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Doni: One of the most personal and most powerful aspects of your life is not who your friends are.

It's not what schools you went to or even the work that you do.

It's where you live.

So is the opinion of our guest today, George Thomas, and frankly, of many other housing experts.

Mr. Thomas is the CEO and general counsel of the Fair Housing Center.

You might wonder why in this day and time we still need an organization like the Fair Housing Center.

It's a fair question, and I suspect that you will not be surprised by the answer, but frustrated nonetheless.

So let's talk why, after all the marches, the legislation, the lawsuits?

Isn't everyone able to live where they want to and where they can afford to live?

My name is Doni Miller and welcome to the Point.

Connect with us on our social media pages.

You can email me at doni _miller@wgte.org for this episode and other additional extras.

Please go to wgte.org/to the point.

Hey, I'm so glad you're with us today.

We have with us a person that I think you are absolutely going to want to pay significant attention to because he's talking about something that's very important to you and that's your housing.

That's where you live.

That's what barriers impact you living, where you choose to live and why those barriers are still there.

It's my honor and my pleasure to introduce George Thomas today.

He is the CEO and general counsel for the Fair Housing Center.

Welcome so much.

George: Thanks so much, Doni.

Doni: I'm glad to have you here.

So before we get into the more difficult pieces of our conversation today, would you spend a minute telling people what you do?

George: Yeah.

So the Fair Housing Center, I've been there since 2020.

The Fair Housing Center has kind of four main programs I'd really want people to understand.

One is our enforcement program, which is helping victims of housing discrimination.

If you're a victim of housing discrimination, you can call us.

Go on our website.

Use a contact form or walk in.

Every year we get about 2000 intakes of folks contacting us for various different reasons.

That's a big part of what we do is helping those victims.

Our second program is we do a lot of research and policy advocacy.

We research housing issues in the area and then form advocacy strategies around those issues.

Third, we do a lot of education outreach.

So part of that is educating housing providers on complying with the Fair Housing Act, doing the right thing under the law, but also just changing hearts and minds, like changing the public's perception about fair housing issues and to try to better accomplish the goals of the Fair Housing Act.

Finally, we have a relatively new program, which is we now have an attorney on staff that handles some housing conditions, cases.

They're focused on areas that have been historically disinvested, have maybe landlords that prey on those areas.

Then there's bad housing conditions.

So may not be directly a fair housing issue, may not necessarily a discrimination issue, but we're still able to assign a tree to help with those housing issues.

And those are focused on those those neighborhood areas, too.

Yeah.

Doni: You know, I bet if you asked anyone, they would say, I thought this was not an issue anymore.

George: I do come across that sometimes, but as soon as you start to lay out some facts, I think it very quickly changes the public perception.

And really glad that you say that because this is an opportunity to kind of correct some false assumptions that are out there.

Doni: Yeah, let's do that.

George: So let me give you a couple of facts that I think surprise folks.

Today, the black homeownership rate is actually lower today than it was at the time of the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968.

The gap between the black homeownership rate and the white homeownership rate is actually wider today than it was at the time of the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968.

At the same time, we've seen just generally across the population areas like Toledo, like many cities, just the general homeownership rate is is going down to four for a lot of folks.

But that's impacting certain communities more than others.

Toledo, for example, is now to the point where probably more than 50% of the population are renters.

So we've had this economic system for many, many, many years that is built around generational wealth through homeownership.

But you have to ask like, well, who can access that, though?

And the other side of that coin is that if you can't access homeownership, if you're looking at a rental market now where housing prices are continuing to increase, where certain areas are harder and harder to get to, where we still have to this day, really significant racial segregation in certain neighborhood areas.

If you just look at census data for the city of Toledo, this little metro area, there are whole census tracts that have more than 90% of the population are black, are not persons, are not not nonwhite population in those areas.

So and the other thing we have to keep in mind, too, is that 1968, the passage of the Fair Housing Act, that was not very long ago at all.

If you think about that in terms of human generation, like that was just the last generation right.

And it was the generation before that that planned out our communities that drew the maps that that we have today, they're the roads that we drive, the way that our communities are structured.

All of that was planned just really just the previous generation.

Now we're living in a community is planned around a certain economic dynamics, certain access to opportunities.

This is the place we've inherited.

And it's true that maybe we've made some progress in certain ways.

But I think a better way to understand it is we were set on a trajectory and through the course of the history of the country and we have some now some laws in place to try to change the directory.

But we really have to work hard, work together to to stop the trajectory from going direction it was and to bring us to a point where we really can achieve the goals of the Fair Housing Act.

So now more than ever, actually, I see a need for fair housing agencies like the Fair Housing Center.

Doni: It's really disappointing to hear when the Fair Housing Act was signed in 1968 is, as I recall, the hope was that now everyone in America is going to have access to a home.

And we also know that much generational wealth is built on the ability to own a home.

So what's happening that's pushing us backward is this.

George: I think, a complicated question.

But I think part of the answer is that we need to understand civil rights laws and the Fair Housing Act is not just aiming towards reacting.

So not just punishing behavior when we can prove that discrimination occurred.

So that's one thing, is it's a law that we can enforce through litigation.

If you can prove there is intent, prove that someone experienced discrimination, that was intentional and you have the evidence to show all that and you can bring it into court.

Yes, that's a tool.

And we really want to use it for victims of housing discrimination.

That's how that coin, though, is how do we make sure that we're also setting goals for progress?

Right.

Because we know it's hard to prove discrimination cases.

Often you have to have the evidence.

You have to be able to maybe record information or we have fair housing testing where we send testers out to look for discrimination in certain ways, which I can talk about more.

But one of the things that was built into the Fair Housing Act, a lot of people don't know was a requirement to affirmatively further the goals of the Fair Housing Act.

I think we're only now more recently seeing some real teeth behind those rules.

Potentially.

There are some new regulations that that HUD has been reviewing that could finally bring some muscle behind that additional requirement.

And that's kind of unique from civil rights laws.

Like I said, usually you're waiting for discrimination to happen and then trying to respond to it.

That's tough.

But if you if you want to instead set goals for integration, goals for removing barriers, a fair housing choice that's a little bit more complicated.

It requires research.

It requires building different public policies, and it requires us coming together as a community to make that change.

So like I was saying earlier, we set it on a trajectory.

The tools we have are maybe a little bit reactionary and we wouldn't.

We need to find ways to actually change that and be an affirmative to further the goals of the Fair Housing Act.

So I think that's part of what has happened.

Doni: You've raised like 50 questions right in my head right now.

One of them is this one is particularly interesting to me.

The goal of fair housing is not necessarily to integrate neighborhoods, is it?

George: I think part of the goal was was desegregation and integration that was initially part of the are they certainly the only goal, but it's to open new communities of opportunity.

So it's not just desegregation integration, but it's also making doing reinvestment in those same neighborhoods, rebuilding neighborhoods and redoing reinvestment activities.

Doni: Because, because my challenge with with the goal being the integration of neighborhoods is what you've just alluded to.

Then there is not that those in.

But first of all, first of all, I think it sets a standard that in order to be successful, you have to live in neighborhoods with people who don't look like you.

Right.

Which I think is a devaluing premise to begin with.

Second of all, I think that it it discourages or it gives reason to provide exception for those times when you choose, not when the choice is not to invest in those neighborhoods that are predominantly black or predominantly Latino.

So.

Right.

I'm glad to hear you say it clearly.

George: A goal of it is not to make choices for others, but rather the community.

We work together to find ways to reinvest and meet the goals of the community itself.

So what?

For example, one thing that we've done recently is worked on reinvesting dollars from a settlement, from a lawsuit.

That significant lawsuit that we filed against Fannie Mae.

Part of our process there was meeting with the community, doing focus groups, doing surveys, trying to gather what's the best way to reinvest back into the neighborhoods that were harmed.

And so we have we rolled out a number of different programs from the settlement that were informed by interviews.

Focus groups means that we had that includes down payment assistance to build homeownership in the very neighborhoods, for example, that were the were disinvested.

Doni: And you're working with partners in that regard so that the investment is a full.

George: Or.

Exactly.

Yeah, we're not directly implementing those programs.

The one program we are directly implementing is some legal assistance to the tenants who live in those neighborhoods.

Like I was mentioning earlier, the other programs like building new roofs on homes or down payment assistance or we have a minority business loan program.

Those are all through partners.

Doni: Okay.

So what are the protected classes under the 68 law?

George: So originally, it was focused on race, color, national origin.

And since then, though, it's important to to add the, you know, sex and familial status and disability were added later.

Also said, I should say religion is one of the protected classes under federal law.

Some of those weren't added until later into the eighties.

But now, like for disability, for example, we actually have more calls and more intakes and disability issues as compared to other protected classes.

And that's actually true for every almost every fair housing organization across the country and consistent with national trends.

But part of the reason for that is that often disability cases are easier to prove.

And there's a lot of different reasons for that.

It's not that we're not we're still getting a lot of calls on all of those different bases of discrimination, all those different protected classes, but often that disability that tends to be a bit easier to fill.

Doni: Is easier.

George: To open.

Doni: We still have so much to talk about that we need to break for sure.

You'll stay with me, won't you?

George: I will.

Doni: Thank you so much.

We'll be back in just a moment.

Jaden: I'm Jaden Jefferson one point this week from Swan Creek Metro Park, asking people a pretty interesting question.

There's one zip code impact, one's destiny.

Take a look and see what these people had to say.

Does one zip code determine one's destiny?

Jesse: Of course not.

What determines your destiny is your persistence.

Dr. Peele wrote, It outweighs talent, skill, intellect outweighs everything.

In other words, a guy who gets back up.

That's why they play football, right?

Yeah.

They teach you to get back up.

Once you get hit and get knocked down, you got to keep getting back up.

No, it doesn't.

Angelo: And the reason why?

Because every other zip code is living a different way.

Jaden: Does one zip code determine one's destiny?

Jailan: No, I don't think it does.

Why is that?

Because just because you live in a certain area don't mean you can't follow your dreams.

Jaden: On point this week from Swan Creek Natural Park, I'm Jayden Jefferson.

Doni: As always, you may connect with us on our social media pages.

You can, as always, email me at doni _miller@wgte.org.

And if you'd like to revisit this episode or look at any of the others that we have online, please go to wgte.org/To the point.

We're talking to George Thomas, who is the CEO and general counsel for the Fair Housing Center.

This is and this is this project.

This topic is way too broad for the time that we have today.

But one of the things that I really want people to understand is that your zip code really does have an impact on your life.

George: Yeah, absolutely.

So if you stop and think about it, you look at other civil rights laws for a second.

There's a civil rights movement leading up to passage of laws against employment discrimination or discrimination and public accommodations.

But I think it's fair to say that in a lot of ways, the fair passage of Fair Housing Act was a kind of a pinnacle of the civil rights movement in a way, because housing is so personal to where you are to you, it affects every aspect of your life.

It affects what employment opportunities you can get to, your transportation opportunities, what schools you can access.

Crime and safety, even just health is powerfully impacted by your housing.

So I think we think about civil rights laws.

I suggest that housing has to be really central to our understanding of what what we value and in our in our legal system, how we protect people's freedom.

Housing gives you access to almost every other opportunity.

Doni: Totally, totally agree with that.

And the the difficulty, I think, as we as we move forward is that discrimination is becoming more sophisticated and harder to identify.

George: Yeah, that's that's right.

I mean, think about, like the course of history here.

So after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, we've seen a few like really significant lawsuits where there's really large settlements coming out of those.

And of course, the industry learns from that.

They adapt their they become more sophisticated.

And so part of our challenge is often is uncovering or gathering enough evidence, gathering the information we need to be able to uncover discrimination because it's become more sophisticated.

And in some cases, the discrimination may be occurring in ways that the actors don't even realize that it's necessarily intentional, but it doesn't really matter if it's having the same effect, if it's having the effect of perpetuating the issues that we saw, you know, pre 1968.

If we're going to really try to fix those now, it's up to us to have more sophisticated processes of investigation and, you know, uncovering discrimination.

In addition, like I was emphasizing earlier, we need to make progressive policy goals to remove barriers to fair housing choice.

One example of that, just one is lead poisoning, right?

Lead poisoning we see as a fair housing issue.

It's a barrier to fair housing choice.

We might not be able to prove that that one landlord had a discriminatory intent.

Right.

Like you could prove a lawsuit to say, well, there's lead poisoning in this neighborhood area because of this one actor intended to discriminate.

That might be hard to prove, but we still know it's a fair housing issue.

It's limiting access to opportunity in certain neighborhoods.

Doni: Predominantly and older stock homes is it pre 1970?

George: Correct.

You know, we're looking at, you know, pre 1978.

But whenever this comes up, though, I always give an example, which is we're in this little area.

I'll give this example, you know, like the old orchard area, we're familiar with very, very few labor poisoning incidents.

And even though the housing stock was primarily built before 1978.

That's right.

Go to other neighborhood areas.

The housing stock is just as old or older or maybe even a little bit newer.

But it was so pre 1978.

There's there are some public schools, elementary schools in our area where local research has found that more than 70% of the children are experiencing some level of elevated, elevated blood lead levels.

And that should shock us.

That should really concern us.

And we need to see that as a really significant housing disparity in our area.

So it's not initially about the age of the housing to answer your question, but it is about what neighborhood areas and we have historically been disinvested and we've been preyed upon by investors that don't don't don't care for the neighborhood, the area that needs reinvestment and has been neglected for various different reasons over time.

Yeah.

Doni: And for folks who are unfamiliar with the impact of lead poisoning, delayed learning, more vulnerability to illnesses and lots of things for children and lots of things that that negatively impact the children who live in those neighborhoods.

George: Yeah, absolutely.

It's hard to overstate the gravity of this as a public health issue in our area.

And we're not alone.

Like Cleveland, for example, in Detroit, city after city have been grappling with how to deal with this.

Because if you look at like Flint, Michigan, for example, that was a lot of folks all at once were poisoned.

It made a lot of news coverage.

Right.

And that one moment.

But what we see, though, is a gradual, constant, often invisible crisis that's happening year after year after year, where we know that children are getting poisoned.

It's hard to track it.

But once you dig into the research a little bit more, it's probably in the thousands, you know, every year.

That's unacceptable.

And and again, we have to understand it as a fair housing issue.

You might be able to prove discrimination, but it is undoubtedly a result of fair housing issues over time.

Doni: Are you guys still using your testing methods?

I think I mentioned that I was a testing for a long, long time ago.

George: Yeah.

Yeah, I it's funny you say that.

We're we have been filing cases aggressively based on fair housing testing where there's just a case that we've filed recently, we'll probably be making some press releases about soon.

But the point is that we are testing program.

Folks don't know as it gathers volunteers gathers, folks who are interested in helping the fair housing movement to some extent, and we train them on how to go out.

And maybe, like I say, it's applied to an apartment and you have to two testers who are identical in every way except for a protected class are almost identical in every way except for the protected class.

So hypothetically, we'll have a white tester and a black tester on paper and their resumes and everything and their credit score, so to speak, look almost exactly the same.

They go to apply for the same apartment.

If you can show that they were treated differently or one was offered the unit and the other was not, that's the kind of evidence that we need to show housing discrimination.

So your points earlier become more and more challenging to uncover.

It's very hidden, right.

But those are the kinds of tools that we need to take to uncover discrimination.

Doni: So from your experience, George, what would you say to folks that they should be looking for as evidence of discrimination?

George: Well, what I usually tell folks is if you feel like you may have experienced discrimination based on one of those protected classes, that business was race, color, national origin, sex, religion, familial status, disability, go ahead and contact us.

Right.

So at that well will evaluate can we gather the evidence we need to be able to prove discrimination if sometimes it's just a feeling that you have, sometimes you might have a little bit more.

Maybe you think, I wish I could have recorded that conversation.

They said something may I don't have it recorded, but we might be able to help with that.

Maybe we can have someone else apply and then they might be able to record the conversation and maybe they'll say the same thing.

So it's to be clear to housing discrimination.

It covers the entire housing market.

From it is the design and construction of housing to the mortgages you might need to buy a home too.

Applications for a rental unit.

Even getting access to insurance in the housing market.

So all aspects of housing, it's a very wide net.

If you feel like if you experience housing discrimination, we're more than happy to talk with you further.

Doni: How would housing discrimination appear in design build?

George: Yeah, so usually what we're looking for in design and construction cases is accessibility for persons with disabilities.

So if it's a multi-family housing complex that's built more recently, that might trigger us to look into it a little bit more, make sure that their following accessibility design and construction standards, that means like the doorways need to be wide enough, the mailboxes need to be within a certain reach, etc..

The other part of it, too, though, is we're at that that phase that just a design construction.

It means zoning and land use rules.

So if a housing complex is being prohibited from development in a certain area, let's say, or if there's know questions brought up, but based on a protected class about the design and about zoning issues, that's another area where fair housing applies.

Doni: I think one of the things that's not quite so obvious in when you're discussing protected class is the issue of sexual harassment.

Mm hmm.

So your woman and I'm in my apartment and my landlord is asking me to do things that I'm not comfortable with in order to remain in my department, in my apartment when I call you for that.

George: Absolutely.

So one of the protected classes I mentioned is sex.

We actually don't get that many calls of someone saying I was denied housing just based on my sex or gender.

But we do get calls and sadly about folks contacting us saying my landlord has made some requests for me, like sexual requests or maybe if it's just dating and sexual harassment and housing had occurred kind of in two main ways.

One is quid pro quo or you say housing versus I'll do repairs for you or I'll give you housing in exchange for entering a romantic relationship with me or going on a date with me or whatever the case may be.

The other way is just a hostile environment.

So there's lots of comments over time or someone doesn't feel safe because of the comments, or someone maybe just keeps asking for a date over and over again.

Maybe it's not in exchange for something necessarily, but keeps harassing.

If we can gather evidence of that, then yes, that's housing discrimination, too.

Yeah.

Doni: Two quick questions.

We have just a minute left.

LGBTQ protected.

George: That's it is now.

And after the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock.

So again, it's under that that class of sex the Supreme Court in Bostock was actually an employment discrimination case.

Extended sex to cover sexual orientation and gender identity.

And HUD more recently has issued guidance saying they're extending the Bostock decision also to fair housing as well.

Doni: Okay.

And cost, if I'm looking at coming to you for help and maybe there's a lawsuit in, I'm like, Jeez, I can't afford to do all this.

What do you say to me?

George: Thank you so much for saying that.

It's 100% free where all of our services are free and it doesn't matter.

Your income level discrimination affects everyone potentially in every way.

And so there's absolutely no cost for our services.

Doni: Great.

So I'm going to ask you to give folks your phone number.

We're going to try really hard to get it on the on the website to get what you give it.

George: It's 4192436163.

Doni: Thank you so much.

Thank you for being with us today.

And I sure hope you'll come back now.

George: Thank you so much, Doni.

Doni: Appreciate it.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us.

And we will see you next time on To the Point.