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Friday, August 7, 2015




I-Team: Renters With Section 8 Vouchers Turned Away Despite Legal Protections

By Ann Givens and Chris Glorioso

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http://www.nbcnewyork.com/video/#!/news/local/I-Team:-Renters-With-Section-8-Vouchers-Turned-Away-Despite-Legal-Protections/282584061
Laws forbid big buildings from rejecting tenants simply because they rely on government aid. But the I-Team went undercover and found many brokers and landlords say upfront that they won’t accept Section 8 vouchers -- in full disregard of those laws. Chris Glorioso reports. (Published Thursday, Nov. 13, 2014)
Updated at 12:53 PM EDT on Friday, Nov 14, 2014
Laws in New York City and Westchester and Nassau counties forbid big buildings from rejecting tenants simply because they rely on government aid. But the I-Team went undercover and found many brokers and landlords say upfront that they won’t accept Section 8 vouchers -- in full disregard of those laws.
For one Brooklyn mother, a year-long apartment hunt has been a constant lesson in rejection. She relies on the Section 8 program to help her pay the rent, but repeatedly she says brokers and landlords have turned her down.
"Mostly brokers tell me up front. 'No we don't take Section 8, or the landlord doesn't take Section 8,'" said the woman, a licensed social worker with a master’s degree who asked the I-Team not to use her name because of the perceived stigma that comes with being on public services.
After repeatedly being rejected for apartments, the mother contacted The Fair Housing Justice Center, a nonprofit organization that tests landlords for housing discrimination. The Center did their own tests on landlords, and found that they rejected their testers as well when the investigators pretending to be prospective tenants said they would be paying rent using Section 8 vouchers.
The mother is now suing more than two dozen brokers and landlords who allegedly turned her down for that reason.
“She deserves an apartment. She should not have to be sleeping on friends couches,” her attorney, Mariann Wang, said.
On Craigslist and other popular real estate sites, dozens of ads say "No Section 8" or "No Program," The I-Team found ads for two- and three-bedroom units in posh Brooklyn Heights that read, "Sorry, do not take public assistance."
When the I-Team set up appointments to see the apartments, the broker reiterated what was in the ads.
"No. They're not accepting Section 8,” the broker said, adding that only “working class” people are wanted.
The owners of two Brooklyn buildings that said they don’t accept public assistance did not respond to messages left by the I-Team.
Joe Masino, a spokesman for Bronstein Properties, the owner of the Brooklyn Heights building that listed ads for two- and three-bedroom apartments, sent the I-Team an email saying the ads were not not posted by Bronstein Properties, nor were they posted "at the direction or with the knowledge of Bronstein."
When contacted later by phone, the broker who wrote the ad said the ban on public assistance was a mistake; she said she accidentally cut and pasted the content from another ad.
Wang and Fred Freiberg, director of the Fair Housing Justice Center, have criticized New York City’s Human Rights Commission, the agency responsible for rooting out housing discrimination, for not aggressively enforcing rules passed in 2008 that outlawed discrimination based on “source of income.”
“It’s not enforced and unfortunately there are many landlords and brokers who still break the law openly and blatantly," Wang said.
“The city needs to recognize that it is actually more costly to allow this discrimination to go on unabated, than to actually do something to stop the discrimination," added Freiberg.
Patricia Gatling, the head of the city's Human Rights Commission, canceled an interview with the I-Team, but issued a statement describing her record as “proactive in combating housing discrimination.”
She said the Human Rights Commission has obtained $390,000 in settlements from buildings and brokers who have been accused of discriminating against people on public assistance.
Her statement also noted that housing discrimination is only one of the many types of discrimination the Human Rights Commission is tasked with battling.
“Housing complaints make up 20 percent of the cases filed at the New York City Commission on Human Rights,” Gatling wrote to the I-Team. "There are currently 107 housing discrimination cases pending at the agency; only 13 alleged Lawful Source of Income discrimination.”
"To date, we have taken 16 Lawful Source of Income cases to trial,” she said.
This week, Mayor de Blasio confirmed he will be replacing Gatling with a new commissioner in the near future. He did not provide a reason for the decision. 
Published at 12:08 PM EDT on Nov 13, 2014
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Chief Kevin Sewell and Lorenzo Davis
Chief Kevin Sewell and Lorenzo Davis, both fired after standing up against injustice
Two seasoned and highly respected black men in law enforcement in two different cities were each fired this summer—not for corruption, not for misconduct, not for poor management, not for sexual harassment, but because they each stood up against injustice inside their own departments.
In 2007, the city of Chicago created an "independent" review board to monitor fatal shootings by police. I put those quotation marks around independent because the boards are often stacked with retired police officers who are often anything but independent in their views of their comrades. Of the 400 cases they reviewed, only one shooting of the 400 was found to be unjustified.
Lorenzo Davis was the supervising investigator for the review board and the facts in many of the cases just weren't adding up to him. He had been a Chicago police officer for 23 years and served as a commander, the head of a detective unit, then the head of an entire district, and eventually oversaw the entire public housing unit until he retired and joined the review board.
Soon, Davis began determining that many more police shootings in Chicago weren't justified at all. He found that six shootings were unjustified. That may not seem like a lot, but it's a 600 percent increase from the one shooting that was deemed unjustified in the previous eight eight years. His supervisors demanded that he reverse the rulings. He refused, and on this past July 9, he was fired. Chicago doesn't even deny that this is why they fired him. Here's their statement:
Davis’s termination came less than two weeks after top IPRA officials, evaluating Davis’s job performance, accused him of “a clear bias against the police” and called him “the only supervisor at IPRA who resists making requested changes as directed by management in order to reflect the correct finding with respect to OIS,” as officer-involved shootings are known in the agency.
Mind you, the man they are saying has a clear bias against the police is a decorated officer from the department with nothing but glowing reviews.  
Below is an interview he did with WBEZ.
Chief Kevin Sewell of Pocomoke City, Maryland, the first African-American police chief in the city's history, was fired June 29 after he stood by two fellow African-American officers who were experiencing over racism from white officers in the department. According to the Washington Post:
The officers alleged in complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that they faced racism that was overt and rampant — allegations the city denies. Among the incidents alleged: a food stamp superimposed with President Obama’s face that was left on a black detective’s desk and a text message that read, “What is ya body count nigga?”
“This is one of the most egregious cases of primary racial discrimination and retaliation for assertion of rights before the EEOC that I’ve seen,” said Andrew G. McBride, co-counsel for the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, which is representing Sewell. “Chief Sewell has a fantastic record as a police officer. He was terminated because he stood up for two African American officers who filed an EEOC complaint.”
Both of these stories are deeply disturbing and reveal that cities are fighting against even the most basic decent reforms to address police brutality and racism within their own departments. It's absurd that two honorable men who were award-winning public servants were basically taught that if they wanted to be in the system, they had to play the deadly game of pretending like injustice is imaginary. It isn't, and we must demand answers in both of these terminations.

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO SHAUNKING ON TUE JUL 21, 2015 AT 07:53 AM PDT.

ALSO REPUBLISHED BY POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY GROUP AND DAILY KOS.


HERE AT LEAST OFFICERS DID TAKE A STAND AGAINST TERRORIST ACTS ON PEOPLE OF COLOR!
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Thursday, August 6, 2015




Obama Unveils Stricter Rules Against Segregation in Housing

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and 
Julian Castro, the secretary of housing and urban development, announced the new housing initiative in Chicago on Wednesday. Christian K. Lee/Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration announced an aggressive effort on Wednesday to reduce the racial segregation of residential neighborhoods. It unveiled a new requirement that cities and localities account for how they will use federal housing funds to reduce racial disparities, or face penalties if they fail.
The new rules are an effort to enforce the goals of the civil rights-era fair housing law that bans overt residential discrimination, but whose broader mandate for communities to actively foster integration has not been realized. They are part of President Obama’s attempt to address the racial imbalances and lack of opportunity that he says have contributed to unrest reminiscent of the turbulent 1960s in cities like Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, where African-Americans have clashed with police officers.
The requirement is likely to pose the greatest challenges for cities in the Northeast and the Rust Belt that have the highest levels of segregation according to the 2010 census, including Detroit, Milwaukee, New York and Newark.

MAP

Mapping Segregation

New government rules will require all cities and towns receiving federal housing funds to assess patterns of segregation.
 OPEN MAP
More affluent minorities have diversified many predominantly white neighborhoods in those cities, but the segregation of less-wealthy minority families remains entrenched. The new effort aims to encourage affordable housing development in more desirable neighborhoods, and to improve the housing stock in lower-income areas.
Civil rights groups celebrated the announcement as a long-overdue response to the persistence of segregation in an increasingly diverse nation. Hilary O. Shelton, the director of the N.A.A.C.P. Washington bureau, called it “a crucial step forward in advancing fair housing and discrimination protection.”
But it has caused a backlash among conservatives, who denounced it as another directive from Washington to communities they say have long suffered from ill-conceived government housing initiatives. Some congressional Republicans are moving to deny funding for its implementation. The changes also could prompt some governments to follow the example of Westchester County, which has foregone some federal funding because of its refusal to comply with fair housing regulations.
Julián Castro, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said the measure should rise above politics, noting that both Democrats and Republicans supported the 1968 Fair Housing Act that undergirds it.
“A ZIP code should never prevent any person from reaching their aspirations,” Mr. Castro said in a conference call on Wednesday. While the 1968 law has always required communities to ensure equal opportunity in their neighborhoods, he added, “the fact is that federal efforts have often fallen short” when it came to enforcement.
Administration officials said that asking cities and localities to detail how they plan to use funds to reduce segregation would foster cooperation with the federal government. Housing and Urban Development will make available a trove of data that local officials can use in deciding how they will address segregation and racially concentrated areas of poverty, rather than being told how they must meet the new goals.
Mr. Castro said penalties for noncompliance, including the loss of federal housing funds, were a “last resort” that he did not anticipate using.
“We’re approaching this in a very collaborative spirit,” he said. “Enforcement is always a last resort — it is there, it is possible, but our preference is to work cooperatively and steadfastly with communities.”
The completion of the new requirement was first reported by The Washington Post.
Some local governments, like the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, have already created the kinds of fair housing plans the federal government will now require. Rob Breymaier, the executive director of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center, a nonprofit group that advocates “meaningful and lasting racial diversity,” said he hoped other communities would follow that example.
“This rule makes it clear that the fair housing obligation isn’t just being able to say, ‘I didn’t discriminate,’ ” Mr. Breymaier said. “It’s also saying, ‘I’m doing something proactively to promote an integrated or inclusive community.’ ”
Federal officials announced the new policy two weeks after the Supreme Court endorsed a broad interpretation of the fair housing statute, allowing suits under a legal theory that civil rights groups say is a crucial tool in fighting housing discrimination. It also builds on recent academic research documenting that lower-income children have much better prospects if they live in diverse neighborhoods.
“It’s significant, because it is a serious effort by the administration to, in effect, enforce one of the legacy civil rights laws,” said Marc H. Morial, the president of the National Urban League. “The country has to confront this, and it is my hope that this rule will help us change this paradigm, because this pattern of residential segregation, isolated pockets of poverty, is not just confined to the cities.”
The measure met with instant derision among Republicans who called it an executive overreach that would force Mr. Obama’s priorities upon neighborhoods across the nation.
Representative Paul D. Gosar, Republican of Arizona, called the rule Mr. Obama’s “most aggressive attempt yet to force his utopian ideology on American communities disguised under the banner of ‘fairness.’ ”
The House last month passed an amendment by Mr. Gosar to defund the rule.
“This is just the latest attempt by H.U.D. to social-engineer the American people,” said Edward J. Pinto, a housing specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“The goal is to get the suburbs to look more like the cities,” he added. “It’s presumptuous for H.U.D. to think that someone in Washington, D.C., should decide all of this.”
Housing advocates, however cheered the move.
Debbie Goldberg, the vice president for housing policy at the National Fair Housing Alliance, noted a recent Census Bureau report saying that for the first time, most American children younger than 5 are members of minority groups. “If they don’t do well, the country doesn’t do well,” she said.
Ed Gramlich, a senior adviser at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, cautioned that change was likely to come slowly. Local governments that receive federal funding are required to draw up plans once every five years. For some jurisdictions, the new rules may not need to be addressed until 2020.
Still, he described the new requirement as “tremendous.” Until now, he said, local governments have basically had the freedom to decide for themselves whether they were complying with the 1968 law.
“Jurisdictions would say, ‘We put up a fair housing poster during Fair Housing Month,’ and that was it,” he said. “The whole concept was unenforceable and therefore meaningless.”
A version of this article appears in print on July 9, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama Unveils Stricter Rules on Fair Housing. Order Reprints

NOBODY IN CHICAGO IS FOLLOWING THE HOUSING LAWS



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