Commemorating the Anniversary of the Fair Housing Act
The history of the Fair Housing Act embodies both our Nation's most noble instincts and recent behavior by our Federal Government, which should make none of us proud.
On April 11, 1968, one week to the day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Congress passed and the President signed into law the Federal Fair Housing Act which now prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, national origin, religion, color, sex, familial status and disability.
Acting on this legislation, which has been stalled in this body for over 2 years, was a fitting tribute to Dr. King and reflected a belief that something constructive could be achieved in the aftermath of days of unrest in cities across the country.
In 1988, the law was amended by the Fair Housing Amendments Act, which significantly strengthened the enforcement powers of the act, giving the Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Justice the authority to mandate and to enforce the expanded and comprehensive requirements of the act. Unfortunately, while we can be proud of passing these landmark statutes, the sad fact is that the Fair Housing Act remains the least enforced of our Nation's civil rights laws.
Through the work of local housing groups like the Housing Rights Center in my district in Los Angeles, we know that more than 3.7 million people are discriminated against in housing transactions every year, and we are on the brink of an economic crisis fueled by a failed subprime lending market built primarily on borrowers and neighborhoods of color.
The current foreclosure crisis is the outgrowth of persistent discrimination in housing, lending and insurance markets that took place under the negligent eyes of the very Federal agencies charged with enforcing our Nation's antidiscrimination laws. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued only 31 charges of discrimination, and the Department of Justice filed just 35 cases.
Sadly, the risk posed by lax enforcement of the Fair Housing Act is no less than the resegregation of America. While we have made some progress in reducing levels of residential segregation, most Americans live in communities largely divided by race and ethnicity. Perhaps more distressingly, our children are attending increasingly segregated schools. Recent research demonstrates that by 2000, minority students were in schools with substantially fewer white students than was the case a decade earlier. We must reduce those troubling trends.
To that end, I urge my colleagues to support this resolution offered by Mr. Green, whose dedication to the housing needs of America and America's most vulnerable households is second to that of no other member of the Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee, which I chair.
Additionally, in my role as Chair, I'm joining Mr. Green in rededicating myself to the enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, starting with making plans for a joint hearing with the Constitution Subcommittee, chaired by Mr. Nadler of New York, to hold the inadequate efforts of both HUD and the Department of Justice up to congressional scrutiny.
The best way to celebrate the anniversary of the Fair Housing Act is to take concrete actions to enforce both its letter and spirit.
Mr. Chairman of our Judiciary Committee, whose lifelong work has been to end discrimination and to enforce fair housing and to enforce civil rights, I just thank you for having the opportunity to work with you.
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