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Thursday, April 6, 2023
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Economic Justice Summit March 30-31, 2023
Economic Justice Summit at Georgetown University Law Center
March 30-31, 2023
Georgetown University Law Center, The Sarah and Bernard Gewirz Student Center
120 F Street NW, Floor 12, Washington, DC 20001
Free. Register. by March 29, 2023, 8:00 p.m.
For more information, contact: ABA Service Center (800) 285-2221 / service@americanbar.org
The theme for the American Bar Association's Civil Rights and Social Justice Section (CRSJ) 22-23 Bar Year is economic justice, fundamental to civil rights and social justice. This two-day Summit will cover issues such as guaranteed income, taxes and debt, housing, and the racial wealth gap. During the Summit, lawyers, activists, policymakers, and key stakeholders will formulate policy solutions to the nation's most critical economic disparities and devise strategies to implement such policy solutions.
As the American Bar Association (ABA)’s only membership entity exclusively dedicated to the advancement of human rights, civil liberties, and social justice, we seek to understand the role that lawyers can play in the pursuit of economic justice. A detailed agenda with program descriptions and speakers is available here.
The Economic Justice Summit is open to both in-person and virtual attendees, so please choose accordingly during the registration process. This event is complimentary and open to the public. Please share word of this event widely with your colleagues and networks.
Summit Supporters: Truist, Georgetown University Law Center, D.C. Bar, American Tax Policy Institute, ABA Section of Taxation, Francine J. Lipman & James E. Williamson.
Summit Co-Sponsors: ABA Business Law Section, ABA Center for Public Interest Law, ABA Commission on Homelessness and Poverty, ABA Criminal Justice Section, ABA Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law, ABA Section of State and Local Government Law, ABA Young Lawyers Division.
Read the ABA's article about the Summit.
Read the Wealth Disparities and Civil Rights issue of CRSJ's Human Rights Magazine.
HUD Housing Summit 2023
HUD Bridging the Wealth Gap: Asset Building and Economic Justice Summit
May 1, 2023
11am - 4pm ET,
Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, 451 7th Street, SW, Washington, D.C. 20410
In person / Virtual option available
In addition to housing, asset building and financial empowerment are key components of HUD’s efforts to support those who have been historically underserved. During this hybrid convening, attendees will hear from HUD leadership and peers about the importance of leveraging housing as a platform to build assets and work towards economic justice. Participants will engage with community leaders, staff from across the federal government, policy experts, affordable housing practitioners, and other stakeholders in the field.
Housing, asset building, and financial empowerment are key components of HUD’s efforts to support those who have been historically underserved.
Learn about the importance of housing as a platform for asset building and economic justice. Engage with community leaders, staff from across the federal government, policy experts, affordable housing practitioners, and other stakeholders.
Friday, March 24, 2023
Housing Segregation
Columbia, Maryland is Becoming More Racially Segregated
A new study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) has found that Columbia, Maryland has changed from being a case study of housing desegregation in the 1970s to being racially segregated in 2023.
The planned communities of Columbia and Reston, Virginia, were case studies in a new era of housing desegregation in the 1960s. The planned community of Columbia was built by James Rouse, who stated that “Like any real city of 100,000, Columbia will be economically diverse, poly-cultural, multi-faith, and inter-racial.” Columbia had no racial covenants and there was no racial steering of buyers. The city developed affordable housing for a mix of incomes.
The Black population of Howard County increased rapidly from 1970 to 1980, with much of this in Columbia. In 1980, Columbia had low levels of segregation and an evenly distributed Black/White population on a neighborhood level. These measures gradually worsened. Three common measures of segregation at the community level all showed that the evenness of distribution of the Black population and the exposure of Black and White groups to one another both declined, while Black isolation from Whites increased.
By 2020, Howard County was 21.4% Black and Columbia 28.1% Black. While there has been an increase in diversity in the County and Columbia, there has also been increasing segregation. White population has declined in Columbia similar to Maryland. In all, there has been a decline of nearly 15,000 White residents in Columbia over two decades. Currently, 76.5% of White residents own a home compared with 52% of Blacks. Blacks therefore are more likely to live in multi-family rental buildings, which cluster their population in areas with higher proportions of apartments.
The newer villages in Columbia have not been developed in the original spirit of economic and racial integration. The older Columbia villages of Harper’s Choice, Owen Brown, Wilde Lake, Oakland Mills, and Long Reach were developed with greater concentrations of affordable housing. Dorsey Search and River Hill were not developed until the 1990s and have few multifamily units, almost no affordable housing, and its schools are less than 10% Black.
The newish Dorsey Search and River Hill have only 22% and 9% renter households respectively, have much higher household incomes, and are relatively poor in Black/White integration and economic equity. Dorseys Search and River Hill have Black populations below 10% compared to the 20% to 35% African American population in most other villages. The older Town Center and Wilde Lake have 76% and 57% renter households.
Only a small percentage of Columbia's housing stock is affordable when compared to the overall Baltimore metro. While the first villages built in Columbia broke barriers, those in recent decades have failed to sustain the mix of rentals, townhomes, and single-family homes that made Columbia a pocket of remarkable integration in a society still deeply struggling with racial inequality.
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Read the February 1, 2023 NCRC article.
Mortgage Lending Discrimination
Widespread Discriminatory Housing Appraisals Persist in the U.S.
A large number of Black property owners hold that white appraisers are using their race to determine the worth of their homes. About 97% of appraisers in the U. S. are white, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) and other advocates report the result is widespread appraisal discrimination. In 2022, the NCRC released a report finding that the average appraiser gave a value that was $7,000 higher to the same home owned by a white rather than a Black.
In one high-profile case, the Baltimore-area home of Dr. Nathan Connolly and Dr. Shani Mott was valued at nearly $300,000 more when they performed a “whitewashing experiment” in 2021, removing family photos and asking a white colleague to stand in for them. The couple has filed a lawsuit in Maryland, and the U. S. Department of Justice unusually issued a statement of interest in their case, just as they did last year with the case of Mr. Austin and Ms. Tate-Austin.
Redlining, a Depression-era practice that denied mortgages to people of color in certain neighborhoods, continues to drive down home values in Black neighborhoods, and today, racism and discrimination are still inextricably entwined in housing values.
A recent possibly discriminatory example is the case of Terry Horton who has been a Cincinnati landlord for over 10 years. He has rented to single mothers who rely on Section 8 housing assistance to pay their rent, and he and all of his tenants are Black. To free up cash for buying a new apartment building, he wanted to refinance his three-unit rental property in Cincinnati's North Avondale neighborhood, near Xavier University and with a roughly $39,000 median family income. His lender estimated the property’s value at around $500,000. But an appraiser declared his property worth only $359,000.
Horton believes that the first appraiser, who is white, discriminated against both him and his tenants because of their race - all were whom met the appraiser. Two more appraisals of Horton’s property had higher values, though by the time Horton reapplied for a loan based on the later values, interest rates had climbed so that it was not advisable to refinance his mortgage. “It was completely devastating,” Horton said. “It rips the whole bottom out when you come to the realization that because of the color of your skin, they’re devaluing your property.”
He recently filed a complaint to HUD with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which works for increased wealth in low-income communities. The complaint cites multiple methodological and factual errors in the first appraisal done by Brent Martin of Martin Appraisal Company. Martin Appraisal Company was subcontracted by Appraisal Nation, an appraisal management company used by Horton’s lender, Stratton Equities.
According to the complaint, Martin underreported the size the property by over 500 square feet, selected nearby properties of comparable size and quality within a smaller size bracket than Horton’s property, underreported the number of bedrooms, and underestimated Horton’s monthly rental income by over $450. After Horton disputed, Appraisal Nation refused to change its $359,000 valuation.
HUD confirmed receipt of the complaint and has begun processing it. Should HUD determine that there is cause to suspect discrimination, the case could be moved to a HUD administrative or to a federal judge.
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Read the March 18, 2023 New York Times article.
Read the February 27, 2023 NCRC article.
Fair Housing Law
HUD Restores “Discriminatory Effects” Rule to Strengthen Fair Housing Enforcement
On March 17th, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it has submitted to the Federal Register a Final Rule entitled Restoring HUD's Discriminatory Effects Standard. This cancels HUD's 2020 rule that weakened Fair Housing Act disparate impact claims and restores the 2013 discriminatory effects rule. In the new Rule, HUD states that the 2013 rule is more consistent with how the Fair Housing Act pertains to the courts, and that it more effectively implements the Act's remedial purpose of eliminating unnecessary discriminatory practices from the housing market.
The restored discriminatory effects policy (which includes disparate impact and perpetuation of segregation) provides a strong means to tackle those policies that unnecessarily cause systemic housing inequality, even if not adopted with discriminatory intent. For many years, it has been used to challenge policies that exclude people from housing opportunities, including zoning requirements, lending and property insurance policies, and criminal records policies.
The rescinded 2020 rule weakened HUD's 2013 discriminatory effects rule that legally supported Fair Housing Act cases involving discriminatory effects for cases filed with HUD and by private plaintiffs. The 2013 rule was that a policy with a discriminatory effect on a protected class was illegal if it did not produce a substantial nondiscriminatory interest or if a less discriminatory alternative could also serve that interest. The 2020 rule added new pleading requirements, new proof requirements, and new defenses that made it more difficult to prove that a policy violating the Fair Housing Act was lawful.
Due to a court ruling halting the implementation of the 2020 Rule in Massachusetts Fair Housing Center v. HUD, the 2020 Rule never went into effect.
Read HUD’s Final Rule on Restoring HUD's Discriminatory Effects Standard.
For more information, read this Fact Sheet.
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Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Book Review
Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
By Judy Heumann and Kristen Joiner. Beacon Press, 2020. 240 pages. $26.95, hardcover.
In this autobiography, Heumann tells her story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and work for basic human rights for people with disabilities.
"Paralyzed from polio at eighteen months, Judy’s struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a “fire hazard” to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher’s license because of her paralysis, Judy’s actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people." Her expensive advocacy work lead to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as several other important laws and regulations positively affecting the lives of people with disabilities.
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