Civil Rights Act of 1968

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"Fair Housing Act" redirects here. For the 1963 California law, see Rumford Fair Housing Act.
President Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1968
President Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1968
Civil Rights Act of 1968
90th United States Congress

Long title: ---
Introduced by: ---
Dates
Date passed: 1968 (U.S. House of Representatives)
1968 (U.S. Senate)
Date signed into law: April 11, 1968
Amendments: ---
Related legislation: ---

On April 11, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (also known as CRA '68), which was meant as a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the Civil Rights Act of 1866[1] prohibited discrimination in housing, there were no federal enforcement provisions. The 1968 act expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and as of 1974, sex; as of 1988, the act protects the handicapped and families with children. It also provided protection for civil rights workers. The Act is commonly known as the Fair Housing Act (of 1968) .

Victims of discrimination may use both the 1968 act and the 1866 act (via section 1982) to seek redress. The 1968 act provides for federal solutions while the 1866 act provides for private solutions (i.e., civil suits).

Contents

[edit] Types of banned discrimination

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibited the following forms of discrimination:

1. Refusal to sell or rent a dwelling to any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin. People with disabilities and families with children were added to the list of protected classes by the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988.

2. Discrimination against a person in the terms, conditions or privilege of the sale or rental of a dwelling.

3. Advertising the sale or rental of a dwelling indicating preference of discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin (and, as of 1988, people with disabilities and families with children.)

4. Coercing, threatening, intimidating, or interfering with a person's enjoyment or exercise of housing rights based on discriminatory reasons or retaliating against a person or organization that aids or encourages the exercise or enjoyment of fair housing rights.

[edit] Passage of the bill

The passage of the bill was largely spurred by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. a week before. [2] Vote statistics (Senate):

  • Passed 71-20
  • Democrats: 42-17 (71.2% For, 28.8% Against)
  • Republicans: 29-3 (90.6% For, 9.4% Against)

House:

  • Passed 250-172
  • Democrats: 150-88 (63% For, 37% Against)
  • Republicans: 100-84 (54.3% For, 45.6% Against)

[edit] Subsequent legislative and judicial changes

Beginning in 1980, Senator Orrin Hatch spoke in favor of rolling back provisions of the Fair Housing Act. Acting on his motion in 1988, Congress voted to weaken the ability of plaintiffs to prosecute cases of discriminatory treatment in housing. But the Fair Housing Act was also amended in 1988 to allow plaintiffs' attorneys to recover attorney's fees. Additionally, the 1988 amendment added people with disabilities and families with children to the classes covered by the Act.

in the early 1990s, in Trouillon v. City of Hawthorne, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund successfully challenged an urban renewal plan on the basis of race discrimination by bringing suit under the Fair Housing Act. Previous litigation under the Act had largely been limited to discrimination in buying or renting housing. The case was also one of the first to establish discrimination in a multi-racial context.

[edit] Discrimination complaints

Individuals with complaints of discrimination can have United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) investigate to determine whether there is reasonable cause to believe the Fair Housing Act has been violated. A one-year statute of limitations exists after an alleged violation for filing a complaint with HUD. HUD will notify the alleged violator of the complaint and permit that person or entity to submit an answer. HUD will try to reach an agreement through conciliation, but if HUD has reasonable cause to believe that a conciliation agreement is breached, HUD will recommend that the Attorney General file suit.

State and local agencies also exist to enforce fair housing laws. HUD may refer complaints to those agencies for investigation. HUD may also authorize the attorney general to go to court to seek temporary or preliminary relief, pending the outcome of a complaint, if irreparable harm is likely to occur without HUD's intervention. If HUD finds reasonable cause to believe that discrimination occurred, the matter will go to an administrative hearing at which HUD attorneys litigate the case on behalf of the complainant. Alternately, complainants can hire an attorney. An Administrative Law Judge (ALA) will consider the evidence and if ALA decides that discrimination occurred, the respondent can be ordered to pay damages, including actual damages, and damages for humiliation, pain and suffering. The respondent may also be order to make the housing available, pay attorney's fees, and pay fines to the federal government.

[edit] Lawful discrimination

Only certain kinds of discrimination are covered by fair housing laws. Landlords are not required by law to rent to any tenant who applies for a property. Landlords can select tenants based on objective business criteria, such as the applicant's ability to pay the rent and take care of the property. Landlords can lawfully discriminate against tenants with bad credit histories or low incomes, and (except in some areas) do not have to rent to tenants who will be receiving Section 8 vouchers. Landlords must be consistent in the screening, treat tenants who are inside and outside the protected classes the same manner, and should document any legitimate business reason for not renting to a prospective tenant. As of 2007, no federal protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is provided, but these protections do exist in some localities.

HUD has stated that buyers and renters may discriminate and may request real estate agents representing them to limit home searches to parameters that are discriminatory.[1] The primary purpose of the Fair Housing Act is to protect the buyer's (and renter's) right to seek a dwelling anywhere they choose. It protects the buyer's right to discriminate by prohibiting certain discriminatory acts by sellers, landlords, and real estate agents representing them.

[edit] Housing Discrimination

Housing discrimination according to the Civil Rights Act of 1968 is the “refusal to sell or rent a dwelling to any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin.” Later on the disabled and families with children were added to this list. This is also known as the Fair Housing Act. There are several organizations that oversee and attempt to uphold this law, one being the Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

[edit] Social Steering

Social steering is a form of housing discrimination that involves housing authorities, real estate companies and even local governments steering certain groups of people, often minorities, into certain areas of a city. According to Realestateagent.com, it is “Directing a particular race to a certain neighborhood and away from others. An example is a real estate broker steering a black family away from a white neighborhood.” Housing projects are an example of steering. Often, especially in east coast cities, housing projects concentrate poor minorities into a few buildings or blocks, concentrating the population and isolating them from most of the city. Often the areas where the steering tends to concentrate certain groups of people lack city resources that other parts of the city may have. Mike Davis notes that in Los Angeles, the ghetto is not wired into key information circuits like the rest of the city such as education and cultural media. In the 1950’s governments across America took initiatives to destroy slums and ghettos of the cities, and put up housing projects in place. These multi-story, high density projects were where whites began to push blacks who were dislocated by destruction of slums, also heavily avoided by the white population. Despite the Fair Housing Act, which included cases like Gautreaux and Shannon which prohibited placing projects exclusively in black neighborhoods, the trend did not end[2]. Social steering can also be outside the economic institutions of real-estate a government policy decisions to build projects. Often the people living in a neighborhood may not be so friendly to people moving in that are different from them. For example, in 1985 an interracial couple moved into an all white neighborhood in Philadelphia. Upon arrival there was an angry mob waving torches and protesting the arrival of a person of color[3]. The attitudes of people in certain neighborhoods therefore can also attribute to the segregation and steering of people of certain backgrounds. Before the Fair Housing Act many minorities were met with blatantly racist objects of deterrence such as signs in the neighborhood or at real estate companies explicitly saying they do not accept certain minorities. However, after the Fair Housing Act, steering took on the role of a subtle fashion, where realtors deceive and lie making it harder to learn about or rent/buy homes in certain neighborhoods. The minorities are guided or “steered” into neighborhoods with certain characteristics of economics and race. A Cleveland study revealed that 70% of companies in the 1970’s practiced racial steering[4]. As recently as 2006 there was an investigation of a real estate company in Chicago, where African-American and white testers attempted to buy condominiums. White testers were shown much more properties, around 36 while the African American testers only got to see on average 7[5]. This was actually a lawsuit known as Coldwell Banker vs. Illinois Attorney General (2006). Another Detroit study showed that whites were rarely shown homes in non-white neighborhoods unless they asked to see them. There are numerous cases and studies done that show the more subtle end of racial and social steering after the Fair Housing Act. On the average, 50% of the time African-Americans are discriminated against when searching for housing [6].

[edit] Redlining

Redlining is related to steering because it is denying financial support and services to neighborhoods based on race, ethnicity, or economic status[7]. Rather than subtly steering individual families towards certain areas or only giving them information on certain racial areas, redlining was a blatantly and legally tolerated criteria for financial institutions to better decided where to put their money. Originating in the New Deal, this procedure was a protocol for deciding where federal, state and city funds would go to for financial services. Affluent middle and upper middle class white areas where outlined in green on a map, meaning that financial services were clear to be rendered and these areas were desirable for investment. Racial areas, specifically African-American neighborhoods were outlined in red, meaning they were undesirable and poor, not to mention racially heterogeneous. These maps were used by banking institutions to construct guidelines for lending money. As a consequence, many of these redlined areas, which were also typically located in urban environments as whites tended to move out to the suburbs of America, experienced deterioration on a rapid scale. Since these areas have been neglected and redlined and cannot receive funds from banks to revitalize, they cannot attract businesses, which perpetuates the cycle of poverty. The poverty often leads to crime and neighborhoods become further neglected because they continue to be unattractive to outside investment, and continue to be redlined by banks. Thus, private banks and financial institutions as well as the U.S. government are accused of being responsible for these practices in several instances, which before the Fair Housing Act were widespread and blatant throughout the U.S. Redlining is still practiced today on a more subtle setting. Instead of having official maps circulated to institutions, which is illegal, the public domain tends to ignore poor and non-white neighborhoods by denying basic public services.

[edit] Segregation Index

Nancy A. Denton and Douglass S. Massey devised a segregation index to measure the degree of segregation of African-Americans and whites according to income levels. Their objective was to show that the discrimination of African-Americans when it comes to housing was not related to income level, which many thought to be true. Many have argued that continuing segregation is due to the fact that African-Americans generally make less money, which means they cannot afford to live in the same neighborhoods as affluent whites. But as the segregation index by Denton and Massey showed, blacks still remained highly segregated from whites no matter what the income level was. For example, in 1980, black families earning $2,500 a year or less had an index level of 86 while those earning $50,000 or more had an index level of 83. This trend was common throughout most major metropolitan areas, especially prevalent in the northern cities. The goal of this index was to show that upward economic mobility did not affect the level of segregation in America’s cities. It should be noted that Denton and Massey also surveyed Hispanics and Asians, and found on average the indices to be 64 which meant the poorest Hispanics and Asians were still less segregated than the most affluent blacks. Leslie Carr notes that in 1990, 74 percent of whites live in suburbs, while most African-Americans and Hispanics live in urban areas, and that African-Americans were a majority population in 14 cities (with populations over 100,000)[8]. The purpose of this study was to show that housing practices are indeed racially discriminatory and not economically.

[edit] Legislation

1. Civil Rights Act of 1866: This is the law that declared all people born in the United States are legally citizens. This means they could rent, hold, sell and buy property. This law was meant to help former slaves, and those who refused to grant these new rights to slaves were guilty and punishable under law. The penalty was a fine of $1000 or a maximum of one year in jail. 2. Fair Housing Act of 1968: Title VIII of the Civil Rights act of 1968. Extends the protection to color, religion, sex and national origin. 3. The New York State Human Rights Law: Extends the protection to marital status and age, aimed to prevent non-racial discrimination. 4. Section 236 and 237 of the New York State Property Law: Further extends the protection to include dwellings with children and mobile home parks. This is meant to protect renters and sellers from discriminating based on number of children in a family. Currently the Fair Housing Act protects against discrimination of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and handicap or disability. The law applies to all types of housing, rental homes, apartments, condos and houses. The only exception to the act is when an owner of a small rental building lives in the same building he rents to. Since he owns the building and also resides there, he can decide who lives there. However this exception is shaky and does not hold up in court very well.

[edit] Sexual Orientation

Sexual Orientation is not protected under the Fair Housing Act. This is because federal law does not protect gays and lesbians or other sexual minorities (transgender or transsexual). When it comes to discrimination against gays and lesbians it is up to the city ordinances and whether or not the city or state has laws that protect orientation. There are actually several states that protect gays and lesbians and some cities and states that protect transgender people as well. The states that protect gays and lesbians are: California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Areas that protect transgender people are: California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Mexico, Rhode Island and New York City. There are also cities that have passed laws making discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal. These are: Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, New York, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Seattle. These areas of the country are notably more liberal.

[edit] Violation

There are an estimated 2 million cases of housing discrimination each year according to the HUD. However, between the years of 1989 and 1992 only 17 of these went to court nationwide. Redlining is still a major problem despite the legislature passed making it illegal. Studies and investigations have shown that minorities who apply for mortgages are rejected 3 times as much as Caucasians. According to one Federal Reserve Board study, among higher income applicants, the denial rates were as follows: African-Americans: 21.4% Latinos: 15.8% Asians: 11.2% Whites: 8.5% Housing Projects have also come under fire by researchers and NGO’s alike. Housing Advocates Elizabeth Julian and Michael Daniel, “in addition to the inequality in the actual housing provided to low-income African-American families under the federal programs, the neighborhoods in which they receive assistance are usually subject to various adverse conditions not found in the neighborhoods surrounding the housing units in which whites receive the same assistance. These conditions include inferior city-provided facilities and services, little or no new or newer residential housing, large numbers of seriously substandard structures, noxious environmental conditions, substandard or completely absent neighborhood service facilities, high crime rates, inadequate access to job centers, and little or no investment of new capital in the area by public and private entities.” Thus, this discrimination goes beyond being poor because white housing projects receive more attention and public investment, making housing discrimination overall a racial problem.

Although several legal measures have been taken to protect all kinds of people against housing discrimination in the U.S., still the most commonly targeted and largest victims are African-Americans. Due to long histories of redlining, racism, segregation laws and attitudes it remains difficult to this day to say that African-Americans are protected under U.S. law when it comes to housing.

[edit] Property Taxes

Many experts believe that another form of housing discrimination lay in the property tax system, which is directly linked to the education system. Though the spending of property taxes normally go through a process to make sure they are being spent on areas of the city equally, the case is usually the opposite (equalization). Those who live in low-income housing or rent homes do not pay much property taxes. These areas tend to be geographically close, usually neighborhoods since those of certain economic status usually can only afford to live in a certain area of the city (economic segregation). Thus the city government tends to spend property taxes disproportionately, spending the bulk of them on areas where the most income taxes are produced. This in turn creates unfair distribution of city services such as roads and schools. It becomes a cycle that perpetuates the cycle of poverty, since the unequal distribution of property taxes neglects lower income areas since they are not able to produce as much property taxes. Conditions of schools stay poor, education continues to be sub-par, and lack of quality civil services make the area unattractive for new investors.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ letter from HUD to Jill D. Levine, Esq. dated 10-02-1996 www.reintel.com/letters.htm
  2. ^ Squires, 1993 p. 24.
  3. ^ Massey, Douglass, 1993 p.109.
  4. ^ Carr, 1997 p. 124.
  5. ^ Carr, 1997 p. 125.
  6. ^ Squires, 1992 p. 44.
  7. ^ Squires, 1992
  8. ^ Massey, Denton, 1993

[edit] References

  • Carr, Leslie. Color Blind Racism. Sage Publications Inc, 1997.
  • United States. Committee on National Statistics. Measuring Housing Discrimination in a National Study. NY: GPO, 2000.
  • Kristyn, Hartman. "Major Realty Firm Accused Of Racial Discrimination." CBS2Chicago. 22 008 2006. CBS. 26 Apr 2008 <http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/Coldwell.Banker.real.2.331468.html>.
  • Cole, Yoji. "Racial Steering? Black Family Says They Were Kept Out of Gross Pointe." DiversityInc. 02 002 2007. DiversityInc Magazine. 21 Apr 2008 <http://www.diversityinc.com/public/1225.cfm>.
  • Scott, Janny. "Report Alleges Bias by a Real Estate Giant." The New York Times. 11 10 2006. The New York Times. 23 Apr 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/nyregion/11discriminate.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>.
  • Squires, Gregory D.. From Redlining to Reinvestment. 2. Temple University Press, 1992.
  • American Civil Liberties Union, Humans Rights Violations in the United States. Human Rights Watch. United States Library of Congress, 1993.
  • Massey, Douglass. "Racial Discrimination in Housing: A moving Target." Social Problems 52(2005): 148-151.
  • Williams, Richard, Reynold Nesiba, and Eileen Diaz McConnell. "The Changing Face of Inequality In Home Mortgage Lending." Social Problems 52(2005): 181-207.
  • Henderson, A. Scott. "Race Matters: The Folks Next Door." Reviews in American History 29(2001): 119-125.
  • Massey, Douglass, and Nancy Denton. American Apartheid. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1993.
  • "Understanding Your Rights: Housing Discrimination." FindLaw For the Public. 2008. Find Law. 7 May 2008 <http://public.findlaw.com/civil-rights/housing-discrimination/le9_funderstanding(1).html >.

[edit] External links