more funding and more staff and greater
resources in order to be able to carry out its responsibilities
more effectively, one of which should be, along perhaps with
several other Federal agencies that have a role to play in the
regulation of technology in that space, being more proactive
about looking at how these different platforms operate and
whether or not the systems that they use are functioning to
discriminate. As you know, if you can't see what is going on,
if you don't know what the data say or the algorithms do, you
don't know whether discrimination is happening. So, greater
transparency, greater investigation, I think would be helpful.
The other thing I want to underscore is something that was
not particularly relevant to our Facebook case, but is an issue
in other online platforms, which is the conflict that exists at
the moment between the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and the
Fair Housing Act, where courts have interpreted the CDA to
trump the Fair Housing Act and allow for discriminatory
advertisements to appear on certain platforms in the name of
free speech. And we think that is a problem that really needs
to be rectified. I don't think it was what was intended, but it
is how it stands now.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you very much. Let me just follow
up for a moment. Did Facebook admit and recognize and make some
commitments to change?
Ms. Goldberg. Yes. So, I don't believe that in the
settlement, Facebook acknowledged doing anything wrong, as is
typical of these kinds of settlements. But it did make a number
of changes or commitments to make a number of changes including
setting up a new portal for advertisements for housing credit
and employment that will not have the discriminatory options
that were on its platform in the past.
It will also set up a portal where anybody, anywhere in the
country, can look at the housing-related ads that have been
posted. So, it gets us past this problem of, you never saw the
ad because you weren't targeted for it.
And in addition, because there are concerns about what
happens after an ad has been developed, approved, and then gets
to be delivered that even though we have taken some of the
discriminatory options out of the ad targeting, that the
algorithms may themselves generate additional discriminatory
patterns, Facebook has agreed to work with us and a range of
experts to study those patterns over time and take additional
steps to correct it.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you very much.
The Chair now recognizes the distinguished ranking member
for 5 minutes for questions.
Mr. McHenry. I think we all agree--I hope we all agree--
that we need the Fair Housing Act. So, let me just go across
the panel and let us see if we can get some agreement here.
Do you all agree that we need the Fair Housing Act? Ms.
Goldberg?
Ms. Goldberg. Absolutely.
Mr. McHenry. Ms. Hill?
Ms. Hill. Yes.
Ms. Johnson. Yes.
Ms. Olsen. Yes.
Mr. Furth. Yes.
Mr. McHenry. All right. Well, this is good. It is
Washington, so we have to start with some sense of commonality
where we can get it.
So, do you believe that in order for the Fair Housing Act
to work, we need effective tools to prevent discrimination to
eliminate the practice, or rules to eliminate the practice of
discrimination?
Ms. Hill. Yes.
Ms. Goldberg. Yes. I think that is one part of meeting the
goals of the Fair Housing Act.
Ms. Olsen. Yes.
Mr. Furth. Yes.
Mr. McHenry. Thank you.
Mr. Furth, you outlined in a piece in October of last year
entitled, ``Ben Carson's Approach to Affordable Housing Might
Work''--one quote I pulled from there is, ``Carson's HUD
suspended the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule in
2018 and plans to reframe it to challenge the exclusionary land
use regulations of cities and counties that receive HUD
funding. This approach is promising and represents an
appropriate exercise of Federal power that restores property
rights and hopefully will help to reduce poverty.''
Dr. Furth, do you believe that the process that resulted in
HUD's 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule was
ineffective, and if so, why?
Mr. Furth. So, I take your question to mean was the rule
itself--
Mr. McHenry. Was the 2015 rule ineffective, and if so, why?
Mr. Furth. It appears to have been ineffective to me. Some
people think we should have given it longer to operate before
drawing that conclusion and reasonable people can differ on
that point.
But to me, it helped jurisdictions that wanted to be
inclusive. So, if we look at the New Orleans Assessment of Fair
Housing, it is great, it has lots of good of things and they
tried to follow up on those policies.
But if we look at communities that didn't want to be
inclusive, it didn't force them to do anything other than fill
out this report. So, they had to do a bunch of reporting and
the staff had to make a lot of plans. But the staff plans don't
bind elected officials. We have to take local self-government
seriously. It exists.
And these local decisions are made by elected officials who
answer to their voters. They don't always make decisions that
we agree with. And for HUD, at least HUD should say, if you are
going to make decisions that are routinely exclusionary, we are
not going to participate.
Mr. McHenry. Okay. So, here is a question. Do current HUD
rules take into account the cost of local land use regulations?
Mr. Furth. No. In fact, I believe appropriations bills
every year forbid HUD from taking zoning into account.
Mr. McHenry. Okay. What effect does that have on the supply
of affordable housing across the country?
Mr. Furth. It is massive. If you look at especially coastal
cities where there is a long history of very strict regulation
of private land use rights, what we get is a few jurisdictions
that have sort of a traditional stock of rental housing and
they are willing to build more, not a lot more, but a little
bit more.
Mr. McHenry. Dr. Olsen, does the Zillow data--is that
similar to what you have seen in the data if you have analyzed
that component of your data?
Ms. Olsen. Yes. I think in general, anyone who spends time
studying housing markets and how they work and why we do or do
not build recognize that a major barrier to adding housing to
any community is land use zoning.
So, to make a more tangible example, 75 percent of the City
of Seattle is zoned for single- family only. It is generally
easy across--
Mr. McHenry. How does that compare to other localities?
Ms. Olsen. That is pretty normal to have extensive single-
family zoning. The other practice that kind of comes through
with land use regulations is that it is easy to add density
where density already exists. So, places that kind of already
have that element to it kind of get the more density, more
rental apartments units and then you have these insular
communities that are exclusionary that might have access to
really great amenities like great schools where it is harder to
add that density, and so it is harder for other communities to
access.
Mr. McHenry. So, to that point, this is about income
segregation based off of this cost structure that local
regulations bear out on the cost of housing?
Ms. Olsen. That is implicitly how things net out at the
end. It is basically new land, just current land use
regulations, one way to think about it is that it reinforces
historical redlining over time.
Mr. McHenry. Okay. Thank you all for your testimony. I
appreciate it.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you.
The gentlewoman from New York, Ms. Velazquez, is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Ms. Goldberg, thank you for the National Fair Housing
Alliance's past support of my bill, the Sexual Harassment
Awareness and Prevention Act. As you know, sexual harassment is
a form of sex discrimination that is prohibited under the Fair
Housing Act. However, every day across this country, residents
in affordable housing programs face sexual harassment at the
hands of landlords, property managers, and others in the
housing industry.
Can you speak to how affordable housing residents are
particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and misconduct and
how they can often be left homeless because of it?
Ms. Goldberg. Thank you for that question, Congresswoman.
It is a terrible problem that people face. The supply of
affordable housing that we have in this country is extremely
limited. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates
that only one out of every four households that is eligible for
assisted housing actually receives that housing.
And the housing in the private market, depending on where
you are living, may or may not be affordable or affordable
housing may or may not be available in any large numbers in the
private market. And so, having a unit that you can afford is a
very valuable thing that people are very reluctant to give up,
because there is no guarantee that you are going to find
another one. And that puts women in particular in a very
vulnerable position.
Ms. Velazquez. And can you speak to the fact that this is a
problem that more than just women face? Can you explain how
seniors and individuals in the LGBTQ community also face this
threat? And I will ask Ms. Johnson to expand on it, too.
Ms. Goldberg. Sure. I think you make a very good point,
that this is not a--women may be the largest single category of
people who experience this kind of discrimination but they are
certainly not the only ones. And I will defer to Ms. Johnson to
speak more on that.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you. One of my colleagues actually said
something that stuck with me. They said that deep poverty and
homelessness felt to them like the stripping away of all of
their choices in life.
They had to take whatever job was available and hang on to
it regardless of how degrading and demoralizing, especially
when it was freezing cold or pouring rain. They had to sleep in
whatever shelter was available regardless of whether that space
was safe. They had to hide their inner light because living on
the street meant constantly putting on a shroud of toughness.
They had to fight to protect themselves. They had to steal to
eat. They had to beg to survive.
And I think this story, unfortunately, isn't a rare one.
But it does point to when people don't have secure housing,
when they are discriminated against in various ways, when they
do find housing, whether it is safe or not, they stay, whether
it is degrading or not, whether it is good for their children
or not, they stay.
And so, they are putting themselves and their families in
precarious situations when affordable good quality housing
isn't available.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you.
Ms. Goldberg, while it is true that HUD does publish an
annual report regarding complaints brought under the Fair
Housing Act, this report is not detailed enough for Congress
and the public to get a clear portrayal of the complaints
brought alleging sexual discrimination or harassment.
The discussion draft of my bill will require HUD to
disaggregate this information in several ways including race,
gender, family status, those with disabilities, and those who
are elderly, as well as by the number of complaints filed by
State, residents of certain housing programs, and the number of
complaints that allege retaliation.
How will these additional details help HUD address sexual
harassment claims brought by residents?
Ms. Goldberg. Having additional detail is always helpful
because it lets us see where the problems really lie. And one
of the points that you have sort of implied but not made
explicitly that I think is really important is the
intersectionality of some of these issues.
People face discrimination for more than one of their
characteristics, which can sometimes make it difficult to
understand exactly what is going on. And so, having the kind of
data that you are proposing in your legislation would really
shine a light on what is going on and help us understand it
better.
I would say that we also need ways to make sure that people
who may be subject to sexual harassment in housing know what
their rights are and know how to pursue them and report them,
because as we said, people feel very vulnerable. They are
reluctant to come forward and complain because they are afraid
they will be evicted.
And so, I suspect that the number of incidents that we see
even in the HUD data and the data that our members collect as
well is probably, far under-represents what actually happens.
Ms. Velazquez. I yield back. Thank you.
Chairwoman Waters. The gentlewoman from Missouri, Ms.
Wagner, is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Wagner. I thank the chairwoman and I thank our
witnesses for testifying today.
It has been 51 years since the passage of the Fair Housing
Act, and while many accomplishments have come from its
enactment, there is still much work to be done to ensure its
effectiveness. I know that Secretary Carson has turned his
attention and full examination to the alleged redlining by
Facebook. He has also, I know, expanded that in looking into
Google and Twitter in this space.
This question is for both Ms. Goldberg and Dr. Furth. Given
that the medium for advertising the rental and sale of real
estate has changed with trends towards Internet platforms and
big data, how can we ensure that HUD has the tools, including
advanced technology, to enforce the law as written?
Ms. Goldberg. I would agree that HUD needs--I think this is
implied in your question--more resources in order to really be
able to understand, evaluate, and where necessary take action
to enforce the Fair Housing Act with respect to the kinds of
online platforms that you are describing and that is certainly
what our case with Facebook illustrates.
Mrs. Wagner. Thank you, Ms. Goldberg.
Dr. Furth?
Mr. Furth. I apologize, I have no expertise in this area
and I defer to my co-panelists.
Mrs. Wagner. Dr. Furth, let me ask you this question. In
your testimony, and I will change subjects here, you listed
three principles for the revision of HUD's 2015 Affirmatively
Furthering Fair Housing Rule. One specific principle you
mentioned is that the rule should have real teeth.
What sort of changes do you believe would make this rule
more enforceable and also result in better outcomes?
Mr. Furth. My preferred change would be that communities
that are extremely exclusionary--and we can debate exactly how
to define that, but usually you know them when you see them--
should be for a time, a couple of years, or maybe a full 5
years ineligible to receive Community Development Block Grants.
I actually think having said this more since I wrote the
public interest comment that that would actually require
further legislation from Congress and that HUD cannot under
current statute do that. That is what some lawyer friends have
told me.
So, I would certainly encourage the committee to consider
giving HUD the ability or the instruction to live off places
like Brookline, Massachusetts, or Cupertino, California, which
are very wealthy, well-resourced communities that are
essentially, through loopholes I would call them in the CDBG
formula, receiving grants that are intended in statute to be
used primarily for low- and moderate-income families, and they
are using that to essentially subsidize a local regime of
exclusion.
Mrs. Wagner. I have worked with Congressman Al Green on the
other side of the aisle in CDBG DR reform in some of these
spaces. I look forward to advancing that legislation at some
point.
This rule was not established until 2015. What did
communities do up until 2015? Did they operate without
standards? Were communities free to do what they wanted?
Mr. Furth. I think they are still free to operate without
standards and do what they want. Up until 2015, there was a
process called the analysis of impediments which was a similar
but much lighter version, where the staff would sort of put
together a little report about how fair housing might be
blocked in their community and they would submit the report and
it would get filed away and nothing would happen.
Mrs. Wagner. By not having a rule in place, would you say
that HUD was opposed to efforts to further the purposes of the
Fair Housing Act, or that HUD was opposed to the Fair Housing
Act itself?
Mr. Furth. No, I don't think so. The Affirmatively
Furthering language is tricky. It says that you are supposed to
do things affirmatively, go out of your way to further fair
housing, and exactly how you go out of your way to do that is a
judgment call and I am not calling into question 50 years of
HUD directors.
Mrs. Wagner. Thank you.
And Ms. Goldberg, I think I have a little bit of time left
and you may have wanted to finish discussing some of the tools
and resources that are necessary in advancing technology and
enforcing the law as written, please.
Ms. Goldberg. Thank you. I appreciate that. Really two
things, one is that I think this is an issue that cuts across
more of the Federal Government than just HUD and it is a place
where an interagency effort would be very helpful. It is not
just housing ads but also credit and employment ads that are at
play in our Facebook case, for example. And so, I think a
broader set of eyes would be helpful.
I would also just say very quickly that I think that
focusing on zoning alone in the context of Affirmatively
Furthering Fair Housing misses a big part of the puzzle. It may
be a very useful piece, but it misses a big part.
Mrs. Wagner. Thank you, Ms. Goldberg.
My time has expired. I yield back.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you.
The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Scott, is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Scott. Thank you very much, Chairwoman Waters.
Ms. Hill, let me start with you. In 1968, 51 years ago, the
Fair Housing Act was passed, and yet here we are with still
this piercing discrimination. What would you say if you had to
name one or two or three things, why is that?
I mean, 51 years is a long time, and in those 51 years a
ton of resources and money have been put into it, yet this
thing is still so alive, this racial discrimination, sexual
orientation discrimination. What is going on? What could you
say to us that would really put our finger on this problem?
Ms. Hill. Thank you. I certainly appreciate the question.
And I would say that a big part of why we have not made maybe
as much progress in this area as we would have liked is that
prior to the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule,
much of the focus in the fair housing conversation was on
ending private acts of discrimination.
And we really as a country hadn't gotten to dealing with
the history of racist housing policy in this country. We hadn't
gotten to addressing the history of segregation and really
working to affirmatively further fair housing by creating and
opening the door for open and integrated communities.
I will say that we have spent some time this morning
talking about what Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing means,
and luckily, we don't have to guess as to how that can happen.
We all know that former Vice President Walter Mondale is still
with us, and he is one of the original sponsors of the Fair
Housing Act and has spoken publicly and been very clear about
what that Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing language meant
back in 1968.
And so, we really as a country have to focus on working to
end the legacy of segregation.
Mr. Scott. So, let me ask you this. We have in place what
is called the Housing Choice Vouchers Program. Tell me, is that
effective? How does that work?
Ms. Hill. Well, I can certainly talk about the way that the
Housing Choice Voucher Program has played out in New Orleans
post-Hurricane Katrina, for example. The promise of the program
is that people will take these vouchers and be able to find
housing in the private market that works best for them and
their families.
We know that many public housing authorities across the
country shifted to this model of more vouchers and less public
housing in order to de-concentrate poverty. Unfortunately, in
communities across the country and in New Orleans, we have
really just under the voucher system further concentrated
poverty, and in New Orleans, voucher holders have been moved
across the Mississippi River and canals following Hurricane
Katrina and are re-segregated in communities of high poverty.
Mr. Scott. Let me ask you this, can these Fair Housing
Choice vouchers be used to help pay the rent?
Ms. Hill. Well, yes. And I think there are a few ways to do
that. We know that we haven't quite gotten to the point where
the vouchers are meeting the goal of providing free choice in
the private market in terms of housing.
In New Orleans, our housing authority has been working to
roll out a pilot program where the voucher payment standard is
adjusted to meet the cost of living in specific neighborhoods.
Mr. Scott. I want to make sure I get the right answer here.
So, these vouchers can be used to help pay the rent?
Ms. Hill. Well, depending on the neighborhood. And so, it
is important, I think, from an on-the-ground perspective for
housing authorities to have the flexibility to be able to set
the payment standard depending on the actual neighborhood.
Mr. Scott. Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Goldberg, you had an interesting comment about, you
called it the disparate impact rule. Could you amplify that a
bit in terms of its impact on this issue?
Ms. Goldberg. In terms of its impact on housing choice
vouchers in particular?
Mr. Scott. No.
Ms. Goldberg. Or on fair housing in general?
Mr. Scott. Exactly. You made a very salient point. I
remember part of it. But I did remember what you called it,
disparate impact rule.
Ms. Goldberg. Yes.
Mr. Scott. Thank you.
Ms. Goldberg. It is a critical tool that has been just
fundamental to enforcing the Fair Housing Act, because not all
acts of discrimination are blatant and in-your-face. Many acts
of discrimination, whether or not they are intentional, are
carried out through policies and practices that look neutral,
like the situation that Ms. Hill described of the apartment
complex that would evict somebody if the police were called to
their unit.
That doesn't sound like it is going to discriminate. But in
fact, because of who is likely to be the victim of domestic
violence, it does have a discriminatory impact, and this rule
helps us ferret out and eliminate those kinds of policies.
Mr. Scott. Thank you very much.
Chairwoman Waters. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Posey,
is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Posey. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman, for
holding this hearing.
At our recent hearing on Homelessness and Housing
Affordability, I pointed out that Secretary Carson has stated
that local zoning and building restrictions were among the most
important contributors to homelessness and to unaffordable
housing.
When we marked up the Homeless Act, I offered an amendment
to provide authority for HUD to use incentives to encourage
local communities to reduce zoning measures and other land use
practices that serve to restrict the supply of the affordable
housing in this country, and it passed with bipartisan support
much to, I think, everyone's surprise.
Today, three witnesses mentioned exclusionary zoning
practices as an obstacle to fair housing and access for
protected classes. One of the witnesses found--his testimony on
this obstacle recommends strong incentives for eliminating such
practices and recommends we look to the market outcomes as
metrics to measure the success of our efforts along these
lines.
I believe that we know just as reducing zoning restrictions
is a path to affordable housing, it is also one of the best
practices to ensure fair housing.
Mr. Furth, in your testimony, you say rather than relying
on local policymakers with vague and unenforceable commitments
to integrate, HUD should tie the disbursement of CDBG grants to
clear requirements for already enacted zoning de-regulation
reforms to the entitlement process that reduce the cost of
building new housing. HUD should set clearly defined metrics
which cities should begin permitting more housing if they want
to continue receiving grants.
Can you please describe some of those metrics and how they
tie into the market outcomes?
Mr. Furth. Yes. So, market outcomes are essentially when we
look at the housing market as it is, what do we see? We see
rent levels. We see how rent is changing.
We see whether building permits are being issued and we
could see patterns of segregation and other demographics. So,
those are the outcomes. Those take time to develop. If you
change your policy today, you are not going to see rent or
segregation disappear in one month.
So, we should look for the long term, are these policies
having an effect on market outcomes? And then when a community,
say a Cupertino, California, says, ``We have been very
exclusionary but we want to keep getting the CDBG money, so we
are going to change our policy,'' we say, ``Alright, in terms
of the outcomes, you don't look great. Your rent is extremely
high and a moderate-income person wishing to live here has
extremely few options. But, okay, you are going to legalize
accessory dwelling units. You are going to expand the land in
which multifamily housing can be built. You are going to get
rid of parking minimums that drive up the cost of constructing
housing.''
If they do one of those policies, we say, ``Alright, we
will let you in for now and then we will reevaluate after some
years and see if the outcomes match where we hope this policy
would get you.'' And then at least we are creating--I don't
think it is a very powerful incentive. I don't think we are
taking away local self-government if we enact something like
this.
But we are at least saying if a community is exclusionary
and unwilling to try to change, then HUD should wash its hands
and say we are not subsidizing that.
Mr. Posey. I concur. So often in this country we measure
success by how much money we pour into something, not how
effectively we get results, and that is definitely a problem.
And I appreciate your comments about Dr. Carson looking into
the land planning as an attempt, actually, the first attempt in
his job to do that. And we know that it makes no sense for a
homeless shelter to require two parking places per resident, to
have one bathroom for every resident.
We talked in committee a little bit about how Mother Teresa
had a homeless center she was trying to open in New York. And
they said well, you can't do it. There are not enough
bathrooms, somebody may have to wait in line. So, they continue
to use the street and sleep on the street, and that was just a
big deficiency of government.
So, you proposed that HUD tie the disbursement of community
block grants to a local community meeting clear requirements
for re-regulating zoning or reforms to the entitlement process
that reduce the cost of building new housings like we just
talked about.
Does the use of CDBG grants reach enough communities to
broadly and consistently provide incentives or do we need to
consider other incentives in addition to those?
Mr. Furth. That is a great question. And I think one of the
best critiques of our proposal is that a lot of very
exclusionary communities don't get CDBG. So there are not that
many Federal levers right now that are useful and we could
certainly consider creating levers, but I would also say fix
what you are doing wrong before you create new money pools.
Mr. Posey. Okay. I didn't have time to ask Ms. Hill a
question, but I appreciate your testimony.
Ms. Hill. Thank you.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you very much. The gentleman from
Missouri, Mr. Clay, who is also the Chair of our Subcommittee
on Housing, Community Development, and Insurance, is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and let me thank the
witnesses for your testimony. The National Community
Reinvestment Coalition released a report on March 18th that
identified more than 1,000 neighborhoods in 935 cities and
towns where gentrification occurred between 2000 and 2013.
In 230 of those neighborhoods, rapidly rising rents,
property values, and taxes forced more than 135,000 residents
who are often black or Hispanic to move away. Right here in
Washington, D.C., 20,000 black residents were displaced, and in
Portland, Oregon, 13 percent of the black community was
displaced.
While the study shows the concentration of wealth and the
displacement of black and brown people, the study also found
that wealth-building investments are increasingly concentrated
in the larger cities, while other regions of the country like
rural areas and tribal areas languish.
Ms. Goldberg and Ms. Hill, is gentrification of fair
housing an issue?
Ms. Goldberg. I think gentrification can be a fair housing
issue, certainly, if what it entails is the displacement of
people who have been living in a community who are members of
protected classes and being displaced by others.
What we see I think in some cases is people of color living
in a community for many years, and whether market forces or
public investment or some combination spurs investment, and
makes the neighborhood more attractive, other forces as well,
housing prices go up, and the people who have been living there
have been forced out.
Where that has a racial impact or an impact based on
national origin or any other protected class, that can be a
fair housing issue.
Mr. Clay. Let me ask Ms. Hill, what tools exist at the
Federal level that can help local jurisdictions think through
these equity issues so that they can begin to address them?
Ms. Hill. I do just want to quickly say that in New
Orleans, we are seeing climate gentrification that has been
fueled by a flight to higher ground. And we know that white
residents have been far more likely to have the resources to
buy land in high-ground areas following Hurricane Katrina.
African-Americans, who before the storm had been living in
these high-ground neighborhoods bordering the Mississippi
River, have now been easily displaced by those increasing
rents. And so, I think it is important to at the Federal level
have some oversight that ensures that local communities are not
spending Federal disaster dollars in a way that will fuel
gentrification and displacement or in a way that perpetuates
segregation.
Mr. Clay. Thank you for that response. And Ms. Olsen, has
Zillow done research on this issue directly or with relation to
market trends broadly that can shed light on this topic?
Ms. Olsen. Yes. I think in looking at gentrification and
where the market pressure is, currently, for example, if I
looked at a major metropolitan area and I wanted to understand
where home values have grown the most in the past, it was
generally close to the job centers, because you have this
greater concentration of people flowing into an area.
It was hard to add housing into those areas because of just
all sorts of things, so land use restrictions and kind of
different barriers there that cause home values and rents near
job centers to increase and we find generally lower-income
households and often communities of color or individuals of
color are then pushed further and further out.
So then commutes increase, generally other amenities in
that space from my earlier testimony kind of highlights there
is disparate access there. So for sure, this is kind of a
common dynamic and it comes down to many factors that influence
that development.
Mr. Clay. Thank you for that. And Ms. Johnson, are there
any particular impacts gentrification with displacement is
having on the LGBTQ community?
Ms. Johnson. Thank you for your question. The reality is
that LGBTQ people, especially queer women, transgender people,
and LGBTQ people of color are more likely to live in poverty
and are more likely to be incarcerated.
So for example, up to 40 percent of women in incarceration
identify as LGBTQ. So when we are looking at gaps, and we are
looking at gentrification, when people who are reentering
society after imprisonment can't find stable housing, they are
forced out of the community. And so that is just one example of
where those intersections come together and affect the LGBTQ
community.
Mr. Clay. Thank you. And I yield back.
Chairwoman Waters. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Williams,
is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Williams. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I thank all of
you for being here today. Secretary Carson asked for comments
to change the Obama Administration's Affirmatively Furthering
Fair Housing regulation.
This was not an arbitrary decision. President Obama's own
Council of Economic Advisors had doubts that the way the
regulation was written could effectively combat discrimination
in the housing market.
So, Dr. Furth, can you explain the shortcomings of the
previous Administration's Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
regulation, and in addition, was there a consensus when this
rule was introduced back in 2015 that this would end
discrimination?
Mr. Furth. Thank you so much. So in my view, it was a well-
intentioned rule and it had two primary shortcomings.
The first is that it was very costly to administer,
particularly for small communities. So if you don't have a
dedicated planning staff, you are going to be looking at paying
a consultant $50,000 to complete an assessment of fair housing.
And if you are the type of community that is inclusive and
isn't putting up barriers to housing, that seems like punishing
someone just for showing up and wanting to participate in HUD's
program, and I don't think it makes sense to kind of push these
communities through a process which might be helpful to some,
but is costly for virtually everyone and it turned out to be
very costly for HUD's staff.
They did it for a year and a half and the career staff
said, ``We are exhausted, we can't keep up the pace of this
with running through all of our communities.'' So that was the
first shortcoming.
The second was, despite the good intentions and the ample
amount of work by many parties that went into it, it didn't
change policy. So, it shined some light on problems and it was
certainly much better than the analysis of impediments as a
research method. And as a researcher, I appreciate people
working hard to understand problems and documenting things
really carefully, and it is great if HUD wants to make
information available to communities that they don't have the
resources to study this data themselves.
But if you are going to do all that work, there should be
some change. So if you look in the mirror and you walk away and
don't change anything, that is a fundamental flaw. And so I
think that the rule can be improved without abandoning it or
giving up any idea that HUD can interact with municipalities.
Thank you.
Mr. Williams. Thank you. The economy is currently firing on
all cylinders, I would say, and there are more job openings
than people to fill them. Wage growth came in at 3.2 percent
last year, which is the highest number in over a decade, and
unemployment is at 3.8 percent.
So capitalism really is an amazing thing. Dr. Olsen, would
you agree with me? Are you a capitalist?
Ms. Olsen. Well, I am an economist. Like many in my
profession, I believe that perfect free markets are a gorgeous,
beautiful thing. But also, as an economist I recognize that
there are common market failures such as information
asymmetries, positive and negative externalities, and
concentrated market power. If these are operating in a market
to a strong degree then the market will either over- or under-
produce.
Mr. Williams. Okay. Let me ask you a question. In your
testimony, there is a graph on homeownership between different
races of individuals.
Ms. Olsen. Yes.
Mr. Williams. What do you believe is the biggest
contributing factor for all of these disparities even though,
as Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell stated in front of this
committee in February, the economy is in a very healthy place?
Ms. Olsen. Well, that is I think one of the upsetting parts
about this and why affirmatively was a part of the wording here
is that it has roots in historical policies that come back to
redlining.
If you can imagine how homeownership kind of reinforces
itself over time, the biggest barrier to homeownership is that
down payment, in order to make that down payment, people often
turn to their communities, their families and friends for a
loan or a gift.
So for example, currently, 51 percent of first-time home
buyers need that kind of assistance from their communities.
Back then, it was probably similar. If you didn't get that
resource over time, you can't make homeownership work. So if I
start from a situation where we had redline areas, communities
of color that were barred from access to homeownership, that
would have a chain reaction that flowed all the way down to
today that would continue that barrier.
Mr. Williams. Okay. I am a capitalist who knows that free
markets work. So Dr. Furth, before I continue this question,
are you a capitalist?
Mr. Furth. Sure.
Mr. Williams. As a small business owner, I have seen the
effects of the government policies, the current issue for
example, if interest rates go up, it could keep somebody from
buying, $50 a month could change their ability to buy a car.
So can you give us quickly some specific examples of
policies that are preventing the free market from dealing with
affordable housing?
Mr. Furth. A great one is parking minimums in big cities.
Mr. Williams. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you. The gentleman from Texas, Mr.
Green, who is also the Chair of our Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations, is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I especially thank
you for the opportunity for us to move from talking points with
reference to invidious discrimination to action items.
We have several pieces of legislation that will afford us
the opportunity to do so. I am going to call to your attention
H.R. 149, the Housing Fairness Act. Very simply put, it seeks
to codify and standardize two programs into one: the Fair
Housing Initiative Program; and the Fair Housing Assistance
Program.
In so doing, it will legitimize further to a greater extent
the process of testing, a process that is utilized to acquire
empirical evidence to support discrimination contentions, we
can now with this evidence have facts that we can utilize to go
forward.
So Ms. Goldberg, let me start with you, if I may. Could you
kindly tell me where the testing can be beneficial if we do it
on a standardized nationwide basing or the testers themselves
have been trained to do so with the greater degree of
expertise?
Ms. Goldberg. Absolutely. Testing is a critical tool for
fair housing enforcement. And I am sure Ms. Hill could speak to
this as well. It has been used by our organization and many
other organizations around the country.
It has been upheld by the Supreme Court as a valid and
necessary tool for fair housing enforcement because it lets you
run essentially a controlled experiment. You send out two
people who look the same in all relevant characteristics but
one is, for example, African-American, one is white, one is a
woman, one is a man, one is a family with kids, one without
kids.
And you give them comparable characteristics, a comparable
profile so that they appear to be equally qualified. In fact,
usually the tester who is a member of a protected class is a
little bit better qualified than the other. And you see what
happens to them. And if they are treated differently because
they are comparable in all relevant criteria, you can determine
whether the difference in treatment is based on that protected
class characteristic. No other tool that we have is so valuable
for figuring out whether discrimination is occurring.
Mr. Green. Would someone else care to give a comment?
Ms. Hill. I would, if I may.
Mr. Green. Ms. Hill, thank you.
Ms. Hill. Thank you, I very much appreciate it. What I will
mention is that testing is oftentimes the only way to discover
whether discrimination is happening and whether people are
being kept out of a certain community.
We were able to bring litigation because we had analyzed
some census data with regard to a community in the suburbs of
New Orleans, and we found that the area surrounding one
particular neighborhood was very racially mixed, but on the
census data map this certain community was very white, and when
we zeroed in, we found that it was a large multi-block
apartment complex and there were no people of color living
there.
We sent some testers out and all of the black testers were
denied. Now the property manager was very nice about it, she
didn't say they couldn't have access to that space because they
were black, but that is what was happening.
When we got into litigation, the property manager who had
been managing that space for 32 years admitted under oath that
in 32 years she had never rented to an African-American
resident. And so we know that for decades, black people were
excluded from this community where many of them had hoped to
live. Without testing, we would not have been able to uncover
that discrimination, because nobody came in and made a
complaint to us about that particular place.
Mr. Green. Moving on to some statistical information--the
staff has done a great job, and I want to compliment the
staff--the indication is that 71 percent of the reported
housing discrimination complaints have been handled by the Fair
Housing Initiative Program, and this was in 2017.
And that the fair Housing Assistance Program handled 23
percent, that HUD handled 4.5 percent, and the DOJ 0.1 percent.
These numbers seemed to indicate that the Fair Housing
Initiative Program, which is an NGO-based program, and the
Housing Assistance Program, these two entities seemed to be
handling the lion's share of these complaints. Ms. Goldberg,
has that been your experience?
Ms. Goldberg. Yes. I think that pattern has held true over
quite a long time.
Mr. Green. And finally, let me just close with a word--I
hear many people rail and complain about invidious
discrimination, perhaps not in the terminology that I have just
utilized, but they do.
They complain, but when given the opportunity to do
something about it, they don't seem to have the energy to do
so. I think that this is a great opportunity for us to go from
talking points about invidious discrimination to action items.
Thank you Madam Chairwoman, I yield back.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you. The gentleman from Arkansas,
Mr. Hill, is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Hill of Arkansas. I thank the Chair, and appreciate
this good hearing today and I appreciate the witnesses for
being here. I have been involved around the housing policy area
for a long, long time. I was a young staffer back in the 1980s
on the Senate Housing Subcommittee, so I certainly am familiar
with the legacy of some of these challenges that we talk about
today.
And Ms. Hill, thank you for your work in South Louisiana. I
was a volunteer with Rotary International and we rebuilt about
60 houses in Lecompte after Katrina using Bush-Clinton Katrina
money, and that is why I am so supportive of Al Green and Anne
Wagner's efforts at CDBG-DF reform. I know it is controversial
in Congress but we saw families be given the money to raze
their homes in Lecompte, which is on the north side of Lake
Pontchartrain, in an unincorporated area, and the money didn't
go into razing their homes. So they will just be back in the
same situation in a future high-water event along Lake
Pontchartrain, and that is why the after-action auditing there
shows almost $800 million was allocated through CDBG-DF but was
not spent properly for home razing. That is why we really need
reforms in that area to make sure that money gets to the
homeowners, and is spent by the homeowners for the purpose that
it was intended so that they have a much safer, dryer place in
the future. So, thanks for your work.
I was intrigued listening to the conversation back and
forth about HUD's discoveries at Facebook and we are in a new
era of discrimination when we go digital and go social media.
So that was interesting to me. The Chair and the Ranking Member
have been talking about forming a taskforce on on financial
technology, Fintech, and of course, Zillow is on the cutting
edge of Fintech as well as Facebook.
So I am very interested in not only how we can cut
compliance costs for market participants, improve access to the
unbanked and things of that nature through Fintech, but also
sort out at a lower cost discrimination through the use of big
data.
So to help me learn a little bit more about this, who wants
to answer the question, how did HUD learn about this Facebook
ad presentation issue? Who is the best one, Ms. Goldberg,
should you tackle that?
Ms. Goldberg. I think I could answer that. I believe HUD
learned about it the same way we did, which was through some
amazing investigative reporting done by ProPublica.
Mr. Hill of Arkansas. Okay. Good. And once that was
identified, what was the methodology then for tracking that and
discovering it, and is that open source type data that could be
used by financial institutions, for example, or tell me how
then HUD went on to the next level to build the case if you
will?
Ms. Goldberg. I can't speak to what HUD has done, it has
issued a charge which tells you what it found but I am not sure
what its methodology was. I can tell you what we did if that
would be of interest, which is that we created for the purposes
of this test, what is the word that I want, a management
company.
And we said to Facebook that we had apartments we wanted to
rent, we went on their site, to their ad portal and looked at
the characteristics that they let us use to either include
people who would see that ad or to exclude people who would not
see that ad. We were able to get ads approved by Facebook that
included the use either to exclude people and primarily
included the use of protected categories under the Fair Housing
Act.
And so, it was a form of testing in a way. We were able to
see for ourselves by posing as a potential landlord that the
tools that Facebook made available enabled us to discriminate.
Mr. Hill of Arkansas. Dr. Olsen, do you want to add to that
from Zillow's point of view of looking at big data, do you have
any thoughts on that? On how best for HUD, for example, to root
out using social media or big data?
Ms. Olsen. You know, I don't think we have. As an
economist, I really don't have a lot of insight into what HUD
could do in order to explore. I can say that the purpose of the
finding was to solve for information asymmetries by putting all
available listings online for everyone to search and sort
through. And that kind of finding is important to this kind of
idea.
Mr. Hill of Arkansas. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I yield
back.
Chairwoman Waters. The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Foster,
is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Foster. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you for
this hearing. You know, I represent the second, third, and
fourth largest cities in Illinois: Joliet, Aurora, and
Naperville.
And rolling through here on the screens are these redlining
pictures, and I remember trembling with rage when I saw the
redlining pictures of Joliet and Aurora from the 1930s, and
then driving through those neighborhoods and seeing how their
futures have been determined by these bigoted, racist policies.
I also represent Naperville, which until well into the 20th
Century was what was called the ``sundown town,'' so they
didn't have any redlining issues there. But it has gotten
better. It has really gotten better in Joliet, in Naperville,
and in Aurora. And a part of that, a big part of that were the
Federal policies that leaned heavily against this.
And I was reading through the complaint against Facebook,
which sort of brought that same level of rage. I don't think
this was intentional, but it just underlines the danger in the
power that has been given to these companies, that although
Facebook themselves probably didn't deliberately do this, I am
convinced there are many landlords out there that would take
advantage of the ability to do that.
And it underlines the fact that Congress hasn't been paying
enough attention to the power of tech on this. But then on the
other side is, what could you do to actually fix this and use
the power of tech for a positive way? I guess, Ms. Goldberg or
Ms. Hill, I can't remember, was talking about doing electronic
testing, essentially simulating landlords.
I mean, you could potentially have access to when someone
puts out an ad and say, okay, it is fine that you set this
criteria but this criteria will discriminate against X, Y, and
Z, and let the person thinking about putting that ad out there
get immediate feedback from Facebook that this is a
discriminatory set of criteria that you have.
Is Facebook, to your knowledge, talking about that sort of
immediate feedback so that even say an individual landlord will
not inadvertently do this?
Ms. Goldberg. I can speak to that. What Facebook has done
is committed to taking off of its platform, creating a new
portal for people who want to advertise services related to
housing, employment, and credit so that they will create ads
through a different mechanism than other people who are
creating ads for other kinds of goods and services, and that
employment and credit portal will not offer the options of any
categories that you can either include or exclude that
reflect--
Mr. Foster. But the number of proxies that you can generate
is--
Ms. Goldberg. It is a lot. And we will be working with them
and monitoring what they do over the next 3 years to ensure
that all of the categories that might have a discriminatory
effect are removed.
I would say two things if I could in response to your
question further. One is that in the context of Facebook, the
problem is not just in the ad creation to begin with, that was
clear and that is what some of the main provisions of our
settlement agreements speak to. But a problem that neither we
nor Facebook actually knows how to figure out, but will be
looking at over the next 3 years, is the way that its algorithm
delivers ads to people even when those ads don't have any
discriminatory targeting based on the other information that
Facebook has about people, and who it thinks will be most
likely to respond to an ad, and other ad campaigns that may be
running which reflect the historic discrimination in our
society.
So it is a real problem, and we are hopeful that by working
together we will be able to get to the bottom of it. I would
just say if I could that I think the Facebook problem is a big
one and I hope that we are on a good path to tackling that, but
it is not the only one and the way we see algorithms and big
data work for example in the mortgage lending space is a little
bit different. And so it is going to take a little bit
different kind of tools to address that.
Mr. Foster. And then on the other side, you can imagine the
situation, we spend a whole lot of money trying to subsidize
socioeconomic integration in our communities. I mean, it is a
really good thing, it is a better outcome for the whole
community.
And so have people ever thought we have all this big data?
So that for example just paying, say Facebook, if their ad
results in a placement of a family in a neighborhood which
increases socioeconomic integration, that somehow, they get
rewarded for that monetarily. Is that sort of idea ever been
talked about, to just use these big datasets for good? If you
could answer that for the record, I would appreciate it. I
yield back.
Chairwoman Waters. The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr.
Kustoff, is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Kustoff. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you for
convening the hearing today. I also want to thank the witnesses
for appearing this morning.
Dr. Furth, in your testimony, especially in your written
testimony, you go into some discussion about Community
Development Block Grants. We all know the Community Development
Block Grant program is one of the oldest programs under HUD. It
is also frankly probably one of the most popular with our local
mayors and local elected officials.
In your written testimony, you discussed withholding some
of the CDBG funding to encourage, if you will, local
communities to better incentivize fair and equal housing
access. Can you explain, if you could, why withholding these
CDBG funds from communities would, in fact, better incentivize
better housing and land use policies?
Mr. Furth. Certainly, thank you. So CDBG money is not a big
part of any community's budget unless they are in the disaster
program. But it is a very popular part because every mayor kind
of gets this little pool of money. It is often like a million
bucks to do a project that they don't have local budget for, so
this isn't usually used to just pay for standard things, it is
used to pay for kind of really fun one-offs. Unfortunately, it
is frequently used to directly give to local businesses, which
seems like a really, really poor use of Federal money to me.
And so, mayors love it, right? It gives them a ribbon
cutting. It gives something that they couldn't have gotten
through the local taxing authority, that their voters wouldn't
necessarily have approved.
So, that is a great lever. It doesn't hurt renters, right?
So if we said, okay, if you don't comply with some inclusion,
we are going to withhold your home funds. Well, the home funds
actually support low-income renters. So the pain there is felt
by the people we are trying to help.
CDBG hurts mayors if you take that away. That is the--I
joke that it is a French abbreviation for mayor's ribbon
cutting slush fund. And I think that is how it gets used and
that is why it is a good lever, although it doesn't hit every
community.
Mr. Kustoff. If I could follow up on CDBG, and I didn't
state this to the witnesses before, but in my district, I
represent West Tennessee, so I have part of Memphis, part of
the City of Memphis, the City of Jackson, Dyersburg, and rural
parts of West Tennessee.
Memphis is a community that uses CDBG grants quite a bit.
As it relates to the formula, and I know I am getting a little
bit in the weeds, but the formula B if I could, which in part
is based on--as I understand it, 1940s housing data or 1940s
data is weighted at around 50 percent appropriation.
So some older suburbs benefit from the pre-1940 or the 1940
formula even though they are kind of low-need communities. So
my bottom line question is, should HUD look at redoing the
formula, reformulating it in order to better distribute funds?
Mr. Furth. Yes. Well, HUD can't. But I would urge this
committee to revisit the formulas. They were written in the
1970s when an old house was a bad house, right? So, the
assumption in the formula was that if you lived in a 50-year-
old house, it must be falling apart.
And now we know if we go to the most exclusive addresses
and zip codes, the houses are often very old and very, very
nice. And that is no longer a good proxy for need. So, I think
we could very easily rewrite the formula to much better target
Congress' original intent and what this Congress would also
intend for using that program. I would applaud that.
Mr. Kustoff. And you think it is something that can be done
and could be done during this Congress?
Mr. Furth. Well, every other Congress since then has not
wanted to touch it because there is a fixed pot of money and if
a little less goes to Brookline, Massachusetts, instead going
to Memphis or Allentown, then somebody squeals and the people
who squeal have Representatives in this body and redistributing
money across cities is going to hurt somebody.
But if we can put aside that parochialism or even to say
within your district that there are communities that are really
well-resourced and there are communities that aren't. And right
now, even within your district they are probably funneling that
money poorly.
Mr. Kustoff. Thank you, Dr. Furth.
And I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you.
The gentleman from Washington, Mr. Heck, is recognized for
5 minutes.
Mr. Heck. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, indeed, thank you
for holding a hearing on a matter is as important as this.
Dr. Olsen, welcome to Washington, D.C., again, I think as
an economist I have some questions I would like to ask you,
specifically following up on Mr. Clay's questions regarding
gentrification, which I thought were fascinating and
provocative.
And Ms. Hill, thank you so much for reminding me that
gentrification can occur for reasons other than just lack of
supply, i.e., flight to higher ground. That was a paradigm-
shifting reminder for me and I appreciate it very much.
But Dr. Olsen, is it not only obvious that discrimination
occurs everywhere, but with respect to gentrification, is it
also true that it can often be especially propelled by supply
considerations?
Ms. Olsen. Yes. Yes, definitely, of course. When we think
about displacement, what is happening is that demand is
overwhelming supply and the current way that we do not up-zone.
Mr. Heck. Do not up zone. We have had that conversation.
Ms. Olsen. We have had that conversation before, yes. It
definitely exacerbates this problem and has barriers to kind of
successful or affluent communities.
Mr. Heck. So, in a community like Seattle, for example?
Ms. Olsen. Yes.
Mr. Heck. Where in particular, high-tech companies like
Google and Facebook and Zillow and, of course, Amazon, bring in
not just thousands but tens of thousands of people, it creates
a supply problem on the housing side leading to gentrification.
Ms. Olsen. Yes.
Mr. Heck. And gentrification has multiple and insidious
effects on people of color, does it not? They are pushed out of
homes that they can no longer afford, leaving then to confront
secondarily, where am I going to live when I am confronted with
additional discriminatory barriers? Is that a fair statement?
Ms. Olsen. Something that I often say when I am talking to
groups around the country about housing supply and land use is
to say in one way or another, your community is going to
change.
If the housing stock does not evolve, if you do not allow
it to evolve or become more dense, then the people who live
there, the makeup of them, what they look like, the kind of
jobs they have is going to become, that is what is going to
change, right?
You are going to have people with lower incomes moving out.
If you allow the built environment to change, then it is more
likely that the diversity within the set of people will change.
Mr. Heck. There are two dimensions to this that I want to
quickly introduce and get your reaction to.
Ms. Olsen. Yes.
Mr. Heck. As it relates to the gentrification or supply in
general.
Ms. Olsen. Sure.
Mr. Heck. It seems to me that when demand exceeds supply,
you basically have given additional power to landlords over
tenants, that if they have a product that is in short supply
you have, in fact, tilted a little bit of the power equation,
which then represents yet another way in which people who are
traditionally discriminated against have even less leverage as
it were. Is that not just basic economic common sense?
Ms. Olsen. Yes, I think a way to make that more tangible is
to say in an environment where demand is overwhelming supply
and I have an open listing, say five people show up at the
exact same time, I get to choose which one.
Mr. Heck. So finally, and this is the one that on some
level bothers me the most, homeownership in this country has
declined and is at its relative lowest level in quite some
time. We know that people of color are discriminated against
with respect to lending and with respect to purchasing.
But given that homeownership, which still is aspired to by
the overwhelming percent of Americans, is the single largest
net worth-building asset to the average American,
homeownership, then discrimination when it occurs as a
consequence of all these factors has an especially long-term
structural debilitating economic effect.
Does it not, Dr. Olsen?
Ms. Olsen. Yes. I think homeownership is one of the biggest
ways that you have intergenerational transfers of wealth and
then for yourself to also build wealth over time.
Mr. Heck. And supply plays an important consideration in
all that. Thank you.
I yield back, Madam Chairwoman.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you.
The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Barr, is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Barr. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you to the
witnesses for your testimony today on the very important
subject of fair housing. I want to talk a little bit about
disparate impact.
The Supreme Court's decision in inclusive communities held
that, disparate impact liability must be limited so employers
and other regulated entities are able to make the practical
business choices and profit-related decisions that sustain a
vibrant and dynamic free enterprise system.
But the 2013 version of the HUD rule required defendants to
prove that the practice at issue was necessary to achieve one
or more substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interests of
the respondent or defendant.
Dr. Furth, this question is for you. Did the 2013 version
of the HUD regulation have the effect of discouraging these
employers and regulated entities from making practical business
decisions out of fear that they might result in a lawsuit,
notwithstanding otherwise being perfectly legitimate and good
faith decisions?
Mr. Furth. I apologize, Congressman, I have no expertise in
that area.
Mr. Barr. Dr. Olsen, do you have a view on that?
Ms. Olsen. I also don't think I can comment with my
expertise.
Mr. Barr. Do any of the other witnesses have an opinion
about that?
Ms. Hill. I can speak to it, not in the employment context,
but as a fair housing advocate and a civil rights attorney who
has litigated these cases. What I can say as someone who runs a
fair housing advocacy group, is that we have used the disparate
impact theory to positively benefit the residents of South
Louisiana, most recently in the direct aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina where we brought litigation against a local government,
a community that passed a law that would require that
homeowners who wanted to rent their homes in their community
could only rent to people who were related to them by blood. At
the time since the State approved that 93 percent of the
homeowners in that parish were white, it would directly follow
then that the majority of their blood relatives were white.
And so, even though that law did not on its face exclude
people of color, it had the effect of prohibiting people of
color from renting in that community.
Mr. Barr. So I want to maybe ask the question a little bit
differently to get at the question that I am concerned about.
The Supreme Court, in the Inclusive Communities case, what the
Supreme Court held was that a disparate impact claim cannot be
based solely upon a showing of statistical disparity.
Given that the HUD rule on disparate impact does not
conform--I am talking about the 2013 rule--with the Supreme
Court decision in 2015, shouldn't we agree that a revised
rulemaking is appropriate?
Dr. Furth?
Mr. Furth. I can't speak to your premise. But clearly, if
the rule is ruled unconstitutional, then it must be revised.
Mr. Barr. Right. And so, HUD has released a proposed
revised rule that conforms to the Supreme Court Inclusive
Communities decision, does anybody have a problem with that?
Ms. Hill. Well, I would just say that I don't believe that
the Inclusive Communities decision spoke to the 2013 HUD rule
and I don't believe that there has been any court finding that
the HUD 2013 rule is--
Ms. Goldberg. Well, to the contrary, courts have found that
there is no conflict between the 2013 rule and the ICP case
decision. And based on that, there is no reason to go back and
revisit this issue which is a rule that has been in effect or
excuse me a doctrine that has been in place, a tool that has
been available to us almost as long as the Fair Housing Act,
has been upheld all the Federal Circuit Courts that have--
Mr. Barr. Reclaiming my time, and I apologize for cutting
you off because I know you are making a point, but in my
remaining time, what I am concerned about is that the 2013 rule
may be well-intentioned, but the concern I have is that it
would actually have the unintended effect of reducing access
for the very classes that the Fair Housing Act is trying to
protect, because it is going to encourage housing providers to
just simply withdraw for fear of litigation.
And so, I think when we talk about an inadequate supply of
housing and the negative impacts that has on vulnerable
communities, we need to be very, very careful about HUD
regulations that would create a litigious environment that
would discourage the provision of housing.
Ms. Goldberg. So, can I just say that the 2013 rule did not
change the landscape in any significant way compared to what it
had been for many decades before that, and we have not seen a
withdrawal of landlords from the market in fear of litigation.
So, I think that your concern is--
Mr. Barr. My experience is different. I yield back.
Chairwoman Waters. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Lawson,
is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lawson. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and welcome to the
committee, witnesses.
Ms. Johnson, I was very interested in your presentation. I
know it has been 50 years since the Fair Housing Act was
implemented, a couple of days in 1968 after Martin Luther
King's assassination.
And I would like for you to elaborate a little bit more on
access for the LGBTQ community of projects that are funded by
HUD, because according to this information, there was a final
rule in 2016 about access, and then it was alleviated in 2017.
Could you express a little bit more from your presentation
what kind of effect that this has had on the LGBTQ community?
Ms. Johnson. Sure. Thank you so much for your question. I
think what is so important to me, in the conversation about
Facebook and the conversations that we have had is that this is
about ending systemic discrimination.
And what we are seeing, how LGBTQ people are impacted is
that they are people of color. They are people living with
disabilities. They are coming from and returning citizens from
prison.
And overwhelmingly, we are seeing this kind of
discrimination impacting young people. Again, as I said in my
presentation, 40 percent of young people living in homelessness
are LGBTQ people.
So there was a statement about the importance of owning a
home and the discriminatory barriers to that. But there are
discriminatory barriers to renting homes, and to getting into
homeless shelters, so, there are multiple levels of
discrimination before these young people or couples or families
can even get to the point of owning a home.
So, I think it is important that in addition to what has
happened since 1968, we have seen gender added. We have seen
familial status added. But we have more work to do.
In addition to doing the testing around current protected
statuses, we also need to be expanding who the protected
classes are, or reaffirming who those protected classes are,
which again around sexual orientation, around people returning
from prison, around people who have housing vouchers.
We have made a lot of advances but there, again, there is
just, I think it is important for Congress to continue its work
to recognize that discrimination is still present. We have to
acknowledge it and we have to continue to do our due diligence
or this affirming work to name it, to find it, and to prevent
gaps in the law for creating, allowing for that kind of
discrimination.
Mr. Lawson. Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Hill, how have credit scores discriminated against
people who are trying to enter the housing market?
Ms. Hill. Well, I think it is clear that there is a
problem. There are gaps in access and the National Fair Housing
Alliance has actually taken the lead on bringing this
conversation to the forefront nationally.
We know that people in communities of color are underbanked
and oftentimes referred to the subprime lending market. And so,
there are a variety of ways in which access to credit leads to
discriminatory outcomes, the credit scoring system and the
algorithms that are used as we talk more about this
conversation around data, definitely does have some
discriminatory impacts on communities of color.
Mr. Lawson. Ms. Goldberg, I have a few more seconds. Can
you comment on that too, please?
Ms. Goldberg. Absolutely. One of the problems that we see
is that the credit scoring systems that are used depend on the
results of many, many decades' worth of segregated and
discriminatory patterns. And so, the access that people of
color in particular have had to mainstream credit from banks
and savings and loans that look good on your credit record that
boost your credit score has been limited.
And instead, folks have been relegated to the fringe market
with payday lenders and subprime lenders and title lenders, et
cetera, who don't report positive payment history to the credit
bureaus but do report if you fail to pay.
And so your good payment history doesn't work for you, but
your bad payment history, should that happen, works against
you. And that is one of the things that has gotten baked into
the system.
Chairwoman Waters. The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Stivers, is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for holding this
important hearing, and I would like to thank the witnesses for
being here. My first question is to Dr. Furth. I represent
among other places Franklin County, Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, where
we have a shortage of 50,000 affordable housing units at this
point. And that shortage seems to be getting worse. Do you
think any of these bills would help us create a supply that
would fix that backlog?
Mr. Furth. In my brief reading of the bills that were
introduced ahead of this hearing, I saw lots of valuable and
well-intentioned things, but I don't think any of them would
help increase supply.
Mr. Stivers. I actually agree, and I think that is our
biggest problem, that and affordability.
Dr. Olsen, I want to take off on some questions that the
gentleman from Missouri and the gentleman from Washington asked
about gentrification. And I am curious if maybe our passion and
upset feelings on gentrification might be slightly misplaced.
Let me just ask you a couple of questions. Does
gentrification help renters or homeowners?
Ms. Olsen. I think one of the reasons, and if I can--
Mr. Stivers. No, can you just answer the question? I don't
have a lot of time, ma'am. Does it help renters or homeowners?
Do property values go up or down when you have gentrification.
Ms. Olsen. I think you first have to define what you mean
by the word, ``gentrification.''
Mr. Stivers. Other people have described gentrification, do
property values go up or down during gentrification? If you
can't answer it, we can move on.
Ms. Olsen. We can move on.
Mr. Stivers. Okay. Thank you very much. And I do have one
more question for you, Dr. Olsen. So, you testified that
minority homeowners have more frustrations with their home
searches. Can you describe what those frustrations are related
to?
Ms. Olsen. I can describe what the exact questions are that
we ask, so such questions are full satisfaction with the home
search process. We ask if finding the right agent is ``very
difficult'' or ``difficult.''
We know about the number of offers they submit in order to
win a bid on a home during a forced sale process as well as the
number of rent applications they need to submit. We also ask
about perceptions of discrimination, so do you feel that you
have been treated differently due to, and we ask questions
about race, sexual orientation, Section 8 voucher holding,
religion, veteran status, gender identity, and gender itself.
In all of those questions, you can see a consistent pattern
where people of color and other protective classes generally
more frustrations in that part of the search process.
Mr. Stivers. Do you think any of these bills would
alleviate some of those frustrations and how so?
Ms. Olsen. As an economist who studies housing markets
broadly, I don't have a lot of good insight into the specifics
of policy.
Mr. Stivers. Okay. No problem.
Ms. Johnson, you had brought up earlier the issue of
homelessness, and I know a lot of folks in the LGBTQ community
face homelessness. And one of the things that you may be
surprised to know is that the Housing and Urban Development
Department does not include anyone who is under age 18 in their
definition of homelessness.
Do you think if they would change that definition to
include folks under 18, it would help people in the LGBTQ
community?
Ms. Johnson. Can you hear me?
Mr. Stivers. I can now.
Ms. Johnson. Can you hear me now? I think recognizing
homelessness of all folks, in particular, again, yes, under 18,
I think that is an important focus in the community and I also
think it is important for us to really look at what is offered
in these shelters, and again, what is offered in renting for
these young people as well. I think it could potentially be
helpful.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you. And one last question. Dr. Furth,
under the policy proposal to use CDBG grants to incentivize
community behavior, what metric would you use to evaluate
whether a community is exclusively exclusionary?
Mr. Furth. Thank you. I don't think one metric is going to
be sufficient. We have to look at a bunch of things. The level
of rent is probably primary, and then within that, if you are a
high-rent place, is rent growing even higher and are you
issuing building permits? Those are key.
Do you have a record of judgments against you in
discriminatory legal actions is something that I would
certainly include. So I think that to be careful--and I have
run the numbers a few times on different things--you need to
have a multiple element definition.
Mr. Stivers. If you want to expand on that, if you could
submit it for the record, if you want to include any of those
elements, that would be very helpful to this committee, I
believe. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Lynch [presiding]. The gentleman yields back.
The gentlewoman from New York, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have some questions, particularly when we see how
redlining functioned. It was in many ways and as we know now a
very racially targeted policy. But it was kind of coded into an
economic language and an economic policy.
So it was racially targeted but it was economic in its
implementation. And so, in having that result as you had
mentioned, Dr. Olsen, that it created a situation where some
communities were more accessible to investment than others.
And that has had intergenerational consequences. So would
you say that the practice of redlining and making some
communities with different racial makeups more able to easily
access capital and lending contribute to a racial wealth gap
today?
Ms. Olsen. Yes. I think if I understand, so let me break it
apart, into two parts. So one, when they redline, they did look
at kind of contextual element, this has a school, this has
parks, but it was pretty explicit too.
There are people of color and there are immigrants here.
And so, it got a lower rating and is hazardous for lending. I
think to your, maybe one of the ways that I can get at kind of
looking at your questions is could you, for example, change
some of the ways that you access credit or maybe you measure
credit scores so that you can make this more balanced and
provide more credit to people of color, that could lay, kind of
not resolve because we have a long road ahead of us in order to
fix these problems.
So, for example, one of the barriers to having a good
credit score, access to credit is that you regularly pay your
rent on time, regularly pay utility bills, regularly pay the
cell phone bill, those are not currently included and
standardized, just the credit scores. Let us say you did, then
you could balance it back.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Just to reclaim my time very quickly,
would you say that government policy, particularly centered
around redlining, has contributed to the racial wealth gap?
Ms. Olsen. Oh, yes.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I have a question. So we now kind of
have this problem where there is an enormous racial wealth gap
as a consequence of discriminatory public policy. I am curious
to see if there are other policies or other practices that
whether intentionally or unintentionally are kind of this
economically coded, yet discriminatory or compounding policy.
In New York City, we have a really big issue with predatory
equity. It is a practice whereby real estate speculators spend
exorbitant sums to buy up affordable housing all over New York.
The buildings that are bought become at risk of default and
tens of thousands of families stand to lose their homes in
addition to tens of thousands of affordable apartments.
Ms. Goldberg, I have a quick question. We are seeing in my
home district of Queens that landlords are using harassment
tactics to push tenants of color, immigrants, and others out of
rent-stabilized buildings using overcharges on keys, rewriting
leases, illegally raising rents, refusing to make repairs,
fraudulent major capital improvements, and even turning off the
heat during winter. What is the Fair Housing Act's role in
mitigating a problem happening on this scale?
Ms. Goldberg. The Fair Housing Act may be one tool, I
suspect other tools are also needed, but if what is happening
is affecting people of color, families with kids, people with
disabilities, members of protected classes disproportionately,
then the disparate impact rule under the Fair Housing Act can
be a tool to force the landlords to change their practices.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So we can use the disparate impact rule
to highlight some of these practices? What about what we are
seeing here is, I represent one of the densest immigrant
communities in the country, and what we are also seeing is that
landlords are leveraging a tenant's immigration status as a way
to exploit money out of them. Sometimes, they will increase
their security deposits and say, ``You need to give me another
$300 or I am going to report you to ICE.'' What under the Fair
Housing Act can we use to make sure that things like that don't
happen?
Ms. Goldberg. Ms. Hill might also weigh in on this, but I
would suspect that you could show that that would be
discrimination based on national origin, which is a protected
class under the Fair Housing Act.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you. Ms. Hill, do you have any--
Ms. Hill. I would agree with that in the interest of time.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you very much. I yield back.
Mr. Lynch. The gentlewoman yields back. The gentleman from
Wisconsin, Mr. Steil, is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Steil. Thank you. Thank you all for being here and
testifying. I look at a lot of our housing and think, where are
there areas where we can drive the cost down? In particular, we
see onerous local restrictions becoming a major macroeconomic
concern across the United States.
And, Dr. Furth, in your testimony, I thought you
thoughtfully pointed out some of the restrictions that are in
place. You identified Silicon Valley, saying it has a small
proportion of the United States population in 1990 than today,
heavily based on local zoning and restrictions.
And you see these impacts in areas where we have high cost
of housing which seems to correlate with some of our other
discussions here on homelessness in particular. And the heavy-
handed regulations in particular in Los Angeles, San Francisco,
and New York City have a significant impact on our overall
economy. Can you comment and quantify some of those impacts?
Mr. Furth. I have seen three good macroeconomic papers that
quantify the total impact of regulation in our kind of most
regulated high-wage coastal cities. And those impacts range
from something like our GDP would be one or two percent larger,
that is overall U.S. income, would be one or two percent larger
if we, if those cities instead had average levels of
regulation. And then the most, I don't know if it is optimistic
or pessimistic, says it would be more like nine or nine percent
larger.
And I think it is also important to note, most of that GDP
gain would be going to people who are currently excluded from
those job markets. So we should think of cities as metro, metro
areas as fundamentally about job access. Right? People move to
places, apart from some retirees, primarily because they want
to work there. And when you say, oh, if you want to work in
Silicon Valley, you need to be able to drop $1.4, $1.5 million
on a starter home, you are excluding most people with middle-
skill levels from accessing those great job opportunities.
Mr. Steil. So you are identifying whom it would hurt. The
corollary of that is who is it helping then? Who are these
local restrictions benefiting?
Mr. Furth. So you really benefit if you were lucky enough
to buy a home in one of these elite districts in 1960 or 1970.
If you were sitting on that, especially in California where a
State tax law prevents taxes from growing for longstanding
homeowners, the sort of the home voter, the person who is in
their house says, ``I have it made and I don't want anybody
else to come in and mess this up,'' they are the primary
beneficiaries of the exclusion.
Mr. Steil. Thank you. I want to jump over into your
proposed test as we look at your proposed replacement of some
of the fair housing. And in particular in the market test, you
drive into outcomes rather than inputs.
Mr. Furth. Right.
Mr. Steil. And in particular you are looking at how do we
analyze potential rent decline, giving more people access to
affordable housing, could comment on that test?
Mr. Furth. Yes. So if you are a community--say you are in a
really expensive metro area, rent is going to be high, right?
So let us say that Mountain View, California, decided that ``We
are going to be the NIMBY capital of Silicon Valley. We are
going to build like crazy and have a huge diverse housing
stock.'' Rent would still be high because it is in a very
expensive metro area, but you would probably see rents starting
to decline in that area.
We see this already in D.C., where I live, where in the
Navy Yard and H Street where there has been extensive building,
rent has fallen and vacancies have gone up and that changes, as
Dr. Olsen said, the balance of power between landlords and
tenants. The best tool you have in your hand when you go to
talk to a landlord is if their unit is vacant and they don't
have somebody else to rent to.
Mr. Steil. I appreciate you taking the time to examine
where these outputs are and how we would measure declining
rents and bringing people in. I appreciate your testimony
today. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Lynch. The gentleman yields back. The gentlewoman from
North Carolina, Ms. Adams, is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Adams. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I want to
thank the chairwoman for putting this together. Thank you all
for your testimony. Fair housing and housing and affordable
housing is a particularly concerning issue for my district, the
12th District in Charlotte. We're getting a lot of people in,
we have a lot of buildings going up, and nobody can afford to
live in them.
But let me ask you about the NIMBYism question, and I want
to direct this to Ms. Hill because of your background as an
attorney. Everybody supports fair and affordable housing as
long as it is not in my backyard. So wealthier, more affluent
communities understand oftentimes how to manipulate the zoning
laws and prevent rezoning efforts in their neighborhoods. It is
also why the 2015 Affirmatively Furthered Fair Housing rule was
so important. Could you speak to how HUD's rollback of Fair
Housing regulations will allow NIMBY policies to continue to
maintain segregated housing in many of our communities?
Ms. Hill. Absolutely. I think without the planning process
that requires local governments to ensure that people have
equal access to communities, then we will continue to see
exclusionary actions by communities that are opposed to people
of color as well as lower-income residents moving in.
In New Orleans, we find as we have been talking here today
about income-based segregation, we are actually dealing--again,
as someone on the ground doing this work every day, we are
dealing in that community with not just income-based
segregation but entrenched deep racial segregation.
We know that after Hurricane Katrina, black renters in
South Louisiana found out the same communities that provided
working class whites with an affordable suburban housing
alternative as well as an exit strategy to avoid school
integration went to great lengths to ban or restrict rental
housing in their neighborhoods. So income-based segregation is
not necessarily the problem that we face, it is still deeply
entrenched racial segregation, and NIMBYism does perpetuate
that.
Ms. Adams. Yes. Ms. Goldberg, would you like to respond?
Ms. Goldberg. I think Ms. Hill said it all.
Ms. Adams. Okay. Let me move to Ms. Johnson. There has been
a lot of interest from this committee in the LGBTQ community. I
have a very large community in my district, too. So let me ask
about the housing protections that we already have that do
apply to homeless shelters and services for people who are
experiencing homelessness that receive Federal funds. So in
your opinion, are the protections adequate to ensure that the
LGBTQ people can get shelter and services when they are
experiencing homelessness, and if not, why not?
Ms. Johnson. Thank you so much for your question,
Congresswoman. The short answer is no, unfortunately not. As we
highlighted in the written testimony, LGBTQ people and
especially transgender people are often turned away from
shelter services altogether. An enforcement of the protections,
while the policy exists, the enforcement is so often
inconsistent and frankly, many LGBTQ people are fearful to even
file a complaint against a service provider, because they have
a fear that they won't get services. And so, again, like we
were saying, it is important to have a policy, but the
enforcement of those policies is critical.
Ms. Adams. Thank you. Ms. Goldberg, redlining, we have
talked a lot about it. Does it continue to manifest in other
ways? You have talked about some of them in terms of the
practices, but it appears that it has not ended. So are there
other ways that it continues to manifest itself?
Ms. Goldberg. It does seem to continue in multiple forms,
doesn't it? We still see kind of your garden variety
discrimination that keeps people of color out of other
communities, out of white communities, or integrated
communities because real estate agents won't show them houses
there and things like that. So, you have that. But some of the
ways that the advertising for housing works as we talked about
in relation to our Facebook case and others, and particularly
some of the ways that we have touched on a little bit in the
hearing today about the kind of economic legacy of segregation,
and what that means for the kinds of financial services that
people of color used as compared to whites continues to
disadvantage people in their search for a mortgage.
Ms. Adams. Thank you, ma'am. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lynch. The gentlelady yields back. The gentlewoman from
New York, Mrs. Maloney, who is also the Chair of our
Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and
Capital Markets, is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you. I thank my friend for yielding and
I apologize to my colleagues that I was in another hearing and
could not be here for a lot of the important discussion on this
critically important topic.
My first question is for Ms. Goldberg. As you know, one of
the most important aspects of the Fair Housing Act is that it
allows for so-called disparate impact claims, which prohibit
practices that have ``disproportionately adverse effects on
minorities,'' and can't be justified by any other legitimate
rationale.
So this allows us to root out unconscious bias or even bias
that is unconscious but well-hidden. I have signed multiple
amicus briefs supporting the use of disparate impact claims.
And in fact, the Supreme Court explicitly upheld disparate
impact claims under the Fair Housing Act in 2015.
But now, the Trump Administration is reportedly trying to
weaken the disparate impact rule and we know that HUD has
recently submitted proposed changes to this rule to OMB. Are
you concerned that weakening HUD's disparate impact rule will
allow clear housing discrimination to go unpunished?
Ms. Goldberg. Thank you for that question, Congresswoman.
We are very concerned. You know, as we have talked over the
course of this hearing about many different ways that disparate
impact has protected all sorts of people from policies that
appear neutral on their face, but work to the disadvantage of
members of protected classes. And that kind of discrimination
is every bit as harmful to the people who suffer from it as the
more blatant, kind of in your face I am going to rent to you
because of, plug in your characteristic there.
So having access to this tool is enormously important in
preserving the Fair Housing rights of people in this country.
It is long-established, it has been supported by courts all
across the country. It has had bipartisan support, and as far
as we can see there is no good reason to go back to the drawing
board and try to rewrite this rule altogether. In fact, there
will be some real disruption I think and costs to industry to
have to accommodate changing to comply with a new rule.
And it seems to be driven in part by some industry
concerns, I would just say the insurance industry in
particular, has been trying for many, many years to get out
from coverage under the Fair Housing Act and the disparate
impact rule in particular.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you. And, Ms. Goldberg, while we know
there have been substantial technological shifts in the housing
market, we don't know much about how these shifts are affecting
fair housing enforcement. Is there currently a way to know how
many fair housing complaints related to online platforms have
been filed with HUD or other reporting agencies, and do you
think HUD should report this data and if it is not being
collected, should we be collecting this data, and how would
this--how would reporting this data to HUD help fair housing
enforcement? And I think we know, with all the changes, this is
an important goal we need to look at.
Ms. Goldberg. Right. I do not believe that HUD collects
information on fair housing complaints based on online
platforms. Given what we learned in our Facebook case, I think
that it would be unlikely for people to know that they had not
been shown an ad, because at least in the Facebook context, the
way the platform operated meant that certain ads never got in
front of certain people. And if you don't know that you have
been discriminated against, you are unlikely to file a
complaint. And I think that is a real challenge that we face
and requires a different approach to enforcement.
Mrs. Maloney. Okay. Ms. Johnson, you mentioned in your
testimony the LGBTQ community experiences unusually high rates
of homelessness. And what I found particularly troubling is the
survey you cited which found that nearly one-third of
transgender people who tried to access a shelter were turned
away due solely to their transgender status. You mentioned that
HUD's equal access rule which was just finalized in 2016 is
intended to ensure equal access to shelters for transgender
people. So my question is, is HUD's equal access rule working?
Is it actually ensuring that transgender people have equal
access to shelters and if not, what can be done to strengthen
this rule?
Ms. Johnson. Thank you. And again, enforcement around,
well, one it is important, again, to say we have to explicitly
name sexual orientation as a protected class. We have to do it.
And that is the first place that we can go, and so I just
wanted to be really clear that we need to do that before
enforcement to the degree it needs to be can even happen.
I think the other piece of this is that in addition to
people who are turned away from shelters and homelessness that
they are receiving is that because of homelessness, so many
people are being, are also incarcerated and so we are also
dealing with multiple forms of discrimination so based on
gender, sexual orientation, but often spurs into other types of
discrimination.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you.
Mr. Lynch. The gentlelady yields back. The Chair now
recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Garcia, for 5
minutes.
Mr. Garcia of Illinois. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good
afternoon to all of the panelists. We have heard how redlining
and housing discrimination persists 50 years after the Fair
Housing Act and as an example, Latinos and African Americans
are more than twice as likely as whites to be denied mortgage
credit or fear that they will be denied if they applied for a
loan. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H.
Chan School of Public Health found that one out of three Latino
adults reported having personally experienced discrimination in
trying to rent a room or apartment or buy a house.
Ms. Goldberg, I would like to ask you a question. Your
organization conducted an analysis of staffing at the Office of
Fair Housing and in 1994, there were about 740 staff people in
that office. They have declined since then. As of 2018, the
number of employees in their office is about 480. What funding
and resource challenges do HUD officials face in enforcing the
Fair Housing Act, one, and 2, given the clear and significant
challenges we face with housing discrimination, how can the
Fair Housing Act be enforced if there is no one to enforce it?
Ms. Goldberg. Thank you for that question, Congressman. I
would agree that the Office of Fair Housing and Equal
Opportunity at HUD needs greater resources, it needs more
people. It needs more training for its staff. It needs the kind
of technological resources necessary to confront the challenges
in the marketplace today, and all of that, I guess the bottom
line comes down to money. And we would encourage more of that.
I would also say that what we have seen and other members
of the committee have alluded is that the frontlines of defense
in this fight for fair housing really rest with organizations
like Ms. Hill's and many other across the country that are in
their community. They know their community, they are doing
education in their community so people are aware of their
rights and know what to do if they think their rights have been
violated, and that help people through that process of
vindicating their rights. And so more funding for the groups on
the ground is also really critical to accomplishing that goal.
Mr. Garcia of Illinois. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, at this
point, I would ask unanimous consent to enter a 2013 report
from the Equal Rights Center into the record.
Mr. Lynch. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. Garcia of Illinois. Ms. Goldberg, continuing, can you
describe the role of testing and how important it is in
combatting discrimination in housing?
Ms. Goldberg. Sure. We talked about this a little bit
earlier. Testing is a vital tool to use to ferret out
discriminatory practices, discriminatory behavior because it
lets you determine that the, whether or not I should say, the
protected characteristic of a person is the key factor in their
lack of access, their being denied for a unit whether that is
to buy a home, to rent a place et cetera, et cetera. It really
lets you control all of the factors in the equation except for
their race or their national origin or the fact that they have
kids or a disability. And without it, it would be very
difficult in many cases to determine whether or not
discrimination is happening.
Mr. Garcia of Illinois. Thank you. One last question.
BuzzFeed reported on December 14, 2018, that loan officers at
banks were instructed by HUD personnel to not approve loans for
DREAMers or the class of young people known as DACA,
individuals whom, as you know, qualify for these loans. And I
quote, in a--the story in Chicago specifically had 42 FHA bank
loans approved for DACA recipients in recent years, about 10
percent of this total client base. HUD officials advised the
bank that DACA recipients are not eligible for these loans. In
four separate phone calls in a recent month to the FHA hotline
for lenders, the loan officer said he was told that the agency
would no longer ensure that DACA recipients received home
loans. Has HUD provided any guidance on this issue?
Ms. Goldberg. In our conversations with HUD, they tell us
that they have not changed the policy, and that while DACA
recipients were eligible for FHA loans before and as far as the
folks at the top are concerned, they are eligible for them now.
But as you report, and as I have seen others reporting as well,
that is not the message that is getting out in the field. And I
think that what is needed is for HUD to make a very official
and very firm and clear statement that policy has not changed
and that DACA recipients are eligible to receive FHA loans.
Mr. Garcia of Illinois. Thank you. I yield back my elapsed
time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lynch. The gentleman yields back. The gentlewoman from
Pennsylvania, Ms. Dean, is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Dean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Like the gentlewoman
from New York, I apologize for not being here before. I was
also in another committee, and I find it fascinating that it
was such a related conversation. I was in the Judiciary
Committee and we were talking there about the Equality Act,
H.R. 5. And so, Ms. Johnson, as you very aptly said, we must
name sexual orientation as a protected class.
The conversation in these two committees is going in the
right direction, as frustrating as it is to run between the
two. So please forgive me, but know that I also want to note, I
am new here, but this majority and these two committees are
tackling very important issues of equality and fairness. And
boy, I am glad to be a part of those conversations.
Ms. Goldberg, I was thinking about you and I read your
testimony and the issue of disparate impact. And I say that
because I represent Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Norristown
specifically, and just to go back into the issue of disparate
impact, I know you have talked about it with some others but I
am worried about something you said in your testimony, that it
is possible that that rule would be eviscerated.
Let me just tell you quickly the story and I hope I am not
repeating anything about what happened to the woman in
Norristown. We know that disparate impact claims are paramount
to allowing victims of discrimination to challenge policies
that wrongly keep from obtaining safe housing, or worse,
endanger them or their loved ones. Specifically, attorneys use
these rules to fight unintended consequences of nuisance
ordinances.
For example, in my district in Montgomery County,
Pennsylvania, in Norristown specifically, Latisha Briggs was a
domestic violence survivor who had sustained life-threatening
injuries from being beaten by her boyfriend and was
simultaneously threatened with eviction after the police were
called to her apartment the third time under a nuisance
ordinance. Her injuries were so horrific that neighbors called
the police and she had to be airlifted to the hospital and
treated.
The case provides an important example of how disparate
impact claims are imperative to helping domestic violence
survivors and particularly women. So, Ms. Goldberg, under the
Trump Administration and the possible threatening of
evisceration of the rule, can you just speak to us about what
the Administration seems to be signaling they want to do with
the rule and the grave dangers of that?
Ms. Goldberg. Thank you for that question, and thank you
for that story. I hope that the woman you talked about survived
and recovered.
Ms. Dean. She has survived.
Ms. Goldberg. That is a perfect one of many, many examples
of the way that disparate impact has protected people in their
housing. So we don't know exactly what the Trump Administration
is going to propose, because we have yet to see the proposed
rule. It is, as far as we know, sitting right now at OMB
awaiting approval to be published for public comment, but what
we do know is what HUD asked about in its advance notice of
proposed rulemaking (ANPR) last summer.
And I would, for more detail, refer you to the comments
that we and a long list of other organizations filed in
response to that ANPR. Several of the issues that HUD raised as
questions that it was considering, which makes you think that
these may be directions it wants to take in changing the
regulation, are very, very concerning. For example, should
there be a wholesale exemption for certain types of businesses?
Our read of the language they used was that there is a question
about whether homeowners' insurance should be exempted whole
hog because it is subject to regulation at the State level and
kind of alleging, the industry for many years has alleged
conflict between the Fair Housing Act and the McCarran-Ferguson
Law.
So there are several other things like that that are in the
ANPR that just raised huge red flags for us about the direction
that the Administration might take, that would really make this
rule unworkable and unable to protect women like your
constituent.
Ms. Dean. Thank you very much.
And, Ms. Johnson, I was thinking maybe you could help me, I
am listening to testimony in the other hearing room about LGBTQ
housing, not just shelter but sometimes in shelter, and the
great fear that a transgender person might get into a shelter
and assault women. Would you like to speak to that kind of
phantom fear-mongering? Sorry, I did just speak to it, didn't
I? I just editorialized my own question, that is not right.
Would you like to speak to the reality of LGBTQ issues in
shelters? And then also in housing discrimination in a larger
sense, not just in shelters?
Ms. Johnson. Thank you so much. We know that transgender
people, particularly transgender people of color, are more
likely to experience poverty and homelessness because of
systemic discrimination. And access to emergency shelter is
critical to ensuring the health and safety of everyone facing
housing insecurity.
The reality is that we are seeing one in four transgender
people who are homeless at some point in their lives. What is
never okay is flat-out denying people places to live. And this
is something that we really have to address. We have to be
talking about gender identity. We have to be talking about
sexual orientation and we have to acknowledge that there is
real discrimination happening for people who are same-sex
loving, who do identify as transgender. And many of those
people are also people of color, right? So the different types,
the overlapping amounts of discrimination are also very real
and create even more undue burden when you are trying to have
and keep secure housing.
Ms. Dean. Thank you very much.
And I see my time has expired. I seek unanimous consent to
introduce an article for the record. It is an NPR report on the
woman that I talked about in Norristown. and I offer that up
for the record.
Mr. Lynch. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. Dean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lynch. The gentlewoman yields back.
And the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Garcia, is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Ms. Garcia of texas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I, too, apologize to the whole panel. I, too, was
sitting in Judiciary this morning. And I sometimes feel like I
should be an octopus so that I could just have my hands in
everything but that is not possible.
But to add to my colleagues' comments, help is on the way.
I think we will successfully get the Equality Act on the
committee and then we will face the challenge of the votes in
the House, and then the Senate, of course. But I I wish it
could be simpler, that we could just have one statement that
said, no discrimination, period, but it is not that way. And we
all have to deal with it.
So, for me, and especially coming from Houston and I wanted
to start with Ms. Hill, I believe it was you who had the study,
or no, actually, it was Dr. Olsen.
I don't know why anybody did a study on the inequities in
terms of facilities that are found in metropolitan areas
because I could have saved you all the dollars, living in
Houston. And it seems to me that it is more than just what you
are mentioning in here. You say that local establishments and
amenities including banks and other institutions and
recreational facilities are less prevalent in communities of
color than in white communities.
I think it is more than that. Did you also look at
healthcare and educational facilities and employment centers?
It seems to me that it is more than just that because it is,
and it goes to the heart of a good quality of life and our own
well-being and our capacity to get a real fair shot at the
American Dream, doesn't it?
Ms. Olsen. Yes. And we have looked at, so financial
services, both traditional and alternative. We looked at
healthcare facilities. We looked at healthy food like grocery
stores where you can find whole foods, and then also
recreational amenities like playgrounds for kids. Not just
that, there are also gyms and parks of different kinds, so
there were great disparities.
And Houston actually had kind of the strongest disparity,
particularly in the financial establishments, so traditional
banking, and then also alternative finance. Houston was
probably where there was the greatest divide between
predominantly white communities and predominantly black or
Hispanic communities.
Ms. Garcia of texas. Right. So I guess I was trying to
figure out just how something in fair housing would really help
that because to me sometimes it really is about incentives that
we can provide for economic development, incentives that we
could provide for businesses moving into communities of color.
I just wondered how we really connected that and that is a
question for anybody nn the panel, so you might want to take a
stab at that one?
Ms. Olsen. I probably would like to make this more
tangible. So the inspiration for this research is very much in
recognition of the fact that place matters so much to so many
other economic outcomes.
Ms. Garcia of texas. Because the point is, ultimately, it
is who you are and what you are able to do.
Ms. Olsen. Right, exactly. Your social mobility, your
ability to start as a low-income family, say, end up in the
middle class one day, so all of these things, place is so very,
very, very important, so why this study, why this amount of
research? Because I think when you say that to someone that
place matters so much, sometimes you need to take that next
step and make it more tangible, right?
Like what is actually, this really gets at the experiential
difference that you can see and observe, but there are many
other differences and disparities between communities of color
and, say, predominantly white. And we measure those sorts of
things too in terms of affordability differences--
Ms. Garcia of texas. But what I am driving at is, what
comes first, the affordable housing that the developer is
building, or do the amenities that come with it and how you can
get the two together?
Ms. Olsen. Yes. I think where it comes first goes back 100
years in terms of redlining and then perpetuated through land
use and regulation zoning.
Ms. Garcia of texas. I wanted to ask about the redlining,
but quickly, Ms. Hill, if you can add to that?
Ms. Hill. Yes, I would just say that it is important to
think about all things happening at once, rather than one thing
happening first because we know that it is going to take a
multitude of policy changes and a wide-ranging approach in
order to bring about true equitable access to housing.
Ms. Garcia of texas. Because it impacts everything, the job
opportunities, how much you earn, whether you have daycare,
what schools you have. I was just totally confounded with your
whole Facebook case. And what really struck me was your words
when you said, they looked at the no-discrimination options. I
mean why did they even have options? I find it baffling that
you are actually talking about removing discriminatory options.
Ms. Goldberg. It is an excellent question, and I wish I had
an answer. Can I just add one thing on your last question? I
know time is up but the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
Rule that we have been talking about was designed to get at
exactly what you are talking about, what kinds of investments
do we need in communities in terms of all of that kind of
economic engine components and what do we do about housing? And
where across the metro, where across the city do we make
affordable housing available? Do we need to target it to low-
income communities, do we need to target it elsewhere?
The answer in each community will be different. But that is
what the rule was intended to focus on, both of those things.
Ms. Garcia of texas. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lynch. The gentlelady yields back.
And the gentleman from Guam, Mr. San Nicolas, is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. San Nicolas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I appreciate
everybody being present here today. I particularly appreciate
the committee for holding this hearing entitled, ``The Fair
Housing Act: Reviewing Efforts to Eliminate Discrimination and
Promote Opportunity in Housing.''
Well, there has been a lot of talk about redlining and the
devastating effects that it has had on communities of color.
But one of the most unfortunate facts that we deal with today,
that I think this country is very blind to, is the fact that
our territories are grossly redlined. They are very grossly
redlined.
I represent the territory of Guam, and 91 percent of our
population would qualify as minorities in this country. In
listening to the conversation of all the members of the panel,
it sounds like everybody here is very much against the idea
that we are going to be excluding anybody based on protected
classes.
And unfortunately, political jurisdiction is not a
protected class. That being the case, as much as we have
champions here on the panel, there are just certain things that
I, in searching throughout the discussion uncovered, that just
kind of highlight why territories need to be taken into very
fair consideration.
Dr. Olsen, I really appreciated your testimony. I went to
zillow.com and I punched in Guam and there is no Guam. Guam has
160,000 people in its 210 square miles, compared to Fairfield,
California, with 116,000 people in 41 square miles, and
Fairfield, California, is on zillow.com.
When I punched in on Zillow loans, none of the territories
are able to access any of the Zillow loans.
Ms. Johnson and Ms. Goldberg, you represent national
organizations and I wanted to ask, do your national
organizations also include research on the territories with the
respect to the groups that you represent?
Ms. Goldberg. That is an excellent question.
Mr. San Nicolas. It is one of the reasons why I am on this
committee.
Ms. Goldberg. And I have to confess that I am truthfully
not a data person, and I am not clear about the data that we
have for Guam and other territories that would help guide some
of this conversation.
I can say we do not have a member there. It is one of many
places where we don't, so that is not a function necessarily of
being a territory or we would say that about South Carolina,
which doesn't have a fair housing organization either.
But I think you raised an excellent question. We see
parallels in some ways I think to what has been going on in
Puerto Rico, for example, post-hurricane there, and in other
ways as well. And I think it is one that we need to take back
and take a close look at it and figure out how we can help.
Mr. San Nicolas. Thank you, Ms. Goldberg.
Ms. Johnson?
Ms. Johnson. We have done some research with the trans
discrimination survey in Puerto Rico but for the most part we
have done organizing work and less research, and we actually
don't do on-the-ground work in any of the territories.
Mr. San Nicolas. I appreciate everybody's candor. And the
reason why I wanted to raise this issue was I really think that
the time has come for this country to stop neglecting the
territories. Everyone here on this panel, I know are good
people. No one is intentionally doing it.
I wrote down a quote, I think from you, Ms. Goldberg,
earlier, ``Many acts of discrimination are carried out by
policies and procedures that might be unintentional.'' And I
think that is definitely a circumstance that we are dealing
with here today.
Our territories are predominantly minorities. We can talk
about trying to address minority disparities in various
districts across the country, but our territories are mostly
minorities, concentrations of minorities. And so, if we are
really looking to address the disparities with respect to
access to credit, access to information about housing, access
to data about what the conditions are in our areas, we need to
make sure that we are not forgetting our territories when we go
about our work.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
Mr. Lynch. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlewoman from
Massachusetts, Ms. Pressley, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you. So when President Johnson signed
the Fair Housing Act into law he stated, ``Now with this bill,
the voice of justice speaks again. It proclaims that fair
housing for all, all human beings who live in this country, is
now a part of the American way of life.
``Housing is a human right. Housing is a critical
determinant of health, of economic opportunity, of social
mobility.''
In my district, the Massachusetts 7th, an urban district
that spans from Cambridge to Roxbury housing and income
disparities have led to a gap in median income of $50,000. As a
result, the life expectancy rate drops from 92 years old in the
Back Bay to 62 years old in Roxbury.
Though the housing market has recovered from the 2007
recession, low-income minority communities are still recovering
from being the victims of rampant foreclosures and predatory
subprime lending. They still face immense barriers to
homeownership, discriminatory practices, with minority
homeownership rates continuing to lag and our affordable rental
prices is only worsening.
And yet in the face of this blatant deterioration of
American families and of the housing market, we find ourselves
stuck with an Administration that deliberately works to
reinstate the very housing discriminations that we sought to
dismantle through the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
I am delighted to see all of you here today as witnesses,
but I must admit I wish Secretary Carson were here.
I know we have a chairwoman who has a gavel and is not
afraid to use it. So I look forward to him joining us one day,
soon.
As someone who was raised by a tenants' rights activist in
a low-income neighborhood, I witnessed firsthand the challenges
faced by those of us who were left out of the housing
conversation.
I am, again, grateful for each and every one of you today.
And I want to get in the balance of my time into some questions
specifically around the Housing Choice Voucher Program.
Ms. Goldberg, the Housing Choice Voucher Program is the
largest source of Federal rental assistance and has a great
potential to help families choose where they want to live.
However, a recent report by the Poverty and Race Research
Action Council and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
found that families using a voucher in metropolitan areas are
disproportionately concentrated in low-opportunity and racially
segregated neighborhoods.
In the Boston area, just 14 percent of families with
children using a Housing Choice voucher are living in high-
opportunity neighborhoods.
How can the Housing Choice Voucher Program be improved to
increase access to opportunities for families and reducing
poverty?
Ms. Goldberg. Thank you for that question. It can be a very
important tool to expanding choice for families, but it needs
some tweaking.
HUD has taken some first steps at that although I will say
this Administration tried to delay the rule, they have moved
that ahead, and only reinstated it after being sued.
But Ms. Hill started to talk about this a little bit
earlier that housing prices vary by geographic area, and the
way that the housing voucher has worked is that we set one rent
limit, and then the voucher will pay for the amount of that
rent that is above 30 percent of your income, you as the
tenant. And so that lets you afford apartments in some
neighborhoods, the neighborhoods where rent are lower, but not
in neighborhoods that are higher, which are often the ones with
good schools and good transportation, and all of those things
that we all look for in a neighborhood.
There is the opportunity to adjust those rent limits to
conform with the rents in a smaller area than the whole
metropolitan area. And now, there is the mobility project that
HUD has authorized for I believe it is 24, that HUD is now
requiring in 24 metropolitan areas around the country. It can
be done voluntarily in others. And that is the kind of change
that lets Housing Choice Voucher--
Ms. Pressley. I'm sorry, reclaiming my time.
Ms. Goldberg. Sorry.
Ms. Pressley. I am running out of time. Yes or no, is there
an argument to be made that race and not income can better
explain the disparities we see in access to opportunity?
Ms. Goldberg. Yes. I think that is an excellent question.
And yes, I would say.
Ms. Pressley. Okay.
Ms. Goldberg. Because we see discrimination against people
of color, for example, at all income levels; it is not just a
question of income.
Ms. Pressley. Very good, okay.
Ms. Goldberg. It is also a question of race.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you. Reclaiming my time, the
Massachusetts 7th Congressional District is home to the largest
public housing authority in New England. How does the FHA
ensure protection from housing discrimination for vulnerable
groups and what does this practice look like? I have 8 seconds.
Ms. Goldberg. I am not sure I am the best person to answer
that. I know that there have been a number of different kinds
of housing--
Ms. Pressley. I am directing that to Ms. Hill.
Ms. Goldberg. I'm sorry.
Ms. Pressley. Yes?
Ms. Hill. So the question is about public housing
authorities?
Ms. Pressley. Yes. And how do we protect vulnerable groups?
Ms. Hill. I do think that working with housing authorities
to ensure that they are administering the voucher program in a
way that de-concentrates poverty but truly allows access to
neighborhoods of opportunity is a great place to start.
We know that across the country there has been a trend
toward getting rid of the traditional public housing
developments and moving public housing residents to the voucher
system. And so, with the majority of folks in that system
rather than living in public housing we have to ensure that we
are administering the voucher program in a way that does give
access to these high-opportunity neighborhoods.
Ms. Pressley. And it seems since our population is aging,
the Baby Boomers are booming, what are we doing specifically or
what can we do to protect the retirees--am I out of time?
Mr. Chairman, I'm sorry. I must have gotten the wrong clock
here. I yield back. Thank you.
Mr. Lynch. The gentlelady yields back.
The gentlewoman from Michigan, Ms. Tlaib, is recognized for
5 minutes.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank all of you so much for your continued
advocacy to also work extremely hard to put a human face behind
some of these legal terminologies that are I think are in place
here.
It is very odd because Secretary Ben Carson and I went to
the same high school. I mean, I remember as a 16-year-old girl
in high school, when he came in and he was phenomenal. He had
just written a book about his historic surgery in separating
twins. It was phenomenal. And he actually said, ``It doesn't
matter how you grew up, if you work hard enough, you will
succeed.''
So it is really troubling that in January 2018, under
Secretary Carson's leadership, HUD halted implementation of the
agency's Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. Under his
leadership, he reportedly proposed removing the words, ``free
from discrimination,'' from HUD's mission statement.
In March, 2017, under Secretary Carson's leadership, HUD
withdraw a Federal Register notice regarding the proposal to
require owners and operators of HUD-funded homeless shelters to
post a notice informing individuals of their rights under HUD's
``easy access in accordance with an individual's gender
identity and community planning development programs.''
Even though we have seen a huge hike, I think the LGBTQ
youth in the U.S. are 120 percent more likely to experience
homelessness than non-LGBTQ youth, and 94 percent of the
service providers report working with LGBTQ youth today.
I come from a community in which literally every corner is
a reminder of the civil rights movement. I remember in college
signing up for Fair Housing in Detroit as a secret shopper, and
I was very good at it. I took great notes and came back and
talked about watching these slides, talking about little notes
or little questions they would ask you, do you have children
and things like that.
They are getting savvy in how they go around this and that
is why disparate impact is so important. Many of you know I
intend to introduce the Justice for All Civil Rights Act. In
over 50 years, they have whittled the courts. Everyone has
watered down and gone around this idea around having to show
intent, when they are like, no, they are working the system and
now they are going around and showing--and that is why the
disparate impact is so important, looking at the implementation
of these policies and what they result in.
And so, I want to know from all of you, give me some
examples of just how creative they are in getting around that.
And especially because many of my residents going door to door,
especially my colleague from Massachusetts, I think we talked
about this before, of women, women with children being targeted
now.
Give me some examples of what you have actually seen them
use, some terminologies getting around this, and why disparate
impact is so important?
Ms. Johnson. I wasn't planning a personal story, but I will
tell one. I am a single mom of two and I wanted to live in D.C.
I was looking for a neighborhood where I could feel good about
where my kids went to public school. I went to public school,
and I wanted them to go to public school. I was looking to rent
a house.
The landlord met my kids. I am who I am. My partner came
and visited one of those times and the landlord said, ``I am
not sure this is going to work for you.'' And I said, ``It is
four people in a three-bedroom house that is three levels, that
is walking distance to the school.'' So language like that, a
landlord where it is coated language, ``I am not sure this is
going to work for you.'' It was like a smack in the face, like
I didn't even know what to do with that. And I am in a
privileged place. And so, that is one example of the many, many
ways we see coded language used.
Ms. Tlaib. One of the things that I have also been hearing,
coming from Detroit, Wayne County, which still contains very
segregated communities to this day, you know, 51 years after
the passage of the Fair Housing Act, the historic, what we call
the Detroit Eight-Mile Wall that was erected to separate blacks
and whites still exists. It is still the symbol. When I drive
by, it is still there.
Will addressing restrictive zoning policies alone eliminate
Fair Housing concerns in residential re-segregation? I know it
is a tough question but it is important.
Ms. Hill. I would say, absolutely not. It is one important
tool, but it is not going to get the job done. We need to
attack this on all fronts and just changing the zoning, there
is no one magic bullet, if there were we would have found it
already. As you have mentioned, it has been 51 years and we
haven't solved the problem yet. That one solution will not do
it.
Ms. Goldberg. I would just add to that if I could, changing
zoning does not make housing affordable. Or it depends perhaps
on affordable to whom? You need to be clear. So if you are
talking about people who are low- and moderate-income, no
housing that you construct in this day and age, even if you can
lower some of the costs through zoning changes is going to make
the housing affordable.
It is like putting water in a trough but you can't make the
horse drink. You can't make the developer build it.
And as Cashuana said, it only gets at one small piece of
the problem. We have many more other parts of it that need to
be addressed as well.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you all.
And, Mr. Chairman, if possible, I would like to submit for
the record a March 21, 2019, article in the Detroit Free Press
talking about few black people getting home mortgages in
Detroit, and it is showing the data of literally half of the
home mortgages loans in 2017 were white residents in Detroit,
and I would like to submit this for the record.
Mr. Lynch. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Chair now recognizes himself for 5 minutes.
First of all, I want to thank all of the panelists for your
remarkable testimony and for helping the committee with its
work.
Ms. Johnson, I have a question. In your testimony, you
mentioned that there are 21 States, including the District of
Columbia, that have language that prevents discrimination
against LGBTQ persons in housing. Do we have comparative data
to strengthen the argument on the national level that we should
adopt this nationally? Are there examples where the data shows
that this is a great thing, it is working and it will help more
families if we go nationally?
Ms. Johnson. I am sure we could get some data to the
committee that could help you with that.
Mr. Lynch. Yes. That would be enormously helpful, I think.
And I am sure it exists. It is just that it hasn't been
collected or quantified yet.
My own situation, I grew up in public housing. My dad says
there were times in our lives when we had to save up to be
poor. And I first got involved in housing representing families
in the old Coney housing projects. That is sort of how I got
elected here, just cases on lead paint, asbestos, six kids and
a mom living in an apartment with one bedroom and one bathroom,
those type of things.
But the world has changed, even the process of searching
for and acquiring an apartment, everything is mobile now.
And I know, Ms. Hill, in some of your testimony and others,
you talked about how Facebook and others have sort of
manipulated this in a way that furthers discrimination.
The democratization of the housing process through mobile
should actually be, could be an instrument of equality rather
than discrimination. And I am just wondering if--I know Zillow
has really gotten into this big time in terms of offering
apartments to rent and to buy.
Is there any recommendation that you would, any of you
would make with respect to sort of the digitization, the social
media aspect of this in terms of just transforming the whole
rental process, especially for young people, they are all on
mobile, everything is on their phones and Smartphones. So our
regulations are set up for the old world, they really are, and
we don't really get at this.
And I am just wondering, in your experience, if you would
offer some recommendations in how we might better protect
people from discrimination in housing?
Ms. Goldberg. Is that directed to any particular one of us?
Mr. Lynch. Okay, anyone, yes. Dr. Olsen?
Ms. Olsen. I think one of the ways I can respond, as
someone who is--I mean, I study housing markets at Zillow but
someone who has worked at Zillow now for over 6 years, that a
big part of our overall philosophy is to try and provide that
information in a way that is easily consumable, both for
renters and buyers on our site in order to do as you say, to
democratize the access to that information, to solve for a lot
of those information asymmetries.
But I think that as this panel has also acknowledged, there
is still a lot of room to grow, there are a lot of things that
we need to recognize when we put these kinds of things in
place. And my organization is dedicated to looking at those
issues. We have formed working groups in order to try and
tackle concerns that this panel has had.
I can't, as not, looking at this issue really deeply in
terms of the policy perspective of it but I could say this is
central to our value system and it is an important thing for
everyone to be looking at.
Ms. Goldberg. I would just add to that if I could that I
think you are completely right, that mobile gives a lot of
opportunities or possibility for democratization. But if the
systems that are utilizing that mobile technology are built on
discriminatory data and reflect the biases that are inherent
and historic in our society, then it is not going to work the
way we would all hope it would work. And so, we need more
transparency, we need better oversight, and we need to make
sure that the laws that govern the use of that kind of
technology like the Communications Decency Act don't impede our
ability to use the Fair Housing Act to make sure that
discrimination is not taking place on mobile platforms or
anything else.
Mr. Lynch. Right. Thank you very, very much.
I see my time has expired.
I would like to thank all of our witnesses for their
testimony today.
The Chair notes that some Members may have additional
questions for this panel, which they may wish to submit in
writing. Without objection, the hearing record will remain open
for 5 legislative days for Members to submit written questions
to these witnesses and to place their responses in the record.
Also, without objection, Members will have 5 legislative days
to submit extraneous materials to the Chair for inclusion in
the record.
And this hearing is now adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
April 2, 2019
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