The case involving the mixed-race couple and the Steger landlord seemed solid to south suburban housing advocates.
After federal investigators found that the Will County couple had been discriminated against, officials from the South Suburban Housing Center in Homewood waited for U.S. Department of Justice attorneys to take the case to court.
When Justice Department attorneys did not go forward with the case, officials at the center, a non-profit housing advocacy group to whom the couple had gone for help, demanded to know why.
The housing advocates contend the Justice Department has been increasingly shying away from taking cases to court because of a policy shift. To try to prove their point, they’ve requested inter-department memos and documents through the Freedom of Information Act and have recruited U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s help to get them.
“There is a definite policy change coming from up high,” said John Petruszak, the center’s executive director. “They’re not filing the cases, and HUD is not finding probable cause. That pipeline has almost closed off completely.”
Though the number of cases filed has declined, officials from the Justice Department and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said they abide by the National Fair Housing Act and try to see cases resolved, either in court or through settlements.
Under the act, a tenant alleging discrimination by a landlord or real estate agent can file a complaint with HUD. If HUD investigators find the case to have merit, the complainant can go to federal court and be represented by Justice attorneys for free. The defendants–typically the landlord or property owner–also can go to federal court, but at their own expense.
The Justice Department is expected under the law to launch a civil suit in federal court within 30 days of a HUD finding.
In 2002, the Steger couple filed a complaint through the south suburban center. They claimed they were discriminated against by two landlords and a tenant at their complex.
According to the complaint, the woman, who is white, and the man, who is black, were the subject of derogatory remarks regarding their marriage and two children. The remarks led to confrontations that occasionally involved police, the complaint said. After a month, the landlord voided the lease and forced the couple out, it said.
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In April 2003, after a one-year investigation, HUD concluded the couple had been discriminated against and filed a “charge of discrimination” against one of the landlords, HUD documents show. The landlord elected to take the case to federal court, but Justice attorneys delayed their filing past the required 30 days. That often happens when attorneys want to review HUD’s facts or wait out a possible settlement, Justice officials said.
The couple and the landlord eventually settled out of court. But the center began sending Justice and HUD attorneys a series of letters asking for an explanation for why the case never reached court. When they didn’t get a reply, center officials sought the help of Jackson’s office.
In a reply to Jackson’s office, R. Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general, said that a court filing was delayed in the Steger case because it was known the two sides were close to settling the dispute and federal officials did not want to disrupt that process.
But to housing advocates, such actions circumvent the law and have a chilling effect on possible discrimination cases.
“I was urging them to file the lawsuit, and [Acosta] is claiming they were holding off for my benefit,” said Jeffrey Tarin, an attorney for the center.
The National Fair Housing Alliance, a Washington-based fair housing advocacy group, released a report in April showing the number of housing discrimination cases filed in federal court by the Department of Justice has steadily dropped in the last three years.
The Justice Department says it filed 131 housing discrimination lawsuits since the Bush administration took office through the end of last year. Under the Clinton administration, from 1996 through 1998, there were 179.
The group also says the number of cases filed is just a fraction of the 3.7 million housing discrimination complaints lodged at various agencies across the country each year.
“Those numbers are pitiful,” said Shanna Smith, National Fair Housing Alliance president. “Neither HUD nor Justice are spending their resources to deal with the few cases they do have.”
Eric Holland, a Justice Department spokesman, would not comment specifically on the South Suburban Housing Center case, but acknowledged the department could be filing more housing discrimination lawsuits and denied there had been any policy shift to avoid them.
Part of the problem, he said, is that HUD referrals have been dropping steadily. They have fallen from 31 to 27 to 12 the last three years, he said.
But only a third of HUD’s housing discrimination cases are resolved through referrals to Justice, said Bryan Greene, a HUD housing director. The majority are settled, he said.
One attorney for the Justice Department left in January in part because of what he said was difficulty in getting approval to file cases in federal court under the current administration.
Eric Halperin, an attorney for the Justice Department’s Housing and Civil Enforcement Section from 1998 to January, said he was not aware of an explicit policy to discourage filing cases. But filing cases did become arduous, he said.
“There was definitely a drop-off in cases brought by this administration over previous administrations,” said Halperin, who now works for the Center for Responsible Lending in Washington. “There’s more scrutiny and much closer management on how attorneys develop and prosecute cases. Basically, we were writing a lot more memos.”
Housing advocates said, whatever the reasons, they fear the drop-off in federal cases on behalf of clients may encourage more discrimination.
“This whole process was set up so that an average person didn’t have to go through the expense and trouble of a lawsuit to file a fair housing lawsuit,” Petruszak said. “We just want to see the law implemented as it was intended.”