3. Toward a Plan That Works

There is no simple or single recipe for successful local
action in the elimination of sex bias in housing. The
solution, like the problem, has many facets. What works
in Cincinnati, may have minimum impact in San Diego or
Cleveland. Only the process of trial and error plan-
ning, organizing, implementing and evaluating
ultimately, a "model" strategy backed by well planned
citizen intervention.

-

may yield,

Experimentation, however, need not be helter-skelter. Others have travelled similar roads before. Moreover, the problem, as outlined in the previous chapters, establishes certain parameters for action. There is plenty to be done, and the four-point Plan we suggest here is but a starting place to avoid "bogging down before digging in".

"It's obvious to me", a San Francisco housing consultant warned the Panel, "that few women do, indeed, understand

RAISING WOMEN'S
LEVEL OF
AWARENESS

the extent of discrimination against
them in the housing market."

Yet the law's responses (described in Chapter 5) to sex bias require that women be a part of the solution. Without 'women pressure', either as individual complainants or as participants

in local citizen intervention, the new laws will be but "ringing declarations coupled with flabby enforcement". Yet few women, we found, know there is a problem.

Over a period of a year and a half we received twelve calls
[about sex discrimination], that doesn't sound like many,
but I think there are many reasons for that ... Some women
don't even recognize it as discrimination.

NOW representative in St. Louis

If FEPC [the California Fair Housing Enforcement Agency]
would mount an informational program concerning the law,
then, I think women would know what their rights were, and
even at this time, if we could have a summary of what women's
rights consist of, I think that you would enable women to
know at least the resources they do have.

As a representative from an Atlanta Civil Rights organization told the Panel in that city:

Before you get public acceptance you've got to get a public awareness of the problem ... We've got to go at it by a public educational effort of some kind.

If you don't know there is a problem, you are even less likely to know there is a remedy for it.

I do not think that the new law has been publicized enough to the extent that women are aware of these laws. Not only of the Federal law but the Texas law. Women all over do not seem to be aware that a statute exists now to protect their equal rights.

San Antonio attorney

The women of Missouri don't really know that they are in
complaint-posture on the matter of housing and shelter
rights. So the absence of your complaints, I think, is
rooted in that basic fact.

Witness at St. Louis Hearing

...

[One]

I definitely think there is a need for education
reason is that women don't know where to go with their
complaint.

Witness at St. Louis Hearing

Many of the laws [anti-discrimination statutes] are new, and
I do not think there has been much publicity. I don't think
women know their rights. I think that is a problem; we have
to consider that women are not aware of the fact that they
have more rights than they had in the past.

San Francisco attorney

If the bill [amendments to Title VIII] is to truly be effective, it must be accompanied by an educational effort informing women of their options under the law, the handicaps they are likely to face and sometimes the subtle ways in which they may be discriminated against.

This widespread "lack of awareness" leads some women to view overcoming it the Number 1 priority. As a witness from an Atlanta organization active in assisting women

in that City replied to a Panelist question:

Q.

If [you] were to concentrate all of [your] energy and
resources on any one area to meet the problems you have
described, where would you start cutting away?

A.

I think the first area would be public information.
think the law has very little use unless the public is
aware of it, and that is the most important area to
begin, to let people know that the laws do exist and
that there is something they can do to prevent this
discrimination against them. [10]

I

We recommend that HUD prepare and arrange for the distribution, through coalitions of women's organizations and others, of a Handbook on Women's Rights in Housing, which Handbook

(a)

(b)

shall summarize the problems women face in
acquiring shelter on a non-discriminatory
basis, and

shall describe the rights and remedies available under federal, state and local laws relating to equal housing opportunities for women.

One way to end sex bias in housing is to place a "tariff" or "cost" on discrimination. Since laws forbidding sex discrimination in housing do not levy a very high "tariff", that is, neither jail sentences nor fines are imposed on violators, the costs which are authorized by the laws must fully be assessed and others found to build additional dis-incentives to noncompliance.

INCREASING
THE COSTS OF
NON-COMPLIANCE

What are the law's "costs"? Pri

marily, they are the victim's rewards from successful private litigation: compensatory and punitive damages, lawyer fees and court costs. (Damages may also be collected as a result of the pursuit of Administrative remedies under Federal and State laws.) Affirmative relief, whether in a private action or as a result of a U. S. Department of Justice suit, may also demand expenditures by a violator.

Since these costs are primarily the outcome of litigation, they are likely to be optimized where victims have access to attorneys familiar with laws, procedures and evidentiary requirements in this field. To facilitate this, a coalition could help establish a "legal referral service" and, with HUD's assistance, arrange for the lawyers' thorough briefing on existing remedies and precedents from both fair housing and equal employment opportunity litigation. Information on two active legal programs may be secured from:

There are other "costs" which might be levied on those who discriminate. Brokers and salesmen, in some states, can lose their licenses or receive other disciplinary action for violating federal or state fair housing laws. Lenders may jeopardize their charters or lose other benefits from governmental regulation by federal or state financial regulatory agencies. Developers may be suspended from participation in HUD or Veterans Administration insurance, guarantee or other assistance programs. Consumer boycotts or picketing, in appropriate cases of egregious misconduct, could also prove costly to the violator.

This list could be expanded, and groups interested in seeking the full implementation of the laws undoubtedly will.

The key point, however, remains: information about discrimination has a multiplicity of legitimate uses in increasing the "costs" of denying women equal housing opportunities. When "costs" are successfully imposed, there is usually strategic value in its publicity to assure that the industry gets the message: violation of this law doesn't pay.

Federal and state civil rights enforcement programs traditionally have had to do their jobs with "nickel and dime"

KEEPING
AN EYE ON
GOVERNMENT

appropriations. Fair housing, never able to attract the monumental complaint backlog which budget officers see as the critical barometer of need, has been especially undernourished. And some have concluded that what resources have been available to government agencies have not been wisely used. [11]

There is no sure-fire antidote to flabby administration of civil rights legislation. Vigilant monitoring by the law's "beneficiaries" -- or someone acting as their surrogates is one useful medicine.

To monitor, as defined in an excellent League of Women Voters handbook What Ever Happened to Open Housing?, means "to scrutinize or check systematically with a view to collecting certain specified categories of data". The data is used in a variety of ways to

ensure enforcement of housing laws on the books and

publicize flaws in the laws as now written and administered. [12]

Monitoring is a big, yet vital, job. Legal remedies are new, relatively complex and shared by a plethora of federal, state and local agencies. The Monitoring Organization, moreover, will not wish to confine itself to agency complaint processing. Its surveillance should include the implementation of agency regulations such as:

1. Regulations and Guidelines of Federal and
State Financial Regulatory Agencies

2.

3.

4.

Fair Housing Poster Regulations

Agencies' Collection and Use of Racial and
Ethnic Data

HUD's Procedures for Referring Fair Housing
Complaints to State Agencies.

5. Affirmative Marketing Regulations

6.

7.

Advertising Guidelines

Equal Opportunity in OFF-Base Housing Program of the U.S. Department of Defense