Challenging discrimination when purchasing a home

A decade ago, George Willborn, a Black radio personality and comedian, reached a tentative deal to buy a $1.7 million, 8,000-square-foot house in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood.

But the White sellers refused to sign the contract, he said, even though Willborn had made the highest offer.

Willborn and his wife filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The sellers’ agent told investigators that the sellers preferred not to sell to a Black family, according to court records.

HUD charged the sellers, their agent and brokerage with racial discrimination, finding reasonable cause in accordance with the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The sellers settled with Willborn by paying an undisclosed sum while denying wrongdoing.

“It was just a shock that in this day and age, racism [could] be so blatant,” Willborn said in an interview with The Washington Post. “This happens to Black people all the time, but there are a lot of times when they don’t have the means to fight it.”

The sellers and their agent did not respond to inquiries from The Post. The agent’s brokerage has since been acquired by Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, and the agent is not affiliated with that firm.

Diane Glass, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chicago, said in a statement: “Our mission is to help more people experience homeownership — all people. And we are painfully aware that our industry has fallen short of that at times. Ensuring that Fair Housing rules are followed and actively working to identify and end discrimination is the only way forward for real estate. We recognize the role we play in housing access and take the responsibility seriously. We are committed to consistent, proactive work in order to fulfill our mission.”

During her confirmation hearing in January for secretary of housing and urban development, then-Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-Ohio) said her priorities included eliminating housing discrimination and increasing Black homeownership.

The problem, though, is that many alleged incidents of racism are hard to identify and harder to prove, experts say.

So, what can you do if you’re a buyer or renter who suspects you might be a victim of housing discrimination?

First, experts say, look for telltale signs: being put off when trying to view homes in neighborhoods where you’re a minority; being shown homes exclusively in neighborhoods where you’re in the majority; or having your application delayed and being told someone else has snagged the property.

Second, familiarize yourself with local and federal fair housing laws and take steps to build a case by documenting the alleged discrimination. And third, obtain legal representation — either a lawyer or a housing advocacy organization — to investigate your complaint and/or negotiate on your behalf.

“It might be hard for somebody to articulate and recognize it immediately,” said Kate Scott, executive director of the Equal Rights Center in Washington. But it usually starts with “a bad feeling about what’s going on.”

George Willborn at his home in Atlanta. A decade ago, White sellers of a home in the Chicago area refused to sign the contract, Willborn said, even though he had made the highest offer. (Lynsey Weatherspoon for The Washington Post)

Racial divide

In 2019, roughly 29,000 complaints were lodged with local and state authorities, HUD and the Justice Department charging housing discrimination, according to the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA). This tally is roughly 7 percent below the record number of complaints logged in 2018, when filings were at their highest since the alliance started tracking the statistics in the mid-1990s.

That same year, nearly 16.5 percent of the complaints alleged racism, a share second only to claims of disability bias. The alliance cautions, however, that the true number of housing discrimination incidents may be much higher as most cases are hard to identify and document. Most victims feel powerless or fear retaliation and, thus, eschew reporting their experiences, the alliance says.

“One of the characteristics of discrimination in the marketplace today is that it can be very subtle,” said Morgan Williams, general counsel at the NFHA. “It has been referred to as revolving-door discrimination or discrimination in which a housing service provider may welcome a prospective housing consumer into their office, shake their hand and show them the door.”

Mortgage lenders, for instance, may repeatedly ask Black home shoppers for the same information while processing their loan applications. Agents might only show certain neighborhoods to African American buyers in a process known as “steering.” HUD, as well as a number of housing organizations, publish warnings and reports about such discriminatory actions.

Yet as an individual experiencing these situations, it may be hard to decipher whether racial bias lies at their core. As a single customer, experts say, there is seldom a base to compare how others are treated.

According to a 2019 report by the National Association of Realtors, 13 percent of Black home buyers had their mortgage applications rejected, mainly because of their debt-to-income ratio. Only 5 percent of White mortgage requesters faced refusals, a third of them reporting debt-to-income qualifications as the reason.

Black house hunters are more likely to have lower median incomes, more debt and worse credit scores than their White peers, according to the National Association of Realtors.

When they become homeowners, they still play catch-up — they have less equity in their residences but that equity makes up most of their overall wealth, a 2017 analysis by Pew Research shows.

“The racial wealth gap plays so much into that,” said Parker Gilkesson, a policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington.

At about $170,000, the net worth of the average White family is roughly 10 times larger than that of a Black family, according to the Brookings Institution.

In a June report, the Urban Institute summarized multiple studies showing that the racial wealth divide would narrow if the homeownership rate was equalized. The Black homeownership rate grew almost 4 percent year-over-year to roughly 46.5 percent in the third quarter of 2020. Yet it still lags behind the share of White homeowners, which is 76 percent, according to the Census Bureau.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia L. Fudge said during her confirmation hearing in January that her priorities included eliminating housing discrimination and increasing Black homeownership. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)

Rental bias

Renting comes with its own set of racist behaviors, experts say. In 2012, HUD’s decennial study on racial inequalities in the housing market showed that while Black renters were equally able to arrange meetings with agents, they were told about 11.4 percent fewer available units and shown 4.2 percent fewer homes than similarly qualified White apartment seekers.

In 2019, after being denied an apartment, Sarel Hines filed a complaint with the Office of Human Rights in D.C., where she rents with a Housing Choice, commonly known as Section 8, voucher.

Landlords in D.C. and around the country regularly discriminate against voucher holders, said Solomon Greene, senior fellow with the Urban Institute, sometimes quite bluntly stating in apartment listings that they ought not apply. It is source-of-income discrimination that inordinately affects African Americans. According to HUD, Black households constitute about half of all families receiving housing assistance, which ranges from living in public housing to having Section 8 vouchers.

“When source-of-income discrimination is happening in the District, it’s tantamount to race discrimination as well,” Scott said. “That is the most common thing that we see in terms of intakes.”

Income is not a protected category under the Fair Housing Act. Rather, it falls onto local jurisdictions to rule it out. About 20 states and D.C. have source-of-income discrimination laws, which a number of municipalities have also adopted.

D.C. banned source-of-income discrimination in 2005. But Hines, who received her voucher in 2014 after nearly 20 years of waiting for it due to a chronic undersupply and high demand for assistance, said she has heard many times that the units she sought did not accept vouchers or had income requirements that excluded housing assistance. Under the law, both practices are illegal.

“It started to affect me mentally, especially [when I couldn’t get] places that I really liked and wanted to be in,” Hines said, adding she and her three children sometimes had to remain in crammed or unsafe units until she could apply again.

Rules barring people with criminal backgrounds from rentals also disproportionately affect Black people, who make up a third of all prisoners in the United States even though they represent only about 13 percent of the nation’s population, experts say.

In some cases, tenant screening solutions disqualify applicants simply for arrests, even if they have never been charged or convicted of a crime.

“That can prohibit you from getting into [adequate] housing, and you’re going to be left with less quality housing and less scrupulous landlords and housing providers,” said Marley Hochendoner, executive director of the Northwest Fair Housing Alliance in Spokane, Wash.

In numerous local jurisdictions, eviction proceedings also linger on renters’ records, even when they have won their cases, impeding them from signing future leases. According to the Chicago-based Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing (LCBH), residents of predominantly Black communities in the city are evicted at rates two to three times higher than those living in White neighborhoods.

The Eviction Lab, a national eviction data and research organization, finds such disproportionalities replicating themselves across the country. They also exist in other parts of the housing market.

During the foreclosure wave triggered by the Great Recession, 2.5 million homes were repossessed by lenders from 2007 through 2009, according to a report by the Center for Responsible Lending. Controlling for income, the center estimates that 8 percent of both Black and Latino homeowners, who took out mortgages between 2005 and 2008, lost their residences to foreclosure. Some 4.5 percent of Whites did.

“Fair housing isn’t entirely about getting into a house,” said Mark Swartz, executive director of the LCBH. “Fair housing is also about being able to stay in a unit.”

From left, George Willborn, Spike Lee and Kevin Willmott at the “Chi-Raq” premiere in New York in 2015. (Johnny Nunez/WireImage/Getty Images)

How to file a complaint

HUD and the D.C. Office of Human Rights have several online resources explaining, respectively, the provisions of the Fair Housing Act and the D.C. Human Rights Act of 1977 and how to file a complaint under each one.

For instance, the HUD site offers scenarios that illustrate violations of the law. And the D.C. site explains that the local law includes the seven protections of the federal law — race, color, sex, national origin, religion, age and disability. But it also details how the local law has 11 more — including personal appearance, marital status, sexual orientation, familial status and political affiliation.

What do you do if you feel that you’re the victim of housing discrimination?

Typically, there are red flags, such as:

⋅ Bad customer service: not receiving a call back or an email response, for instance.

⋅ Being shown houses or apartments only in certain neighborhoods: This practice is known as “steering” clients to communities that the housing service provider, be it a lender or a real estate agent, thinks best match the clients’ background even if customers express broad preferences.

⋅ Being repeatedly asked for the same information or for additional documents until the residence is rented or purchased by someone else.

⋅ Being told a rental or for-sale home is not available when it is.

When they suspect discrimination, renters, homeowners, buyers and sellers should contact their attorney, local legal aid or fair housing organization, which can provide help that includes:

⋅ Mediation or contacting the housing service provider to notify them that they are potentially breaching discrimination laws. Scott said that in some cases, a dialogue helps resolve the situation.

⋅ Submission of a formal complaint: Complaints can be submitted to local authorities such as the D.C. Office of Human Rights or directly to HUD. The latter may task partner fair housing organizations (such as Scott’s Equal Rights Center) to investigate the alleged discrimination.

⋅ File a lawsuit: Depending on the severity of purported discrimination and if an administrative complaint does not yield an agreement, a lawsuit could be pursued.

⋅ Legal representation: During reconciliation attempts, the housing service provider, especially if it is a bank or a corporate landlord, is likely to be represented by a lawyer. Fair housing and legal aid groups can provide legal representation for those who cannot afford an attorney.

Hines, the voucher holder in D.C., settled her complaint, which the Equal Rights Center helped her file, not long ago.

Complaints, which are a frequently utilized recourse, require an initial recounting of the incident when filing, followed by an interview with HUD, a state or a local housing agency.

Evidence such as text messages and emails that illustrate the suspected discrimination are helpful. Depending on the nature of the allegation and the available evidence, the housing agency is likely to conduct testing to determine whether the purported violator indeed engaged in discriminatory practices.

Complaints usually take several months to reach a resolution, which can range from a formal apology to a monetary compensation to victims. Lawsuits can stretch for several years.

Housing consumers who detect possible discrimination, even if it does not target them, can still flag it.

“The reports of discrimination come from all sorts of consumers as well as folks in the industry itself,” said NFHA’s Williams.

realestate@washpost.com