Living on the White Side: Diary of a New Orleans Fair Housing Tester

New Orleans is a city of dappled sunlight playing through tall and lively oak trees. The same spotted sunlight falls on Spanish town homes, white antebellum mansions, and Victorian cottages with sagging porches. The sun filters through the trees, bespeckling children tap dancing for money and businessmen drinking chicory coffee in cafes and complaining about the latest Saints fiasco. It also falls on miles of half-filled tenements.

Walking through these tenements, you see a makeshift barbershop on a front porch with men listening to hip-hop and laughing deeply. Children skip rope in complicated patterns, their shrill voices lifted in sing-song. Once, an old woman stopped me and asked if I was lost. “I am afraid to be here,” she said as she stood at a bus stop waiting to go to work.

 

Pary of my job in 1996 was to listen to black people tell me deeply personal stories of humiliation. I investigated housing discrimination for the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, a nonprofit organization funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The Center was the first of its kind in Louisiana.

The South lags in fair housing enforcement. For example, to date, there are no fair housing centers in Mississippi, yet HUD funds five such organizations in metropolitan Chicago alone.

During the Center’s first three months in business, I conducted a fair housing testing audit of the city. I had been trained in testing procedures by the National Fair Housing Alliance. Testing meant that a matched pair of black and white volunteers inquired about apartments advertised for rent in predominantly white neighborhoods. Their experiences were then compared.

The audit showed that 77 percent of blacks looking for apartments in these neighborhoods faced illegal discrimination. Owners lied to the black applicants, smiling and patting them on the back while assuring them that the apartments had just been rented. Well-dressed, well-spoken volunteers were denied apartments solely because of the color of their skin.

The Center’s audit garnered intensive media coverage. Immediately after the 5 o’clock news on the day the results were announced, our phones starting ringing off the hook. Our staff stayed late into the evening, fielding calls and taking story after story. One person told me, “I have prayed for someone like you to come along. Please help us.”

Shawn Walton* was one of the many callers who saw our number on the evening news. Her story shook me. “The others are afraid,” she said. “I was afraid, too. But I am not anymore. It is wrong and I’m going to speak out about it, even if I do get evicted.”

Shawn was 24 at the time. Her two children giggled in the background while she told me her story. Housing for Shawn was a precious commodity. Housing on the “Westbank,” where she lived in a one-bedroom apartment, was even more precious, due to its relatively low crime rate. Yet she was willing to risk eviction to complain.

Riviera Oaks, her complex, was divided by a parking lot. To the right of the lot, black families and white women with multiracial children were housed, while on the left the manager placed white families and a few carefully chosen blacks. Shawn had not been picked to live on what was known as the “white side.”

Each side had its own swimming pool, as well as heating and air units. The heat and air on the black side was controlled by management, while the white side’s apartments featured individual thermostats. Tenants on both sides paid the same rents.

 

That summer I drove to Riviera Oaks to take some photographs. It was about 95 degrees under a blistering sun. My car’s air conditioner was broken and it felt like an oven on the long drive. When I got there, I saw mothers on the black side sitting outside, sweat on their brows, holding babies. Nearby was a glistening aqua pool surrounded by a tall iron fence. A maintenance man carefully fished stray leaves out of the water.

A skinny boy begged me to ask when the pool would be open. The maintenance man said, “Six p.m., but only for adults.” Adult, it turned out, meant 18. The boy was only 12.

On the white side, a sign read, “This pool for 3401 only. Tenants from 3301 use other pool.” 3401 was the white side. In that pool, white children were splashing along with their parents in the crystal cold water.

Rina Johnson, a tenant on the black side, later became a witness in the case. She told me about the time her aunt and uncle, both in their late forties, came to visit her for the day and brought their bathing suits, hoping to go for a swim. As usual, the pool on Rina’s side was closed, so they went over to the white side to swim. Rina had never been there.

Within minutes, two white police officers arrived and ordered them out of the pool, threatening them with trespassing charges. The complex’s manager, Linda Kreger, had called the police.

 

I soon learned about a New Orleans policeman known as “Paco.” Tenants said that he lived on the white side rent-free in exchange for his services as “security guard.” He routinely entered apartments, sometimes with a partner, to see if everyone inside was on the lease. Those who weren’t were arrested for trespassing. Numerous stories ended, “Then I had to go pay 90 dollars to get him out of jail.” Young, unmarried fathers visiting their children seemed to be particularly favored targets of this practice.

One of these fathers was returning to Riviera Oaks from the grocery store, carrying grocery bags stuffed with food and diapers for his girlfriend and child, when Paco apprehended him. He and his girlfriend tried to explain that he was a guest, but Paco arrested him for trespassing anyway, telling him, “Every time I catch you over here, you’re going to jail.”

Fresh on everyone’s minds during my interviews was an incident involving a young pregnant woman named Sharon. It began with argument between Sharon and Linda Kreger, the manager, after which Kreger sent Paco to Sharon’s apartment, ostensibly to search for guns.

News of the argument traveled quickly. When Paco came, accompanied by police officers, a group of tenants, including some of Sharon’s cousins, gathered outside her apartment. Sharon’s boyfriend answered the door. When he saw Paco and a partner, he demanded a warrant. “What kind of education do you have to ask for a warrant?” Paco said, then grabbed the young man and handcuffed him.

Meanwhile, Kreger pointed Sharon out: “She’s the one.” Sharon ran, but the police caught her easily. In the struggle, she was kneed repeatedly in the stomach, despite screaming over and over again, “I’m pregnant!”

Sharon’s relatives, all female and including her 13-year-old sister, tried to pull the cops off. More police arrived, and a general melee ensued. In the midst of all this, Kreger shouted racial epithets and threatened to evict “all you black whores.” No guns were found in the apartment, but Sharon, her boyfriend, and her sister were all arrested.

Sharon miscarried that day.

One of the cousins involved in the fight later told me that from then on Paco and other police constantly harassed Sharon, until she finally moved in with another relative in a housing project.

After the incident there was talk among the black side tenants of not paying rent. Someone called a television news crew, but Kreger denied them access to the complex. “No trespassing,” she told them.

 

Maintenance on the black side was abysmal. The maintenance man, who was African-American, later became a witness, and told of sneaking over to the black side to fix things without Kreger’s approval. He said black requests for repairs were treated with indifference by the staff.

He also said that he ate lunch in his truck to avoid sitting in the office with the white Riviera Oaks staff, who made racist remarks in his presence. “Can’t they see I’m black?” he asked. Interviews with tenants confirmed the maintenance man’s description of repairs on the black side.

Yet even after hearing the fear in mothers’ voices as they told about fire hazards and rats biting their children, nothing could have prepared me for Chantal’s nightmare. Sewer lines had broken in her apartment and flooded the living room with raw sewage, leaving the carpet soaking wet and stinking.

Instead of moving Chantal and her daughter to one of the vacant apartments on the white side, Kreger waited until one on the black side became free. By the time they moved, the child had become ill.

 

To bolster our case, we decided to test the complex. Though Riviera Oaks certainly looked segregated, and we had witnesses and anecdotal evidence, testing would provide an objective measure of housing discrimination.

I played the role of a white tester, and my counterpart was Tim, an African-American man. We drove to Riviera Oaks together and parked across the street. I waited in the car while Tim walked over to inquire about apartments. When he came back, it was my turn.

Upon entering the small leasing office, I met Kreger, a short, heavyset blonde. They didn’t have any one-bedroom apartments available at the moment, but one would be vacated soon. Kreger gave me the number. I walked outside and looked for the apartment. It was on the white side.

Back in the car, Tim told me that he was shown two apartments, both on the black side. The office wanted to do a criminal check on him before they rented to him, a requirement they didn’t mention to me.

When we first met at tester training, Tim told me that he had left New Orleans during Jim Crow. “You couldn’t even walk down Bourbon Street,” he said. “I know what discrimination is, I’ve been black all my life.”

A few more rounds of tests confirmed that the manager was clearly steering black testers to the black side and white testers to the white side. When we completed the investigation, we referred the case to Sue Kohn, a partner at a prominent New Orleans law firm. Attorneys love fair housing cases, because good testing procedure yields solid evidence, and the plaintiffs’ lawyers can collect their fees from the other side if they win.

The day we filed the lawsuit, I stopped at Riviera Oaks to take a few more pictures. Kreger saw me and promptly kicked me off the premises for trespassing.

Shortly thereafter, the owners of the complex, the Favrots, a prominent New Orleans family, fired Kreger and her staff. They settled the case in March 1998 for $325,000, and were forced to sell the apartments.

Shawn Walton received her share of the settlement and bought a home for her family in a safe suburb of New Orleans. She told us, smiling, that she bought a house on an all-white street.

HUD made a promotional video about the case. On the video, Shawn says, “Everybody’s here for a purpose. I feel some people leave this world not knowing what their purpose is. Look at me, I’m here for a purpose. I found out what that purpose was. So if I close my eyes today or tomorrow, I have done something. I made a difference in somebody’s life.”

Since the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center opened in 1995, it has filed 18 lawsuits resulting in almost $800,000 in damages, submitted dozens of fair housing complaints to HUD, and otherwise advocated on behalf of numerous victims of discrimination. The Center, with a staff of four and a team of volunteer lawyers, board members, and testers, is making a difference, too — a big difference.

* Some of the names have been changed to protect privacy.

 

SIDEBAR

Fair Housing Act Primer

A Short Lesson on the Law and Enforcement Options

 

On April 10, 1968, amid anguished inner-city rioting after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Congress passed the Fair Housing Act. No longer would it be legal to deny anyone a place to live because of his or her race, religion, color, ethnicity, or sex.

The act outlawed redlining, a practice used by banks to deny loans to African-American communities. Insurance companies were barred from offering inferior coverage to home owners solely because they lived in black neighborhoods. Realtors could no longer legally steer blacks away from white areas, or vice versa.

In 1988, the law was expanded to include a prohibition on discrimination based on disability or the presence of children. Newly constructed apartment buildings were required to be wheelchair-accessible. Landlords could no longer keep disabled people from making reasonable alterations to an apartment to assist with independent living. The mentally ill could no longer be discriminated against. Landlords were kept from barring children or segregating families with children within a complex.

However, even with this broad law on the books, not much has changed since its passage.

According to American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of an Underclass by Douglass Massey and Nancy Denton, 78 percent of African Americans now live in segregated black neighborhoods, and one-third live in extremely segregated ghettos where they have little or no contact with people of different races.

Massey and Denton write, “Conditions in the ghetto have deteriorated markedly since the 1968 Fair Housing Act was originally passed.”

A 1995 study conducted by the Montgomery (Ala.) Fair Housing Center reported that 70 percent of African Americans faced some type of illegal discrimination in their search for rental housing in Montgomery. A 1997 study in Jacksonville, Fla., reported a 58 percent rate of illegal discrimination. Other studies throughout the South confirm these high rates.

There are many resources available to combat housing discrimination. If you’re lucky enough to live in a community with an effective private fair housing center, community members can work to eliminate housing discrimination, one case at a time. Anyone can get involved by reporting discrimination to the center, serving on the board, or volunteering as a tester.

Centers usually get the bulk of their funding from HUD. As with any non-profit organization, the centers are only as good as their staffs and boards. Some are extremely effective; others might need some prodding from the community to make an impact.

Since the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (FHAC) opened in 1995, they have assisted in filing 18 lawsuits yielding almost $800,000 in damages. Additionally, they have filed dozens of HUD fair housing complaints and negotiated numerous other fair housing violations, advocating on behalf of victims of discrimination.

A good fair housing center works in the following areas:

·      Education and Outreach: This involves educating the community to recognize and report housing discrimination, as well as training housing providers. Strong ties to the community and other civil rights groups are necessary — the center does not operate in a vacuum.

·      Testing: Centers can test for rental, sales, insurance, and mortgage lending discrimination. The key to a good testing program is the training of testers and testing coordinators. While testing is not a scientific process, proper training of participants creates accurate and objective tests that can serve as powerful evidence in a court of law.

·      Enforcement: Many centers recruit “cooperating attorneys” who do not charge for their services, but will retain their fees from defendants if they prevail in a case. Attorneys may negotiate settlements for clients in state or federal court, or may help clients file cases with governmental agencies.

Accessible to every American is the HUD fair housing complaint process. In almost every newspaper, housing advertisements begin with a telephone number to report housing discrimination. The HUD process helps resolve violations without the use of the courts, and consists of the following:

·      Negotiation: HUD’s first goal is to work out a compromise between the two parties.

·      Investigation: If no compromise can be met, HUD has certain powers to investigate a case, in some ways more power than a private fair housing center. HUD investigators can demand to see application files, for example, or openly interview tenants and other parties involved. Other techniques include creating maps outlining the racial composition of a neighborhood or complex. In disability cases, they have the power to determine whether construction meets fair housing guidelines.

·      Determination of Cause/No Cause: At the end of an investigation, assuming no settlement has been reached, HUD will either determine “cause,” meaning there is evidence of illegal discrimination; or “no cause,” meaning they have found no conclusive evidence of discrimination. If they find “cause” then the case will go to an Administrative Law Judge, who will determine the outcome of the case. If they find “no cause” then the complainant will be given a “right to sue” letter, which allows a private attorney to bring an action in court.

Because HUD is a neutral party, victims of discrimination should actively self-advocate. Above all, have a clear and realistic idea of what you want before filing a complaint. Maintain a strategic stance throughout the process, as the other side will probably have an attorney handling the case. Put all pertinent communication in writing, and keep copies of everything. If negotiation is not an option, make sure to request an investigation. You can even suggest investigative techniques.

For example, an African-American man is denied an apartment that suits his needs, ostensibly because of his credit report. He believes he has excellent credit, however, and suspects the denial to be motivated by racial discrimination. He files a complaint with HUD, demanding a rental agreement as well as $1000 in expenses incurred due to the refusal to rent to him. He gives a copy of his credit report to HUD, along with a detailed list of the expenses.

After two months, he has not heard from HUD, so he both writes and calls his investigator. He requests that the investigator compare his credit report with that of the white tenants in the building.

The next thing he hears, after several months, is that the complex will give him the apartment but no monetary compensation. Depending on how strongly he feels about the issue, he can either continue to press his case or agree to accept their offer.

Finally, a private attorney can take a fair housing case. For help finding a local attorney interested in these cases, contact a civil rights organization such as the National Fair Housing Alliance, the NAACP, the ACLU, or a local Legal Aid office.