Despite laws that ban housing discrimination and the vigilant efforts of organizations that help renters combat it, discrimination in the rental market hasn’t gone away. It has just become a lot more subtle.
In fact, discrimination against certain groups of renters is often carefully masked to keep them from realizing they’ve been victimized, says Mary Davis, senior vice president with the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities in Chicago, a fair housing organization that seeks to eliminate segregation and discrimination throughout the Chicago area.
“It may not be as blatant as someone saying, `We won’t rent to you because you’re African-American, Latino or a family with children,’ ” she says. “The black or Latino or the family with children may not be told about rental incentives, or they may be asked to pay a double security deposit. Or they might not be told about the full range of housing available. Sometimes, there might be a difference in the price of the rental unit itself.”
Often, discrimination occurs not when the prospective renters view the apartment, but at the application stage. At that point, the would-be renter may be told the unit is no longer available, or that the terms and conditions have changed since the unit was first viewed. A denial may also be based on fabricated claims of credit problems or of negative statements by previous landlords. In other cases, the landlord may claim there’s been a delay in the processing of the application or an increase in the application fee.
Jennifer Vidis, executive director of the Cook County Commission on Human Rights, says the truest tipoff that discrimination is occurring is “a changed circumstance or a runaround. There’s a listing in the paper, the person calls and then comes out to see the unit, and at that point there’s a change and now the unit is not available.”
In addition to racial and ethnic minorities, another group often singled out for unfair treatment is people with disabilities, says Alberto Barrera, housing team leader with Access Living Chicago, a service and advocacy group for people with disabilities.
“They try to steer them away,” he says of some landlords. “They’ll show the worst apartment available or tell them the elevators go out for weeks. When we send testers without disabilities to the same building, the elevator is never mentioned.”
Vidis says her office has seen several cases where “landlords wanted tenants out of a building because of their sexual orientation.” Discrimination can also take the form of sexual harrassment, adds Zeva Schub, legal director of the Fair Housing Project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing in Chicago.
This type of discrimination tends to manifest itself in two ways. Renting the apartment, avoiding eviction or obtaining maintenance is contingent upon sexual favors, or the landlord creates a hostile environment characterized by stalking, comments or demands for sex.
One of the most under-recognized forms of rental discrimination is that based on family size, say experts. The Metropolitan Tenants Organization focuses on this form of discrimination, says executive director Pam Alfonso. She says her organization estimates that families are targets of discrimination about 60 percent of the time when seeking apartments in Chicago.
“A lot of people don’t really know that it is discriminatory to refuse housing based on family size,” she says. “If a landlord tells you, `That’s too many children,’ that’s blatant discrimination.”
However, landlords do have the right to screen tenants, says Vidis. If, in checking with prospective renters’ previous landlords, they find that the renter has a record of failing to pay rent, of failing to take care of their unit, of illegal activities on the premises or of damaging property, they don’t have to accept them as tenants.
“It’s this kind of objective criteria–criteria that have no relation to national origin, race, gender or family size–that they can use to turn down the renter’s applications,” says Vidis.
But illegal discrimination is banned in housing on the federal, state and local level.
On the federal level, the Fair Housing Act and its 1988 amendment protects against discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (including sexual harassment), national origin, disability and familial status. It also protects against discrimination by retaliation, intimidation and coercion. The act covers all non-owner-occupied rental buildings, as well as owner-occupied buildings of more than four units, says Schub. It’s enforced by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
On the state level, the Illinois Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (including sexual harassment), national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, disability, familial status, unfavorable military discharge and military status. It also protects against discrimination by retaliation. The act covers all non-owner-occupied buildings as well as owner-occupied buildings of more than five units. It is enforced by the Illinois Department of Human Rights.
The Cook County Human Rights Ordinance outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (including sexual harassment), national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, disability, parental status, sexual orientation, source of income, military discharge status, housing status, and also protects against retaliation. It has no provision regarding the number of units in a building, owner-occupied or otherwise, Schub says. The ordinance is enforced by the Cook County Commission on Human Rights.
In Chicago, the Chicago Fair Housing Ordinance offers protection against discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (including sexual harassment), national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, disability, parental status, sexual orientation, source of income and military discharge status. Like the Cook County Human Rights Ordinance, it has no provision regarding number of apartment units in a rental building. This ordinance is enforced by the Chicago Commission on Human Relations.
According to Davis of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, people who believe they’ve been victims of rental discrimination should immediately contact an organization that can help them through investigative measures to prove or disprove the charge.
Two examples of such organizations, she says, are the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, which champions the rights of families with children and people victimized by sexual harassment, and Access Living Chicago, which does the same for people with disabilities. (For a more complete list, see accompanying story.)
“Enforcement agencies are the key to this process,” she says. “The Chicago Commission on Human Relations or the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development both have the authority to go into rental buildings and compare application files on demand.”
The Cook County Commission on Human Rights is another option, says executive director Vidis. The office would prefer that renters with complaints come in for an interview, but will conduct the interview over the phone if a personal visit isn’t possible.
“We’ll conduct a neutral fact-finding investigation, with the intention of finding if there’s substantial evidence of rental discrimination,” says Vidis. “If we find that, we’ll have a conciliatory conference. We’ll bring in all the parties involved and attempt to mediate the dispute. Very often it works. The parties enter into a written settlement agreement that can be enforced by this office.”
RESOURCES TO FIGHT RENTAL BIAS
These are among the Chicago-area organizations renters can turn to for help in fighting rental discrimination:
Chicago Commission on Human Relations, 312-744-2852
Cook County Commission on Human Rights, 312-443-3456
Illinois Department of Human Rights, 312-814-6200
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, 312-353-7776
Access Living Chicago, 312-226-5900
Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, 312-341-5643
Metropolitan Tenants Organization, 773-292-4980
Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, 312-347-7600
HOPE Fair Housing Center, 630-690-6500
