MoveSmart.org will be live blogging from the first hearings of the National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. The Commission, created through a joint effort of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund (LDF), the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (Lawyers’ Comm), the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), will be hosting four day-long hearings around the country to investigate the state of fair housing. Once the hearings are concluded, the Commission will make a series of recommendations for the next administration.

From around 9:00am until 5:00pm CDT on 7.15.08, we’ll be live blogging after the jump and the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center is video streaming the day as well (click here for the ASL video stream). The usual caveats about live blogging apply below.

9:03am - The room is just about full and folks are slowly taking their seats. Lots of familiar faces in the room, including fair housing advocates from Michigan, Wisconsin, and down-state Illinois. While this hearing may be taking place in Chicago, it definitely has a regional, Midwestern feel (so far).

9:12am - Wade Henderson of LCCR opens the morning by thanking Access Living - the host for today - and then introduces the Commissioners. In attendance today are former HUD Secretary and Congressman Jack Kemp, former HUD Secretary and San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, the immediate past-president of the National Association of Realtors Pat Combs, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Howard University College of Law Okianer Christian Dark, president of Galludet University I. King Jordan, and City of Houston councilman Gordon Quan.

9:31am - Access Living president Marca Bristow welcomes everyone to the facility and highlights the work of the Commissioners on disability and civil rights issues.

9:18am - Henderson highlights the lack of fair housing enforcement in recent years - despite receiving more than 10,000 complaints in 2007, HUD only filed 31 charges.

9:28am - Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan just completed her remarks, video will be up shortly.

9:33am - Commission Co-Chair Henry Cisneros gives a brief opening statement. “Fair housing is one of those principles that makes the housing system work… This system cannot work when basics precepts of fairness are not present.”

9:41am - Commission Co-Chair Jack Kemp gives a brief opening statement. “If we keep these things in perspective, we can modify the lack of progress with the sense of audacity and urging and bipartisan consensus [that is part of this Commission]… I tell people I’m a Republican from the Abraham Lincoln part of the party, the Frederick Douglass part of the party… If Chicago is ground zero [for fair housing], then Access Living is the epicenter.” Kemp concludes, “We have both a moral and political obligation to make this nation what it was meant to be in the beginning, a city on a hill, and I don’t think we can ever be that without a commitment to fair housing and a commitment to equality for all God’s children.”

9:50am - Commissioner Pat Combs gives an opening statement highlighting the work of Realtors to promote fair housing. She notes a recent successful collaboration between fair housing advocates and real estate professionals - convincing Fannie Mae to repeal its “declining markets” policies.

9:53am - Commissioner I. King Jordan gives an opening statement. Citing the statistics Henderson reviewed, he calls the lack of fair housing enforcement “terrible” and “something is drastically wrong with this picture.”

9:56am - Commissioner Okianer Christian Dark gives an opening statement, beginning by saying that there is so much energy in the room, were the setting different she would call for an “Amen”. She highlights the work of Howard University to train a new generation of fair housing attorneys and says that she is confident the panel will provide some answers to the questions looming over HUD’s lax enforcement.

10:00am - Commissioner Gordon Quan gives a brief opening statement. He begins by asking, “Is government our friend on these issues or are they a deterrent?” He concludes, “It is a long journey to get a fair policy, but as that Chinese saying goes a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”

10:03am - Henderson introduces the first panel - Prof. John Logan at Brown University, Prof. Thomas Sugrue of the University of Pennsylvania, Margery Austin Turner of the Urban Institute, and Lisa Rice of the National Fair Housing Alliance.

10:05am - Prof. Logan’s presentation is entitled, “Where is the Breakthrough in Residential Segregation?”. He notes that HIspanics, African Americans, and Asians - on average and in metropolitan areas - live in neighborhoods where they are in the majority. Co-Chair Cisneros asks a few probing questions, including about the diversity within the categories cited. Prof. Logan highlights what he calls the “Ghetto Belt”, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Newark, Milwaukee/Waukesha, and Gary. These 6 areas have nearly the same level of residential racial and ethnic segregation as apartheid South Africa. He concludes by reminding the panel that separate is unequal - the median income for non-Hispanic white neighborhoods was $51k/year in 2000 while in non-Hispanic black neighborhoods it was $35k/year. “Race trumps class.”

10:16am - Prof. Sugrue begins by citing that more than 50 years since Supreme Court-mandated school desegregation, we face not only residential segregation but also educational segregation - and that the most severe examples of this educational segregation can be found in the North. He then summarizes the history and implications of housing discrimination - first in the form of restrictive covenants, then the behavior and policies of real estate professionals and the policies of the federal government, and continuing today the behavior of individuals. “The questions of ‘where you live’ and ‘who are your neighbors’ are not trivial.” Summarizing the implications of segregation, Prof. Sugrue cites the lack of social capital and the perpetuation of deep differences in economic capital.

10:29am - Margery Austin Turner focuses her comments on the “persistence of discrimination by actors in the private market.” She cites research that during the 1990’s discrimination against Latino homebuyers and African American renters and homebuyers decreased while at the same time steering of African American homebuyers was increasing. Citing the 2000 Housing Discrimination Study, Turner states, “In about 1 of every 5 or 6 visits to a real estate agent or rental agent… blacks and Latinos received consistently unequal treatment” as compared to whites. She then explains that the complaint-based enforcement system does not work effectively because “the evidence that we’ve got suggests that very few people file a complaint when they’ve experience discrimination.” Turner recommends a three part strategy to deal with the problem: first, more aggressive enforcement; second, “meaningful public education” about the benefits of diverse communities; and third, real incentives to encourage integrative moves. [Note: we couldn’t agree more - while enforcing fair housing laws is key it is meaningless if families don’t understand that living in an integrated neighborhood is not only their right but also frequently a good decision.]

10:42am - Lisa Rice summarizes NFHA’s fair housing enforcement work in the areas of sales, lending, and insurance. Included in her Powerpoint one of my favorite sections of many NFHA presentations - photos of two similar houses below the question, “Which home is in a Black neighborhood?” Rice first highlights the failure of DOJ and HUD to “buttress the efforts” of small fair housing centers to pursue insurance redlining. “Since 2005, NFHA has filed 11 real estate discrimination complaints but only 2 HUD investigations [of these complaints] have been completed.” Rice concludes by echoing Turner’s recommendations.

10:55am - Commissioner Kemp thanks the panel for their work and their use of “empirical evidence”. Comm. Quan asks Prof. Logan about the impact of immigration on his research and patterns of segregation. Prof. Logan responds that while many first generation immigrants move to the “barrios” and “Chinatowns”, he found that second generation immigrants are not in turn moving to more integrated neighborhoods.

11:02am - Comm. Combs asks Turner and Rice what their organizations are doing to train Realtors to make sure the “we are moving forward.” Rice responds with a litany of ways in which fair housing organizations share information with Realtors. Turner states that training and voluntary efforts are important but that the knowledge that monitoring and enforcement can play a large role - we don’t speed because of speed traps; testing can play that same role.

11:07am - Comm. Dark asks Turner about the third prong of her strategy - incentives. Turner says that she sees two types of incentives - one to individual homebuyers that if they would consider making an integrative move you get some kind of financial assistance to make that move; a second that would counteract the “nervousness” that happens in integrating neighborhoods by ensuring that those neighborhoods are “nurtured and stabilized” so that when families in the minority move in they don’t “tip”.

11:10am - Comm. Jordan says that some of the information presented this morning has been surprising and asks Turner how we can encourage people who are discriminated against to report it. Turner replies that the  problem is we rely on a complaint-based system and that much of the problem is that discrimination often occurs with a wink and a smile. While education and outreach efforts may improve reporting it shouldn’t be the way we step up enforcement.

11:15am - Comm. Kemp says that he is a big fan of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and then asks what is working and what is not working in the CRA. Rice jumps on the answer, saying that while the CRA requires banks to extend credit to all areas it does not require them to extend quality credit - people now have access but the products they have access to are inferior. “The CRA has to stay up with the times.”

11:19am - Prof. Logan notes that many of the mostly-minority neighborhoods that whites might consider are, in many ways, objectively less desirable than their mostly white counterparts.

11:20am - Comm. Cisneros asks each panelist to give fair housing enforcement a grade and what should have been done in 1968 that was not done.
-Prof. Logan gives us an “incomplete” and says that we need to get serious about fair housing enforcement
-Turner gives it a “D”, noting that there has been some progress but not enough. (She also notes that she is a light grader.)
-Prof. Sugrue gives it a “D”, saying that there have been some changes in attitudes even though those changes have not correlated to changes in practice.
-Rice gives it a “D-”, saying that she would add more language to the FHA emphasizing the goal of integration. She would also add language that would implement the Fair Housing Executive Panel, a panel of all cabinet-level positions that gave each an extra mandate to ensure that fair housing was enforced by the full federal bureaucracy.

11:27am - Henderson introduces the next panel: Kathy Clark of the Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance and the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, Prof. Deborah McCoy of the UC Berkeley Center for Cities and Schools, victim of housing discrimination and successful plaintiff Ebony Stern Johns, and State Farm Vice President and State Farm Foundation board member Willie Brown.

11:32 - Kathy Clark was up first - we’ll have video posted shortly.

11:41am - Prof. McCoy will speak to the implications of segregation on schools, the benefits of integration for schools, and policies linking integration and schools. She begins by summarizing statistics that demonstrate schools are re-segregating, and that housing “plays a major role” in this re-segregation. She notes that in segregated schools dropout rates are much higher and access to colleges is much lower. Prof. McCoy notes that diverse schools also help prepare students for a diverse world and expose them to a variety of experiences. She concludes by advocating for pairing community development, school improvement, and pro-integrative efforts.

11:53am - Ebony Stern Johns begins by saying that she is a mother of three, which informs her perspective. Stern Johns’ story was also part of the NFHA conference just a month ago, which we blogged about here (scroll down to 10:30am). Stern Johns’ story is hear-wrenching, and I urge you to watch it in its entirety (we’ll post a link to the video ASAP). She concludes with a heart-felt plea that we begin to believe victims of housing discrimination.

12:05pm - Willie Brown opens with a description of State Farm and their charitable commitments and then notes that he is more hopeful about the situation than his fellow panelists, but that despite that outlook there are serious problems to overcome. He speaks highly of State Farm’s relationship with NFHA, noting that it has benefited them both.

12:11pm - Comm. Dark begins by asking Stern Johns about what went wrong in her case, and she notes that the respondent has not complied with court orders regarding monitoring and obtaining fair housing training. Comm. Dark probes deeper, asking what the Stern Johns family would need to be made whole again. Stern Johns says that her husband, who is from the Caribbean and more traditional, felt powerless to protect his family because of the discrimination. She says that to “put salve” on that hole people need to be believed when they take these concerns to court. In her situation, the eviction judge was uninterested in their complaints of discrimination. “I don’t know if you can ever make us whole - we’ve just had to move on as a family.”

12:18pm - Comm. Quan asks Brown what State Farm are doing to self-monitor their actions in light of the incidence of insurance discrimination. Brown notes first that they are not “closeting themselves”, rather they have reached out and actually hired the National Fair Housing Alliance to audit their agents. When potential discrimination is identified they are taking actions to correct the problem and ensure it does not repeat itself.

12:21pm - Comm. Combs asks Prof. McCoy about a regional approach to fair housing an integration and whether there is a model for such an approach. She replies that there are two approaches - one is looking at county school districts to ensure that governance follows those districts, second is addressing the mechanics that prevent collaboration from happening.

12:23pm - Comm. Jordan asks Stern Johns how she was able to prevail in their court actions despite the hostile climate. She replies that she is “somewhat of a pack-rat” so she had a mound of evidence and that she is persistent.

12:30 - 1:30pm - lunch break

1:35pm - Henderson reconvenes the Hearing from the lunch break by reading a letter from Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who is the sponsor of the Housing Fairness Act of 2007. Sen. Durbin notes that despite progress that has been made, “Chicago is a sober reminder of how much we have to do.”

1:40pm - Henderson introduces the third panel of the day, featuring Jim McCarthy of the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center and the National Fair Housing Alliance, Florence Roisman of the University of Indiana at Indianapolis, Bill Tisdale of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council, and Prof. George Lipsitz of University of California at Santa Barbara.

1:46pm - Prof. Lipsitz begins by noting that many of the rights built into our country have been “delayed and denied to black people”. He advocates for creating “more fair and balanced entry into the market and more equality among the players”.

1:56pm - Prof. Roisman opens by saying that the Federal Government has a history of discriminatory policies, but that is not the focus of her presentation. Rather, her remarks will focus on what the Federal Government is doing today and what can we do about it. Prof. Roisman notes that this is not just about HUD, this is about many agencies and the solutions have to come from many agencies. She cites the Treasury’s administration of the Low Income Tax Credits. “There is no obligation on the developers to say whether they are operating 100% white buildings.” She also says that this is not only about housing but also other factors, such as education. Finally, Prof. Roisman says that it is important to have a federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of source of income, but that it is equally important to have a federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (lots of spontaneous appluase for this comment).

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Brief interlude - we just learned that the newest paper from the Chicago Area Study on “racial blindspots” (.pdf) has hit the web. Highly recommended, and not just because MoveSmart.org is highlighted as a potential solution to the problem.
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2:08pm - Jim McCarthy begins with a description of the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center and NFHA. McCarthy notes that his comments are not meant to reflect “personally or individually” on HUD employees, but rather designed to provide insight into the failures of the federal government to enforce fair housing laws. “HUD lacks strong, consistent enforcement answers to housing discrimination questions.” He highlights one case with the Atlanta Hub office of HUD that was filed in 2005 and is still pending and another in California where HUD settled a case without informing the attorney for a complainant with a mental disability even after said attorney had filed an appearance in the matter.

2:19pm - Bill Tisdale is the final panelist for this session and he notes that his testimony will focus on opportunities for collaboration. He begins by saying that fair housing organizations are professional and well trained and gives examples from Milwaukee about building such partnerships. The MMFHC works on three main areas - enforcement, education and outreach, and community development. “While our HUD office* recognizes fully and utilizes our resources, this by no means reflects the experiences of our colleagues” in other regions. Tisdale then tells the story of a suburban Milwaukee municipality that receives CDBG funds, and to satisfy the requirement that they “affirmatively further fair housing” with those funds they have a local fair housing council. This council has meets only once per year, for the past two years has met for a combined total of less than 30 minutes, and at their most recent meeting one of the council members asked Tisdale for a copy of the municipality’s fair housing ordinance.

*Full disclosure - this blogger’s employment at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil RIghts is 100% funded by a grant from HUD that is overseen by this same Regional Hub - Region V.

2:35pm - Comm. Dark asks if HUD can be fixed or whether a new structure is needed; Comm. Cisneros targets the question to Roisman. Roisman says that HUD can do “infinitely better” and that it has done better in the past. She says that there are two critical elements - one is a secretary that sets integration as a goal and the other is to bring in staff that is committed to that goal. She then highlights the problems that can come when solutions aren’t race conscious - in the Gautreaux program families were encouraged to move to both mostly white and low poverty neighborhoods, whereas in the Moving to Opportunity Demonstration families were only encouraged to move to low poverty neighborhoods and subsequently did less-well than families in the Gautreaux program.

2:41pm - Speaking the problem of having political appointees in charge of civil rights enforcement, McCarthy notes, “We can’t afford to have the world’s only remaining superpower… fail at this project. This our calling card to the rest of the world and we can’t get it right at home.”

2:46pm - These are a fascinating few minutes of conversation between the panel and the Commission - I highly recommend watching the full video (will post a link when available). The discussion of how HUD administers FHEO programs as compared to other programs they administer is great.

2:49pm - When asked by Comm. Combs asks McCarthy and Tisdale if they had one wish what that would be. Tisdale said it is for there to be real collaboration and acknowledgment of the hard work of fair housing organizations, McCarthy asks for more funding.

2:50pm - Comm. Cisneros asks what modifications we should make to the fair housing statutes to address the larger issues rather than individual complaints. Roisman answers, saying that the recent shifts of people with resources moving back to cities offer an opportunity, but that it shouldn’t just be empty nesters that move to cities but also people with families, who in turn will only move if there are quality schools. Roisman advocates for pairing school and housing policy.

2:55pm - Comm. Dark chimes in with an idea, saying that just as the EPA has to have environmental impact statements fair housing advocates should also advocate for integration impact statments considering transportation, housing, education. etc.

3:05pm - Henderson is back at the podium to introduce the final panel which includes Marca Bristow of Access Living, Prof. James Rosenbaum of Northwestern University, Hector Gamboa of Spanish Coalition for Housing (and MoveSmart.org Board member), Bill Wilen of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, and Maria Kong, president of the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB).

3:10pm - Marca Bristow begins with a description of the programs and constituents of Access Living, noting that they have filed more than 45 complaints and more than 20 lawsuits. She notes, “Housing is the key for independence for people with disabilities.” In their investigations Access Living has found barriers to equal housing opportunity based on both architecture and individual behavior are far too common. Bristow then explores HUD policies and procedures, noting that in some cases they perpetuate discrimnation. She says that the voucher programs fail to account for the unique needs of individuals with disabilities and that HUD has not provided guidance on the statute of limitations on design and construction fair housing cases. She concludes by noting, “While funding priorities will inevitably be chaning.. this area is critical for a persons’ ability to get everything else in their life together… if you can’t find a home finding the promises this country offers are very difficult.”

3:30pm - Prof. James Rosenbaum begins with a brief history of the Gautreaux program - from 1976 to 1998 more than 7,000 families moved from Chicago Public Housing to mostly-white, low-poverty suburbs. He cites a recent study that tracked down 1,500 of these families and that 66% of these families were still in the suburbs where they had moved 15 years prior and that these moves had long-lasting impacts on employment. While the Moving to Opportunity demonstration targeted low poverty neighborhoods for families, Prof. Rosenbaum notes that this wasn’t enough; most families ended up less than 10 miles from their previous neighborhoods and its bad influences, and despite moving to lower poverty neighborhoods their children either remained in the same poor-quality schools or moved to other schools that were not any better than their prior one.

3:40pm - Bill Wilen opens his presentation by thanking the Commission and noting that Chicago is an appropriate place to have these hearings given the CHA’s Plan for Transformation. HUD has demolised nearly 22,000 units with plans to rebuild or rehabilitate nearly 25,000 units - since the plan began in 2000 only about 30% of the units are completed. Unlike in the Henry Horner Homes, where Wilen and the Shriver Center successfully obtained a consent decree to govern the demolition and construction, in most cases the wrecking balls came before any plans for rebuilding were in place. Wilen then describes the Wallace litigation (the shortcomings of this case are a major influence for MoveSmart.org). He then cites the successes at the Horner development and said that it served and serves as a model for how HUD should redevelop public housing.

3:50pm - MoveSmart.org Board Member Hector Gamboa gives a statement highlighting the successes of the Spanish Coalition for Housing’s voucher counseling programs; video will be up soon.

3:58pm - Maria Kong is the final panelist, and she begins by noting that in another 40 years we’ll be doing the same thing unless we change. She notes that despite our incredible diversity we have not made a real committment to fair housing. She cites many examples of this lack of commitment - condo board policies, affordable housing financing barriers, the lack of diversity requirements in tax credit properties, and the backlog at HUD. “Discrimination and alienation will continue forever… unless the government adopts policies to promote diverse communities.”

4:14pm - In response to a question from Comm. Quan, Prof. Rosenbaum notes that there are many theories about why Gautreaux was successful but that all agree part of the answer is it deconcentrated poverty. Solutions that lead to poor families living in the suburbs and wealthier families returning to the cities will only switch where poverty is concentrated.

4:20pm - Comm. Dark asks Gamboa to reconcile the Kathy Clark’s previous testimony about voucher holders with his report. Gamboa replies that they were working with a smaller group of 4,000 families, noting that they are moving families from substandard housing to quality housing and that access to the vouchers in the first place was a success in and of itself. She follows-up by asking if Source of Income discrimination as a proxy for race is different from community-to-community. Gamboa replies that this could certainly explain the discrepancy. Bristow adds that for disabled voucher holders they offer an opportunity to move towards independence.

4:26pm - The final panel concludes and there is now limited time for open comments. We’ll be posting video Videos of testimony from Bernie Kleina of HOPE Fair Housing Center and Prof. Maria Krysan of the University of Illinois at Chicago are below.

4:36pm - Vincent Curry describes his organization’s recent success in their lawsuit against Zanesville, Ohio. Last week a court found the city in violation of the Fair Housing Act for denying black residents of municipal water service and awarded the victims more than $10,000,000.

4:41pm - Nancy Haynes of the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan states that - when they have FHIP funding (fair housing enforcement funding from HUD) - they handle complaints from nearly all of Western MIchigan, but when they don’t they only serve Grand Rapids. Despite receiving scores of 100/100 on every HUD examination and being held out as an example of best practices, their funding is not reliable from year to year and their work is that much more difficult to do.

4:48pm - D. Ardoin, a real estate practitioner in Michigan, speaks in support of the partnerships with fair housing centers and the importance of testing. She says that she equates testing to ensuring a high level of customer service.

4:51pm - Jill Fenner of the Fair Housing Center of Nebraska first describes their agency and then states that the Nebraska Attorney General has refused to pursue cases referred to his office by the state fair housing commission for the past five years. She recommends that HUD take more of a leadership role in compelling the attorney general to fulfill its duties by withholding CDBG and other HUD funds.

4:58pm - Valerie Fourtner (sp?), who is a constituent of Access Living, comments that her life dramatically changed after she became ill and had to use a wheelchair. She notes that she had a very hard time finding accessible housing that was affordable for someone in poverty. In 2006 she ended up being homeless and was turned away by a suburban shelter who said that there was no housing that she would be able to afford. “Where are we supposed live as the disabled?”

5:02pm - “Let me start my testimony by saying, ‘What about me?’” Michael Blue is a resident of a nearby nursing home who has been looking for housing for more than a year, has put his name on more than 40 waiting lists, but has been unable to find affordable housing. Blue says that he wants to live indepently, on his own terms, and cannot do that where he lives now.

5:15pm - Gail Schecter of the Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs and Clyde Murphy of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (and a MoveSmart.org board member) conclude the testimony. We’ll have video posted shortly.

5:25pm - Shanna Smith concludes by thanking the panel and those who provided testimony. We’ll have video of her comments up soon.