Why does fair housing training matter?
Would you believe that in this decade, black applicants for rental housing were discriminated against* 66% of the time as compared to white applicants? Matched-pair testing done by Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) revealed this to be true in Hampton Roads during their 2008 audit of rental properties. Members of the Virginia Housing Commission at the General Assembly who heard this in the fall of 2009 said it was “shocking” that this still occurs. Virginia passed its Fair Housing Act in 1972; shouldn’t equality of opportunity be here by now?
The Fair Housing Act protects race, color, religion, national origin, sex, elderliness, familial status, and disability. Unfortunately, although these groups are protected under the law, the Commonwealth does not have enough resources to prosecute every act of discrimination. The best way to remedy this problem is through prevention. Fair housing training prevents discrimination before it happens, before there is a need for a court case.
Through fair housing training, landlords find out the ways they *can* discriminate. Not all discrimination is unjust. A poor credit rating, history of being a bad neighbor, or record of damaging property, are not protected classes.
However, we know that people tend to stereotype – thinking that they can tell by a person’s skin color or religion what kind of person they are. Bad experiences with particular tenants could lead a landlord to make assumptions that everyone who looks like that bad tenant will also act that way. But the Fair Housing Act prohibits this assumption.
Fair housing training, provided by the Virginia Fair Housing office and HOME, educates landlords so they can recruit and retain good tenants within the restrictions of the Fair Housing Act.
Bills to require landlords to attend training were put in by Del. Glenn Oder (HB405) and Sen. Mamie Locke (SB216). The language in the bills was agreed to by the homebuilders association, apartment managers associations, and realtors associations. At the Oct. 22, 2009 meeting of the Virginia Housing Commission, Delegate Cosgrove reminded members of the commission of the shocking results of HOME’s audit. It seemed like the Housing Commission was going to take a small action towards ending discrimination in Virginia.
So why, at the final meeting of the Commission before the session, on Dec. 8, 2009, did Del. Cosgrove introduce a weaker version of the bill? His version (HB192) would only require landlords to sign an affidavit saying they understand the law, with no penalty for not signing the affidavit. He said that he felt that two hours of training every two years was “too much” to ask landlords to attend. The Commission decided to endorse his version of the bill, rather than the one requested by a broad coalition of stakeholders. These bills are now in a committee of conference, and all versions will likely die because of the presence of this weaker version.
Whose interests was Del. Cosgrove protecting? Did constituencies as large as the ones that supported the stronger bills come to him and express a need to avoid attending a two hour training? Why did the rest of the Commission go along with his bill, effectively killing the training bills before they got to the GA?
Training is just one small step in the battle for equality. Until someone can apply for an apartment and be treated the same no matter their race, color, national origin, religion, sex, elderliness, familial status, or disability, we need fair housing training.
We need fair housing training to be required of all landlords, not just real estate agents. Next year, the Virginia Housing Commission should endorse the stronger bill.
*Differences in treatment that favored the white testers included lower rents, security deposits and fees; offers to waive fees for the white testers but not for the black testers; white testers told about more available units and earlier availability; offers to show units to white testers but not to black testers; asking black testers for identification in order to view units, but showing the white testers units without asking for identification; differing requirements for waiting lists; and follow up calls made to white testers, but not to black testers. (source: HOME)
