Robert McCartney: The 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act is supposed to ensure that nobody in the United States is prevented from renting or buying a home because of their race, sex, disability, or other factors. A major aim was to reduce long-standing segregation of neighborhoods by race, and the law has had some success in doing so, but the work is not over. In our own area, the Washington, D.C., Metro region, a recent study found that housing segregation by race and ethnicity actually has increased since 2010. The study was sponsored by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, or COG, which also sponsors this podcast. The news isn't all bad, though. The study was part of a major new COG plan in which eight local cities and counties, including our area's largest ones, committed to a region-wide plan to promote fair housing and fight discrimination in multiple ways. It was the first time in 25 years that such a regional plan was adopted. It calls for changing zoning rules, promoting testing programs, and discouraging displacement of longtime residents. Above all, it calls for increasing the supply of housing and lowering its cost. That's because, as we'll hear later in this episode, housing affordability is closely connected to increased segregation. Here's Kate Scott, executive director of the Equal Rights Center, whose mission is to identify and eliminate unfair and illegal discrimination.
Kate Scott: Very few people want to be blatantly racist, but the impact of what's happening is leading to segregation. And the reality at this point is that those things are very interconnected with income and wealth.
Robert McCartney: Welcome to Think Regionally, a monthly podcast about issues in the greater Washington area. I'm your host, Robert McCartney. Let's start this discussion by defining two key terms, fair housing and housing affordability. Fair housing, which is the focus of the new COG plan, is the ability to live in a housing free from discrimination. Housing affordability, which the plan also addresses, is about having the financial resources to live in a given area. I discussed both with Rodney Lusk, a member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. He represents the Franconia District and also is a vice chair of COG's board. Let's talk big picture. Why is it important to care about fair housing?
Rodney Lusk: Well, I think it's critical. Housing is foundational, right? So when you think about people thinking about their futures and preparing for the education of their children and the launching of their children into society, you've got to have housing as the foundation for you to do all of those things. And I think communities like ours here in Fairfax County have a responsibility to ensure that we have fair housing. So there's no discrimination in the sales, and the rental, and the financing.
Robert McCartney: Although Fair Housing aims in part to promote integration, the Washington area has been moving in the opposite direction. One statistical tool to identify housing segregation is the dissimilarity index. It measures what percentage of a certain group's population would have to move to a different census tract to be evenly distributed within a jurisdiction. The higher the index, the greater the segregation. In the D.C. region, the COG study found that from 2010 to today, the dissimilarity index between whites and non-whites rose from just under 47 to just over 50, and we are not part of a national trend. Instead, most other major metro areas saw segregation remain approximately steady over the same period. The COG report found that segregation in our region is on the rise.
Rodney Lusk: Yeah, this is disheartening. As a person who serves on the board, I'm the only African-American member on the board. I'm the first African-American male on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. And when I look at the data, it really shows for African-Americans and other minorities, Asian, Hispanic. When you look at the testing that has been done in terms of having folks go and try to lease or rent an apartment building or trying to go and buy a house or trying to finance a house, we've seen disparities across the board, meaning that non-white members of our community are treated differently.
Robert McCartney: Under testing programs in Fairfax and elsewhere, investigators of different races or physical ability go looking for housing to see if they have different experiences. The COG report said surveys found that 13% of the region's residents reported experiencing housing discrimination.
Rodney Lusk: We saw that in some cases with lending African-American members were offered loans at a different percentage rate than comparably situated non-minority members. We've seen also for those that are disabled, particularly in the hearing impairment area, that there's difficulty with some of the lenders and being able to work with those individuals, not having the appropriate equipment and not being able to provide the service as they would with someone who didn't have an impairment. And then looking at even for the sale and the leasing, their examples where person of color goes in, and they're looking to acquire the home that's for sale, and the person who shows it to them says, "Well, it's going to be available in three months," but then the person that comes in, who's next, not a person of color, the copy is available now.
Robert McCartney: To help combat such practices, Fairfax has outreach programs to inform people in the housing industry about their responsibilities. Fairfax also holds an annual event during Fair Housing month in April, where renters and buyers can learn how to avoid being victims of discrimination. It's on April 25th this year. Segregation does not spring exclusively from racial prejudice however. High housing costs mean that many attractive neighborhoods are out of reach for lower income residents, and that leads to racial segregation because the lower income population is disproportionately made up of racial minorities. Lusk said, "An important part of the Fair Housing plan for Fairfax is to add thousands of affordably priced housing units in the next decade."
Rodney Lusk: This board has committed to provide 10,000 affordable housing units by 2034. So over the next 10 years, we anticipate delivering 10,000 units. We're continuing to look at opportunities to partner with non-profits. We're continuing to look at ways to use public lands, and we're going to look to preserve as much of the affordable housing that we currently have.
Robert McCartney: To hear more about different forms of housing discrimination and how to combat them, I turn to Kate Scott of the Equal Rights Center. It's a federally funded group that reviews complaints from people who believe they have experienced housing discrimination in our region. I'm very interested, especially given what your organization does, in hearing some stories or narratives of individuals who have suffered from discrimination. What kind of complaints do you hear regarding discrimination?
Kate Scott: Right. So the most common type of complaint we get is source of income discrimination. So we hear regularly from voucher holders who, and I think this is an important point, have encountered multiple instances of source of income discrimination. So it's not just they tried to use their voucher at this one place, and we're not able to do it. That it's happening to them repeatedly, to the point that some of our clients over the last few years have been at risk of losing their vouchers because they can't find a place to use them.
Robert McCartney: Rental vouchers are a widely used government subsidy to help low-income residents cover the cost of housing. What are other kinds of discrimination that you hear about?
Kate Scott: Yeah. So the second most common type of complaint that we get is disability discrimination. And oftentimes, these are instances where people need some sort of accommodation in order to be able to live in their home. Probably the most common thing that we hear about is people who have assistance animals and whose landlords want to charge them a pet fee. A pet fee for having an assistance animal. That's not an appropriate application of a pet fee because an assistance animal is not a pet. So oftentimes, we end up advocating for those tenants directly with their landlords, explain what the federal guidance is on this issue, and get them to accept the assistance animal as a reasonable accommodation.
Robert McCartney: You run into any kind of overt or not-so-subtle examples of just pure racial discrimination. We don't think you'd be comfortable in this neighborhood, hand to hand.
Kate Scott: One was in Arlington a couple years ago. We had a client who was a Black woman who reached out to a landlord who inquire about a room rental in a group house, and the landlord thought he was texting his current tenant and not our client. He instructed his tenant to give our client the wrong address because he didn't want to rent to her, believing that she was from Africa. And so in that case, we helped her to file a fair housing complaint with the Virginia Fair Housing Office, and ultimately she received some money to compensate for the harm that she experienced.
Robert McCartney: Looking again at how economic inequality and racial segregation reinforce one another, the connection between the two has deep historical roots.
Kate Scott: Segregation in our region is most entrenched where we see big income extremes. So it's also important to remember that discrimination was government policy prior to the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. So things like red lining and condemning of neighborhoods of color those were federal policy. And that has led to ongoing inequality that has built over time. So homeownership in the 20th century was one of the most important factors in many families abilities to build wealth over time. And because of the way federal programs were structured, access to homeownership was only available to white families, and that has led to a huge racial wealth gap in our region. So you have that playing out on the one side. You have the racial wealth gap building on the one side. And then, simultaneous to that, the cost of housing in our region has risen astronautically over time in our region but also in the country as a whole. And so it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that, with the racial wealth gap and the increased cost of housing, that racial segregation in the region has really intensified over time.
Robert McCartney: The new regional fair housing plan aims to address all the challenges we've discussed so far. Hilary Chapman, COG's housing program manager, described its importance.
Hilary Chapman: One of the most important and most significant things about it is, at risk of stating the obvious, the fact that we were able to bring eight jurisdictions together to complete this plan for the first time in 25 years. And it's significant not just for the complexity of the planning process that it's involved, but I think it's important to know is that what this means is that multiple local governments are aligning their federal housing investments in a way that is coordinated. And that is a real milestone for housing coordination in the region.
Robert McCartney: The eight jurisdictions include nearly all of the largest ones in the area, Fairfax, Montgomery, Loudon, Prince William, and Arlington Counties, plus the district and the cities of Alexandria and Gaithersburg. They committed to seven broad goals and strategies that everyone is to implement over the next five years. Can you give me a couple of examples of specific things they're doing because they've done a regional plan as opposed to just doing individual plans?
Hilary Chapman: I think some of the examples that you can find in terms of how the local governments are aligning their policy and programs are going to sound somewhat familiar since the most challenging obstacle to fair housing choice in our region is the lack of affordable housing. So the first and most important and most significant example is to work on increasing the supply of housing that's affordable to families, particularly below 60% of area median income.
Robert McCartney: 60% of area median income is just over $63,000 a year for an individual and just over $90,000 for a family of four. To increase the supply of housing for that population, the plan calls for more housing bonds, mandatory inclusion of lower-cost housing in new projects, creation of new rental housing, and other measures.
Hilary Chapman: Another one that's getting certainly a lot of attention these days is looking at reform of zoning and land use policies to increase the ability to produce more housing overall and portable housing in particular. So one of the strategies is making sure that accessory dwelling units, so for example, a granny flats additional units either within basements or within single family lots, making those be built by right commitment. And then another one that is going to sound, again familiar but is still very important is looking at preservation and making sure that we don't lose any affordable housing as we work to create more of it.
Robert McCartney: The plan also includes multiple steps to protect housing rights of protected groups. It calls for increasing fair housing testing and monitoring lenders and real estate companies to ensure equal treatment. One of the biggest challenges, though, will be finding more money for public investment in strained local government budgets. Where do you think you get the biggest bang for the buck? I mean, more money for vouchers, more money for public housing, more money for low-cost loans, subsidies to developers. Where do you get the... or all of the above.
Hilary Chapman: It's really tempting to say all of the above. I think the key with improving fair housing access and opportunity is it just has to be a both end. It's both in providing opportunities for mobility. So vouchers for individuals or families who simply want to move to a different place that better meets their needs, as well as investing in communities of color and others who have faced disinvestment in the past to ensure that those communities can become, have better amenities, better quality of life, higher quality schools, safe green parks to play in for children, and others. So it's tempting to say there's no bad place to invest, whether that's vouchers or development, but the key is not losing sight, that it's important to do both.
Robert McCartney: Now, I'll share some of my own thoughts. Housing discrimination and racial segregation of neighborhoods have a long and regrettable history in the United States. And the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was a major achievement of the civil rights era aimed at reversing that legacy. So I was shocked to hear that segregation has become more acute in our region in recent years, particularly given that the area espouses progressive values. As I learned more about it, however, I realized I shouldn't have been surprised. I was already well aware both that the increasing cost of housing was a major burden for a large segment of our population and that that burden fell heaviest on racial minorities and other disadvantaged groups. Given these trends, it's a positive sign that local governments representing most of the area have committed to a common strategy, both to increase the supply of affordable housing and to combat discrimination against minorities, those with disabilities, and other marginalized groups. As always, though, it's not enough just to have a plan. It will take a sustained effort on multiple fronts to increase public funding and subsidies, reform zoning, strengthen oversight, and make other regulatory changes to get the region back on track. Here again is Scott of the Equal Rights Center.
Kate Scott: But the last thing I'll say is I think it's great to have come up with a regional fair housing plan, but there has to be sort of an implementation roadmap that goes along with it because, I can tell you, one of the things I've seen over the course of my career is even when you have a great analysis and resulting plan, it doesn't mean anything if there's no thought or resources given to implementing that plan.
Robert McCartney: COG staff plan to support jurisdictions throughout implementation. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. We welcome your feedback. Please email comments to Think Regionally, one word at mwcog.org. This podcast is produced by Lindsey Martin, Steve Kania, and Amanda Lau. This is your host, Robert McCartney, urging everyone, as always, to think regionally.